Halloween Countdown #2

And…the first runner up is…PETER PAN!

​The year after Oz, I was excited to continue the effort and develop a tradition. The kids absolutely loved watching the old NBC TV taped live broadcast of the play Peter Pan with Mary Martin. It was the version I’d grown up with. So the theme was a story and show they loved and would enjoy imitating.

​Before we decided on the details, Spencer was already “hooked” on pirates, and even one of his early understandable words had been “hook” (Spencer and Pirates go way back) (and forward—he does an amazing Captain Jack Sparrow) so it was a pretty easy decision to let him be Captain Hook.

​He had a little replica of the outfit worn by Disney’s cartoon version. He wore a little pirate’s coat, knee pants with white tights (thanks Molly for the loan), gold buckles on his shoes, ruffled sleeves coming out of his velvet-trimmed cuffs, an ascot, black curly wig, and a big plumed feather in his three-cornered hat. Oh, and of course the requisite hook for a hand.

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​Charlie’s favorite color was green and he was nimble and somehow just seemed like a good fit for Peter Pan. Charlie had, well, a Peter Pan costume. It was pretty straight forward. And he was pretty adorable in it!

​Once again, Pierce missed on the starring role somehow (he was such a quiet child!) so I tried to make his Crocodile (again the nemesis; what was I doing???) very cool. I designed the costume and had a lot of fun implementing my plans. The fabric I found had a texture to it, for starters. (For pennies, it was in the scrap bin at Mill Outlet Fabrics!) Then I created the crocodile skin by sewing rows and rows of gathering for the scales. Once again, I added cool craft eyes to make them shiny and real-looking. His feet were fun, with three toenail spikes on each foot. His face peered out the wide, opened mouth of the croc, through the rows of fanged teeth (as real as they looked, they were felt, folks—no animals OR children would be hurt in the making of this event).

​Tinker Bell—we all know how that would play out. But an extra bonus: Molly got lights in her costume. After using the liquid silver for Pierce’s Tin Man costume the year before, I was hooked on cool fabric. I made a leotard and tights out of stretch silver fabric (fortunately, her size required about a half yard), and then I added wings and a tutu with green tulle to hold it up. And the extra fun part? I wove battery-operated twinkling Christmas lights through the tulle and around her wings. So she really did Tinker. I mean Twinkle. She was more of a Twinkle Bell, I guess. She called herself “Tink Tink Bawh” because they were only two and hadn’t quite mastered elocution yet.

​It was a very fun year. We absolutely wore them out—entirely and utterly. We added a number of people to our “must visit” list for Halloween evening, and we took the kids to the mall again. They got lots of candy that I wouldn’t let them eat. But after an exchange for stickers, toys, and raisins, they were completely fine giving up the sugar they knew ahead of time “we” didn’t eat. (Jason took the candy to work the next day and everybody thought he was pretty cool for sharing.) (They didn’t know I’d already picked out the Snickers and Hershey’s minis for myself to keep for the days I hid in the bathroom with the door locked and closed my eyes and pretended I was in my happy place.) So my Number Two pick goes to a very special year of fun and creativity: Peter Pan and Gang. Or should I say: The Crocodile and Gang. (There you go, Pierce. :)