A "no-sew" Halloween

Charlotte's mom helps her "fly" in her butterfly/fairy Halloween costume

'Twas was the night before Halloween and I wasn't up to my eyeballs in spray glitter, tulle, pipe cleaners, and satin. What had gone wrong?

Actually, what little All Hallow's Eve spirit I had was sucked right out of me by on Oct. 2 wedding, a New York City honeymoon and the grading of 110 college essays. My daughter had quite rightly talked me out of making a costume for Charlotte. She said I should take a break this year, and my husband agreed with her.

Charlotte in 2009, her first Halloween, in a costume made by her doting grandmother. Photo by Little Blue World Photography

Last year I made a devil suit for Charlotte, because it was her first Halloween, it suited her behavior, and well, making costumes is what I do. I love nothing better than to dress up and pretend to be someone else, unless it is transforming my children. My kids had a dress-up box that will only be rivaled by Grandma's (that's me!) treasure trove.

Charlotte's mother in a mouse costume I made in 1988, when she was four. Her sister, Lotte's aunt, is dressed as a devil, like Lotte did last Halloween

In fact, I've actually already started the box. My then-fiance ran across a bag that had scarves, belts, and costume jewelry in it. He asked what it was, and I replied: "Leave it alone! It's dress-up stuff for Charlotte."

Wise man that he is, he didn't point out to me that Lotte wasn't even walking yet, let alone changing her clothes. I've been waiting for this child for a long, long time.

I've loaned out some of our old costumes to people with children over the years, if only to justify having them hang around for years between children and grandchildren. I have a particularly nice pink satin unicorn, with a very full pink-tulle mane, that my youngest daughter wore to kindergarten and has served other little girls. (If a little boy wants to wear it, that's okay, too.)

Charlotte and her "lolly."

I've loaned out the Dorothy (Toto not included), Red Riding Hood, Tinkerbell, and the grey mouse. I couldn't loan out Sally from "Nightmare before Christmas" because I made it out of non-woven interfacing so I could paint on it, and it disintegrated.

Former syndicated columnist Judy Markey, who was MY generation's Erma Bombeck, once wrote that making elaborate Halloween costumes was the working mother's way of assuaging her guilt. Like, okay, I can't come to every school event, and/or bake cupcakes, but here you go, child, let me slave for weeks over your Halloween costume to make up for it.

Markey said that in her day, most mothers didn't work outside the home, yet kids went to Woolworth's to buy "cheesecloth jammies" with the name of the character one was supposed to be, emblazoned on the front, which came with a cheap plastic mask. They were merchandised in flimsy boxes with clear windows on the top, so you could see what the costumes were.

It's true; I distinctly remember a Casper the Friendly Ghost costume, and one that simply said "Princess." Very generic, not like Disney Princesses. Just "Princess."

The princess mask showed a blonde (of course) head of hair, with a golden tiara on top, and very long eyelashes at the top of the eye holes. These days, we're so safety conscious that we don't dare send our kids out in masks. They might fall down, or walk out in front of a car.

Come to think of it, there might just have been some competition involved: whose child had the best costume, and whose work-life suffered the most from making said costume.

Before I had a grandchild, I often borrowed some for holidays. One year, my son-in-law's niece expressed a wish to be Violet Baudelaire, a character from the Lemony Snicket books and movie, "A Series of Unfortunate Events." There being no pattern from Simplicity or McCalls for this, I was intrigued, and put one together, Frankenstein-like, from other patterns.

I got the movie from Netflix, and did some research. For Violet's fishnet sleeves, I bought children's tights and cut the toes out of them. Why anyone would make black fishnets for children is beyond me. Perhaps to accompany the French maid's outfit, that I had to explain to my 10-year-old the was "inappropriate." YOU try explaining that particular sexual fetish to an elementary-school student.

It's ugly, I'm tellin ya.

Charlotte's cousin Mikala in a Violet Baudelaire costume, the oldest sibling in the "Lemony Snicket" series of books.

My younger daughter recently retired her gothic-princess prom dress to the dress-up box, along with a sexy fairy costume I made her to wear to work a few years ago. The black gauze wings are long gone, but how hard is it to find wings? The gesture was every bit the putting away of "childish things." She can't fit into the corset anymore, so she's passing the torch.

This year, with sewing out of the question, I stumbled onto a sale at JoAnn's Fabrics and picked up a pink tulle and stretch velvet number that the package said was "a fairy," for six bucks. It looked like a princess to me, and we really tried to sell it as such, but Charlotte put it on and said emphatically, right away, "Fairy!"

So, I had to go to Walgreen's the night before Halloween to find fairy wings since, as her mother says, "She's going to be telling people she's a fairy, anyway." The best I could do was butterfly wings, but they matched the pink dress.

Charlotte came by to have dinner with us, and we got to see her in her costume. Then she went off to a "Trunk or Treat" at her cousin's church, and by all accounts had a great time.

So we drank beer, opened the door for our whopping two batches of trick or treaters, and watched the World Series. It was the most laid-back Halloween I've ever had.