And the Golden Glue Gun goes to...

My plethora of glue guns sit in a drawer all year long until Halloween.  There is not a single cutesie craft that will lure them out before then.  I'm allergic to cutesie crafts.  They make me itchy and squish my face up in contempt.

But a week before Halloween, the glue guns resurface and Mark goes into hyper-drive.  He's trained our kids to be repulsed by all those off-the-hanger costumes and go for something more original.  But original to me means scalding hot glue burns.  My fingers clench just thinking about it.  Thankfully Mark's largely the costume builder and I just do the finish work like painting them or sewing stuff.  I leave the injury provoking work to him.

That's all well and good except for the fact that this year Mark had business meetings in Texas.  That left me home alone with my scorned collection of glue guns and Halloween looming just days away.  No thanks to Pinterest, Chloe and her cousins had already made grandiose costume plans and were alarmed when they heard that Dad/Uncle Mark would be out of town.  What's a craft-repulsed mother to do?  My first thought was to ban them from surfing Pinterst.  My second thought...

I decided to show Mark that I could get "Project Runway" on without him and summon my inner costume curator...

 Chloe, Janelle, & Madi

turned into a bunch of suds-ur-duds...

And for baby Kendra,

I dusted off my sewing machine

and turned her into Boo...

 

Without his dad around, even Connor fended for himself 

and made his own glue-gun creation... 

 I caught him peeking out of his ginormous box mask.

But just when I thought I was doing pretty good fending for myself I catch sight of this little beauty at our church Halloween carnival...

 

This is my friend Angela's MASTERPIECE.  This year the costume craze caught hold of her and she said she decided to give the Skillman's a run for their money. So she turned her daughter into a freaking Christmas Tree!  There are even wrapped gifts under the tree!!  How Spectacular is that?!  Angela spanked us at our own game of Project Runway!  There's no question Angela definitely wins the golden glue gun award for that trick-or-treating treasure!

Luckily my kids are growing and soon they'll be tired of costumes (they will won't they??) and we won't have to do many more of these costume contraptions anymore.  But until then, I'm gonna make sure Mark isn't scheduled to leave town around Halloween anymore--My fingers would rather take their chances carving pumpkins with a sharp knife than risk 1st degree hot glue gun burns any Halloween.