May is the New October: She Needs a Costume?

I fully expect October to be busy with all sorts of fall mayhem happening (I start with October because in my head, still, “the year” starts when the school year starts). I fully expect December to be a blur of sugar cookies, gift wrap and Christmas ornaments.

I’m beginning to learn to brace myself for May. May is the end-of-everything, celebrate everything month. There’s a to-do for Girl Scouts. There’s a to-do for Sunday school. And of course, there are several to-dos that are school related. Technically Meg missed the very last day of school, but there was plenty of to-doing before that day, so we didn’t feel like we missed out.

There was a second grade concert, there was a school Field Day, there was an invitation to see their most recent class project, and there was the end of school countdown via the alphabet.

This is a spectacular idea- when the class was 26 days out from being done, it was A day. The next was B day and so on. Each day, there was a little something-something to look forward to.

Then, on P day (ha! Mom, it’s P day, get it?) we got a note about S day.

S day will be Storybook day! You child should wear a costume depicting a favorite storybook character. 

And there was a note about maybe not reusing a superhero or princess costume.

So.

Here’s the thing. I have never in all of my life made a costume for my kids. We bake, we make crafts, we travel, we swim, we play Mario Kart together. I don’t so much sew for them. So I did the logical thing and turned to Pinterest.

How moms successfully navigated school projects before the Internets, I don’t know. Thank goodness I don’t have to find out.

Thankfully, Meg knew who she wanted to be. Thankfully, there were a few pins with ideas. Thankfully she didn’t have her expectations set too high.

Here are the five  simple things you’ll need to make a Skippyjon Jones costume from the popular children’s books.

1) White sweatshirt with hood. We went to Goodwill and found one for $1.99. It had a pattern on one side, so she was happy to wear it inside out.

2) Brown or white leggings (we had these in her closet).

3) 5 Brown or black socks (for paws and a tail) (we had these in my drawer)

4) Headband to attach ears to (we had this in a junk drawer)

5) Felt to make ears (ears really the most key element to this costume) (we had some left over from another project)

We used hot glue for the ears, and they stayed attached most of the day.  We attached the tail with a safety pin. We even found an orange dinosaur like the one in the “Skippyjon Jones and the Big Bones” book, which was a total bonus.

The most important thing is the Meg was involved in the making of this costume, and she was thrilled to wear it to school. That it actually resembled the character was a total bonus.