My Son's Homemade Toucan Costume.

This day and age, for Halloween, children want to be characters. They want to be walking advertising for some franchise from a multi-mega-million-dollar company.

I hate that, therefore my son and I always made his costumes together. Starting at three, he helped me, he picked the colors, placed bits of felt and glued things on. It was a nice tradition until last year when he announced he wanted to be a Star Wars Clone. I whined, I begged him, I tried to bribe him, but there wasn't much choice, as he had to be willing to wear it.

This year, he wanted to be the same, except a different clone. Since "clones" are meant to be all exactly the same, I don't understand the premise that he had a number of choices. We even went to Party City early.

But two days ago, his teacher reminded the class their costumes had to be easy to take off and to put on as they needed to go to the bathroom.

The Red Clone outfit is a one piece! It's really tight! He needed help with tying the back thus he needed another costume! One I can make! Lets make an animal! Lets make a bird! Toucans are fun!

I have to admit, I spent quite a few hours on it, sewing mostly, and trying different ways to make the hat which in the end, I used a bike helmet. 

It's hard to justify that many hours into a project that was to be only worn for one day at school.

But I found sewing so fulfilling (who knew?), so I kept making it more elaborate because I enjoyed the process so much.

On the second day I finished it.

I am so pleased.