Halloween

When My Sons were little, they had very high standards for their Halloween costumes. They would latch on to an idea of what they wanted to be and what the costume would look like. Nothing from Walmart would do, so we ended up having a wonderful time making our own. This was the case until they got older and the novelty and anticipation of Halloween disappeared which resulted in them donning whatever would pass as a costume just to get out and get some candy.

Some of the costumes I made for them were neatly packed away with the sentimental notion of 'maybe their kids will wear them one day'. I have re-assessed my feelings and have decided: for some reason, the ones I made look pretty hokey now; their kids probably won't want to wear it; their wives probably will want to help pick the costumes themselves; what they wear will be determined by what is the hot trend for the day. I sent the cute re-usable ones away to Cheryl for her grandsons' treasure chest. The rest I threw away.

Here they are, immortalized forever.

1990
Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Era. Andrew was Raphael. The pattern came with instructions to make the head, but it turned out looking like a frog (which Andrew used in 1992).

1991
Andrew in his only Walmart costume.


1991
Here's Brian as Batman.

1992
Here, Andrew used the TMNT head and dressed as a FROG. Brian was Robin Hood.

1994
Andrew as a pirate captain. Brian as a ghost. My first hood for the ghost costume turned out looking like the KKK. This one was a little better.

1995
Their very own robot costumes. This was a fun project. Notice the electricity going between the antennae nodes. The dryer vent hose didn't stay up on it's own, so I had to sew them to t-shirt and shorts. See the protective grill?

1996
Andrew was a Bug. He designed the body complete with underwings (see the little white things sticking out at the back). The cap was sprayed green and twirled pipe cleaners were attached. Brian was a vampire bat. He had to correct everyone who thought he was just a vampire.


1997
This year we made paper mache masks for their 'two headed zombie'. We sewed two t-shirts together and they went trick or treating stuck together.

1998
Here are Andrew's very well-designed costumes that had no concept of reality or my abilities.

1998
Andrew dressed as one of Florida's favorite halloween costumes - the tourist. The loud shirt was purchased from a thrift store and Mickey's hat was re-used. We had a blast making the gladiator outfit - actually, I stand corrected, it's a 'longswordsman'. It was made out of heavy duty bubble wrap and duct tape that we spray painted gold. The helmet was a regular toy race car helmet that we spray painted and to which we glued some upholstery fringe. We used masking tape on the visor to create that effect.
1999
Andrew was a space trooper - he had a helmet and toy laser gun. Brian was a burglar. Easy 5 minutes costumes.

My Boy's Soft Toys

One has to be almost zen-like to let things go. I've been de-junking my sons' things. They don't appear to have too much of an emotional attachment to these things, anymore. I think it's just me. For those things that still seem special to me as a reminder of their childhood, I find it very difficult to just send them to Goodwill. I want to be able to hand them down to family or friends. That way it doesn't feel like I've sent special things off to an unspecial place.

Two huge boxes of soft toys were in the garage for ages now and The Boys haven't missed them. One might wonder, now how can two boys accumulate so many soft toys? Well, every time we went to Sea World or the Science Museum, we couldn't leave until we'd satisfied BoyB's desire to end the trip in the gift shop. Inevitably, they ended up with a huge collection of soft toy creatures. In addition to that, there were the Pokemons, the Disney and the Sonic the Hedgehog characters. Of course, I am guilty of having added many to their collection as well. They had a lot of fun with them. The soft toys were a captive audience for many of their 'pretend' games. We used to call them their 'pets'.

The pets have been de-junked now. I hauled them all out and gave The Boys (17 and 19!!) one last chance to pick the ones they REALLY want to keep. I am touched that they kept Snakey - the huge snake I made for them out of scraps of fabric. Also spared were: Thumper, Buster Bunny, the Sonics, the Tails and an octopus that BoyB likes to wear on his head. (One Halloween, BoyA insisted I make a ghost costume for Thumper).

We heard that my great nephews (5 and 7 yrs old)were into Pokemon. They were very happy to get them, they don't make them anymore. Then I saved the really interesting ones and shipped them off to my great niece (2 yrs old). I think she might be the only little girl with such strange soft toys like a sting ray and an iguana and a piranha. The rest of the not-so-unusual soft toys were hauled off to Goodwill.

And as the de-clutter books always say to do, I took a picture and let it go.

Feathers in the Hats and Gloves Box

It was time to go through our 'hat's and gloves' box and see what to toss. All the warm accessories we need for our trips up north to Michigan and Canada were in this box. I found warm gloves, fat warm gloves, knitted hats/caps, earbands etc. Plus two clutch handbags that are over 20 years old that I hadn't used in 20 years. (Goodwill, here they come.)

Inside one of the handbags I found a few very old letters from John's mum and from Hannah dating back to 1984 - the year we came to the USA. It was fun reading the letters again: Hannah was about to give birth to her son; Mary was in, then out of hospital with a serious kidney infection; Rich & Cheryl had gone up to Johannesburg with the girls; Mum wanted to find out what to do with John's SA tax return. There was also a copy of a letter from me to Hannah: we had just moved into our first apartment in Orlando; we'd started working at a bank as mainframe programmers; a 5 day pass to Disney was $57 ($246 today). Then I fed them to the shredder.

Another envelope contained .... a bunch of beautiful tiny downy feathers. I don't recall the occasion when I gathered these. What was I thinking? What did I think I was going to do with these feathers? Make a Barbie boa? Barbie Native American headdress? They are very pretty though. Poor little bird must have had a mishap.

I at least had to record this little dejunking effort. So I pulled out my camera and played with the feathers. Here are my efforts with the help of Picassa:











I enjoyed the feathers too much to throw them out. I saved them in a reincarnated Oil of Olay jar. Maybe in 20 years time, I'll come across them and marvel at their beauty all over again.

Knitting

I grabbed another bag of something to dejunk. In it were a few jerseys/sweaters that my Mom had knitted for me, circa 1980. I hardly, if ever, wear them now. They're a little out of date fashionwise, so I can't imagine anyone wanting them. I can't bring myself to relegate them to the Goodwill bag.

I consider knitting a craft. These are handcrafted sweaters. Custom knitted to my exact size from a pattern in my Mom's head. She never used any patterns for her knitting. She knew how to knit those fancy cable stiches. She must have learned it from someone else. I can still picture her now, sitting in the shop knitting while she waited for customers to come in. I'll also never forget the sweater that I roasted in the oven because I HAD to wear it immediately. That was in my teens. Ruined it, of course.

My mother-in-law, Mum, used to knit too. She crafted my sons' beautiful sweaters with 'knit-in' designs. She is 87 now and has just recently de-junked her knitting needles and passed them on to her grandaughter. Knitting is fashionable again, I hear.

My best friend knitted a dress for me. She used a knitting machine. Now that might sound like it made things easy, but I think there is a LOT of talent involved in knowing when to increase/decrease the number of stitches and how to fashion an armhole.

I have a lot of reverence for knitting simply because even though I know how to knit, I've never 'really' knitted. I have knitted 1 scarf and 2 caps eons ago. Rather piddly compared to the sweaters and shawls and afghans some women I know have crafted. When my Mom passed away, I brought home her knitting needles. I have since knitted a 6" square potholder. Let's just say, that I don't have any staying power for knitting anything. After about 10 rows, my interest starts to waiver. And 10 rows doesn't a sweater make.

Sweaters are going back into my closet.

My Mother's Wedding Dress

In the process of clearing out my closet yesterday, I came across my mother's wedding dress. It is a simple lace dress worn over a full length satin slip. I am 5 feet tall and have a slim build. Looking at the dress, I can see she was the same size. I mention that, because all my life, she was a little on the heavy side.


My mom was 16 when she married my father in an arranged marriage. She had to leave her family in Mozambique and go and live with my dad in South Africa. They also lived in China for a few years. All this at 16. She mentioned once that initially she and my grandmother weren't very happy about it, but my grandfather insisted. By the time she was 25, she had 6 children.
I don't know if I could have pulled that off. My parents had their ups and downs but they remained together till the end. My mom's birthday is July 1st 1930 and she passed away July 2nd 1993. After my mom passed away, I asked my dad if I could have her dress. He threw it into the washing machine to give it a good cleaning before he sent it to me. Needless to say, that didn't do the dress any good!

So, what to do with the slightly tattered wedding dress. I'm getting older now. Eventually someone is going to have to pick through my things and decide what to do with them. I don't want the dress to end up at Goodwill or in the landfill. I have this terrible habit of trying to re-incarnate things. So I decided that I will make small heart shaped pot pouri sachets out of it for all her granddaughters. She was a very loving grandmother. They can hang it in their closets, out of the way, but always there. I don't want to make clutter for everyone else.

For now, the dress is back in my closet!