Minions

I’ll catch some flack for this, but Halloween has never been a favorite holiday of mine. I have an insatiable sweet tooth, so no complaints about the candy, just the costumes. It stresses me out. How do I decide what to dress up as? Will my costume be creative enough? Should I make it or buy it? If I buy it, can I thrift it or is there a better pre-packaged version? I don’t know, the list goes on and on of all the things I feel I need to consider, it gives me angst thinking about it, even now, mere weeks after the holiday and safely far away from next year’s Halloween.

However, in recent years I’ve grown to appreciate it a bit more. My husband, my kids they love it. There is a lot of talk about costumes. They plan their trick or treating route and they look forward to it. The night is usually filled with anticipation and excitement. I enjoy seeing the neighborhood out and about together. Honestly, that is probably what brought me around the most to this annual event. It’s the fact that for one night, we all come together and put on a giant kid parade and indulge in the youth around us. It’s so fun to hear the chatter and excitement in the streets as the kids race around, the feet coming up the driveway and to see the sweet faces excited about collecting their next pieces of Halloween goodies. I even have a snuggly unicorn onesie I wear now when I pass out the candy. It usually is greeted by giggles from the kids. Secretly, I also love that it keeps out some of that late fall chill we have here in the midwest at that time of year.

As I mentioned in my previous posts, Halloween was the very unlikely event that led me into this latest crafting phase of my life. In our area there is a local sports center that puts on a Halloween soccer tournament every year. The teams are encouraged to dress in costume, typically a group costume. The tournament organizers award one team in each age group a prize for best costume. It’s always fun to see what teams decide to do. There are usually teams dressed as various candies like m&ms and skittles. One year there was a team of Swifties. I’ve seen a team of Dalmations, with their coach dressed as Cruella de Vil. My other daughter’s team went as a team of dominoes one year. It’s a fun event and usually requires a little bit of advanced planning.

A few years back my daughter’s team was given a last minute invite, like three days before the tournament started last minute, to this soccer tournament. It wasn’t a lot of time. I was the team manager, parents were busy and there wasn’t much time for coordination. The team wanted to pull off a “Despicable Me” theme and be Minions. I took to the internet to get some ideas and called my mom.

After listening to me describe what I was trying to accomplish, she told me I should look at a Cricut machine at our local craft store. I had no idea what it was, but decided to give it a go. It was a steep learning curve, with a lot of Youtube tutorials and internet searches. I had no idea what materials I needed or how to do half the things I needed to be able to get the project done.

It was pretty last minute, but the shirts got done in time, with a little help from one of the other mom’s and my own mom. The players were excited, their coach dressed up as Gru and a lot of fun was had. Without realizing what was happening, I had found a new creative outlet. I was hooked.