Costumes

In honor of Halloween, I decided to make a blog post of some of my many costumes I made over the summer. I had grand expectations of posting one costume a day in October until Halloween, but here I am, Halloween over, and just now writing this blog post, which may or may not be interesting to whoever reads it. 

This years Fourth of July Costume: Bald Eagle
(with the same bow tie as the year before.)

It all started two years ago, summer 2018, when I was working at Camp Beechpoint as younger girl's coach. Fourth of July week I decided to wear something patriotic everyday, which culminated in me wearing a patriotic cowboy hat, a minion with a matching patriotic cowboy hat, a red, white and blue t-shirt with stars, a sparkly red, white and blue bow tie, blue shorts and knee-length American flag socks. No, I don't think I have a picture of this. Just trust me. It was not the strangest thing I wore. I wore this outfit all day, (which contributed to me getting a minor case of heat exhaustion, but worth it right?)

Well the next week, everyone was asking me,"What are you going to be this week?" 

And so it began...

Each new day brought a new costume depending on the theme. 


Sometimes I had some other awesome people dress up with me:

Circus Week 2018 Staring a Clown, a Lion, and a Monkey

And then summer 2019 came, and I was a coach again, and I had people asking me, "Are you dressing up this year?" 

And as I am such a crowd pleaser, I did. 

Pharaoh's Daughter (and baby Moses)

Balaam's Donkey (Not Bug's Bunny)

Ok, lets be real. I loved dressing up as much as the kids (and staff) enjoyed seeing me dressed up. 

And perhaps even more.

Kangaroo from my Creation theme week

If you look closely you can see a Baby kangaroo in my pouch
(It might look more like a moose, if you don't have a good imagination.)

 We did not have themed weeks this summer, so it was a little trickier coming up with costume ideas. I ended up doing my own personal costume themes, basing them off something in the Bible. 

Sunflower created day 3

The costumes then turned into a "Who am I?" game, where the campers got to guess my costume and some Bible trivia to earn cabin points. 

We had the return of last years favorite: the sun. This of course was recreated on biscuits and gravy day so as to take another Jimmy Deans commercial photo. (I have last years photo somewhere, but I'm too lazy to go find it right now.) 

Materials: poncho, trashcan lid, hula-hoop, tape

I believe this was the only repeat costume from last year.

Woman from the Parable of the Lost coin

Wise man's House, one of my favorites

I don't remember all my themes, nor do I have pictures of all my costumes. You can be glad because at 5 costumes a week for 7 weeks, that comes to 35 costumes...

Each costume was made (predominately) from 6-7am the morning of and made out of materials/clothing from the camp program room. (Which you will see in the background of most of the selfies.)

This is me as a pineapple.

The pineapple doesn't represent
 a certain fruit of the spirit.

My Pineapple costume was the only one that I bought something for (the net part which inspired the costume.) This was the beginning of the fruit of the spirit week where I dressed up as a different thing each day which represented a fruit of the Spirit. Can you guess which fruit each costume represents?

1) A Hippie 

Totally could wear this outfit daily if I wasn't a little self conscience 

Probably the easiest one to guess

2) A dog. 

This one was the hardest for people to guess. Also, for some reason, the girls were much better at this game than the guys.

3) Poison Ivy

So...funny story. I really had poison Ivy when I dressed up like this. I mean, really had it bad. For several weeks. It was so hard not to scratch, hence the irony of the costume.

Funny story: after drawing and cutting out the leaves for this costume, I can now identify poison ivy, which I never was able to do before, despite studying pictures of it and having people point it out to me. 

4) A Clock 


(Cogsworth from Beauty and the Beast to be exact)

And the Answers are:

1) Peace

2) Faithfulness

3) Selfcontrol

4) Patience 

The next few costumes are from Christmas in July week. I had a friend dress up with me, Gregory the Giraffe. 

 Gregory dressed up as my sheep while I was a Christmas shepherd. He was a big hit with the kids, and he even stuck around to help me teach fireside that night, acting as the lost sheep from the parable. 

Probably my hardest costume to put together, hence all the pictures.

Gregory showed up again as Sir Carmichael, my Camel; however all the kids were too smart and realized it was just Gregory in disguise.  They were quite happy to see him again.

Sir Carmichael the Camel brought to you in part
 by the re-purposed clock costume

Turban brought to you in part by a camper
who made me the beautiful necklace

Selfie with Me and Gregory

Me and Gregory running around the dining hall 

 Christmas in July also brought the return of the Christmas present. (So I guess there were 2 repeat costumes from last year. Though, the style of the present was different this year.)

My big box costumes are my favorite. (Shout out to Daniel who saved them for me!) I like them because I can barely move in them, so they always make people laugh. And that is the best part of dressing up. 

New to this year was the umbrella Christmas tree.

I'm aware it looks a little bit like it should be in a horror movie.
The decorations kept falling off. 

Yes, I could see to walk around in it. There were little spy holes at the top, plus the cloth was pretty see-through. 

The rest of my costume pictures come from my Bible Animals week, which was the last week of the summer. 

Starting with a very tame lion:

Followed by a Locust:

 An ant

A Rooster

              

 And my personal favorite, a whale. Aka "Big Fish".

This costume longer than the others.  Maybe 4-5hrs all together over several days. It even had a blow hole:
A straw through the top which I could squirt water out of and make all the kids scream. 

There is a lot more I could say about the costumes, how I made them, what I learned, how awkward it is having serious conversations when you're dressed head to toe like a flower or some kind of animal...ect., but this blog post is long enough, and I've run out of pictures to keep you interested. 

So I'll just answer a few questions for you before I leave.

Was it hard coming up with a new costume each day?

A little

Was it stressful?

At times.

Was it worth it?

You better believe it.