Such strange things I find myself doing.

It's that time of year. Halloween costume-making time, when I find myself doing all manner of strange tasks. Last year I was shopping for Christmas paper and decorations and papering a huge cardboard box. The year before, I was hunting out the perfect size of paper bag to make Emma Princess Elizabeth from The Paper Bag Princess.

This year, I'm coloring the logo on a jacket.

Yes, you read that right. I'm sitting, royal blue Sharpie in hand, at 2:30 in the morning, coloring the white "Reebok" logo off a jacket. Well, coloring it royal blue, anyway, so it doesn't show against the royal blue background of the rest of the jacket.

There is a reason, I assure you. You see, the Ketchup Princess has decided that we will all be Sesame Street characters for Halloween. She will be Bert, Her Royal Heinz-ness will be Ernie, Mama will be Oscar the Grouch (yes, that's me rolling my eyes you hear) and Abba will be Cookie Monster.

I keep myself on a pretty tight budget for these things; after all, it's only Halloween costumes. I don't care if they're perfect. That's why I only painted Bert's stripes on the front of the sweatshirt that will become the main part of the Bert costume, and intend to do the same with Ernie, and why I don't care that they're sloppy. (It's also why that Paper Bag Princess smelled like a sandwich; it was a recycled Jason's Deli bag I ended up using. Perfect size, and so delicious smelling. ;) ) So I got as much as possible at the local (totally awesome) thrift store, Sun Thrift. They have sales on certain tag colors every day, and I found my husband's jacket for his costume there on a day when it ended up being $2. It was the only royal blue jacket with a hood; alas! at the local high school I went to, where the school colors are blue and white (and the middle school, too, for that matter, not that that matters much when seeking things in sizes fit for adult men), "blue" usually translates to "navy blue", not "royal blue" when we're talking sweatshirts, so my options were pretty limited. In any case, I got it, but it had a big white Reebok logo on it. Cookie Monster obviously doesn't have a big white Reebok logo on his chest, so I had to do something about it.

Considering the trouble I had with paint, I was thrilled when I thought, as I was waiting for the paint on the sweatshirt to dry enough that I could hang it to dry the rest of the way, of using a Sharpie to color it instead. Of course I had to do this now, while the Princess is asleep, or I would never be able to take another Sharpie away when she wanted to color something with it (usually electronics or the walls or important documents) without hearing, "Mama draw pen Abba ja-jet!"

So the royal blue warm-up jacket now has a royal blue Reebok logo instead of a white one, and it actually looks pretty decent. Decent enough for a Halloween costume. And my head is a little fuzzy and dizzy and achy from the Sharpie fumes. Guess it's time to call it a night. The things we do for the sake of our two-year-olds' Halloween costume wishes.