I Remember...

I did this LO in response to the current weekly challenge at 2Peas, the theme of which is "I Remember." (Emily Falconbridge posted it, and she also links to it from her blog.) (This also fits in well with the theme of Love Thursday, which I've not participated in before but I will today since I've got something for it!)

For some reason, as soon as I read the topic of the challenge, a picture and a story came to mind. The weird thing is that they don't actually go together chronologically. The picture is from 1970...I was four. The story in my journaling, however, describes an imaginary game I used to play with myself, and I'm certain I didn't do that until I was significantly older...probably in elementary school some time. Both things had to do with Halloween, though, and this picture is one of my favorite Halloween pictures of me as a kid. (Come to think of it, it is one of the only Halloween pictures of me as a kid!)

My mom has always disliked Halloween in a major way, even as a kid, she's told me. But my mom is also a very good seamstress, and she used to sew a lot of my clothes when I was little (until I got old enough to realize store-bought clothes were far more cool). There were a few years where, despite her disdain for the holiday, she sewed some very detailed costumes for me. One year I was an angel, another year I was a devil, and one year -- the one above -- I was Little Bo Peep. This fluffy, yellow tulle dress was itchy as all get out around my neck, but it sure was cute, wasn't it?

My dad, also a creative type in his own right, was often in charge of props. For Bo Peep, he formed the crook for me out of a long plexi-glass rod. When I was a devil, he fashioned a pitchfork for me out of wood and painted it black. It didn't matter that we lived in the middle of nowhere and I had few places to actually go trick-or-treating. (I can still remember my dad driving me around, in rain, snow and cold, up and down our country road and to various friends' houses around town just so I had the opportunity to say "trick or treat"...and he had some candy to pilch. LOL) I still always had a really nice costume to wear for my preschool party or whatever place I did have to go. (That said, I believe I was actually an angel for two, maybe three years in a row. Mom clearly decided recycling was a good option, even in the early '70s!)

Later on, my costumes got a bit less elaborate, and I don't remember the ones from my later trick-or-treat days very well, the years when I'd go to a friend's house, someone who lived in a real neighborhood and we could walk around, by ourselves, and get candy door-to-door. I know there was a cat in there somewhere...also recycled a few times. But it is those early costumes that hold such fond memories for me. And though I didn't realize it then, they were tangible signs of how much my parents loved me, that they'd go to the trouble to make these costumes and props when they just of easily could have skipped the whole thing.

Love manifested in tulle and plexiglass. How cool is that?