I don’t know about your kids, but my kids seem to have a hard time deciding what they want to be for Halloween. Especially my older daughter, because she wants to be something that no one else will be. She likes to talk about next year’s costume right around the day after Halloween. So, around November 1st last year, my older daughter drew me a picture of Nancy Drew and told me that’s what she wanted to be for Halloween this year. Well, not really.

About two months ago, she and I took a walk to Walgreen’s and discussed possible Halloween costumes again. At that point, she was pretty settled on being a bag lady. We talked about getting clothes from the Goodwill, and how she wasn’t going to wash her hair for several days before Halloween…

Then a couple weeks ago, she decided she wanted to be some sort of animal instead. A panda, she said. “And I won’t change my mind, Mom. I promise.”

Now, if you are looking at the photo of my girls, you can see that she did, in fact, change her mind again. Last week. She decided on the jaguar. Since she is in 5th grade, and this is the last year she could dress up at school, I decided to go ahead and make the costume.

Last Thursday and Friday, the girls didn’t have school due to conferences, so Hubby invited us to come with him to a job site – at a private lake house about an hour from here, where he is building a storage shed/boat house. Perfect. I packed up my sewing machine and everything else I thought I needed to make the costume, and made some good progress while we were there. I did forget to buy a zipper, bring safety pins to thread the elastic, fabric for the hood lining, and stuffing for the tail, so there were a few things to finish up over the weekend.

Here’s the full view:

In comparison, my younger daughter’s costume was easy. She requested a new pair of pajamas so that she could be a baby. So simple and cute! Her pacifier was the plastic part of a ring pop, and she carried her teddy and blanket.

This was the first year my older daughter asked to go trick-or-treating with a friend instead of the neighbors across the street, so I walked around the neighborhood with the jaguar and her little bee friend for a couple of hours before calling the bee’s mom to come pick us up in her car!

They’ve already started sorting out their candy on the living room rug. Don’t worry, I don’t let them keep all of it – which is why they have to sort it out so they can keep their favorites!

How was your Halloween?