Elmo's Ready

Shortly after Caitlin was born, nearly 3 ½ years ago, Granddad bought a very large Elmo as a gift for Ashley. Big Elmo has become something of a mascot in our home and enjoys a very special role at Halloween. While our entire little family head out to trick-or-treat in our neighborhood, Elmo sits in a little chair outside our front door supervising our box of goodies for the trick-or-treaters who visit our house. We’ve started to notice a new tradition involving Elmo’s attire. He is becoming the third link in the chain of handing down costumes. Either Caitlin or Elmo has worn one of the hand-me-down costumes from Ashley in recent years.

The first year of Elmo he wore Ashley’s favorite trousers and top. Ashley and Elmo were about the same size and the clothes were a good fit. That first year Ashley dressed as Tigger.

The second year, Caitlin wanted to be Tigger and Ashley was a skeleton. Ashley decided that Elmo would not wear any clothes because he didn’t really have a costume.

Last year Elmo finally had a costume, he wore the Tigger outfit.

Last weekend, James and the girls dressed Elmo in the Skeleton costume that Ashley wore the year before last. Ashley and Caitlin were very excited at the outcome and would scream their pretense at being scared of Elmo. Note that Elmo is wearing a lei because Ashley says he's a skeleton from Hawaii. She also made him a green paper spider which she tucked into the lei to add to his scariness. And, as if his outfit were not complete enough, he's also wearing a narrow purple boa thanks to Caitlin who loves purple and wanted Elmo to be a fancy scary skeleton from Hawaii!

As for the girls, the fabric has been bought and their costumes for this year have been started. He hasn’t seen them yet, but soon Elmo will get a glimpse at his choice of costumes for next year. Oh, the excitement of it all. The girls are thrilled that their costumes are in the works.  I’ll post a photo when they are finished. I’m planning on having them completed in time for their school Halloween parties, which are fast approaching. I see a lot of time sitting at the sewing machine in my immediate future. I’ll try to keep some time for blogging too.