Straight Off the Boat!

Hello Everyone, and Happy Halloween!
As you all know, we LOVE Halloween at our house.

This year, Jake is a scarecrow and at the age of 11, he’s not exactly a friendly looking scarecrow because that just wouldn’t be any fun. He would love for us to nail him to a post outside and let him bleed as the little kids walked by screaming in horror – but of course we won’t do that. Scarecrows don’t bleed and I am all about accurate costumes.
He made most of his costume himself this year. We were very busy sewing this week and everyone got into it. We had both sewing machines humming at once at the dining table (Grace has her own). I don’t have pictures of the scary scarecrow yet, but will take some this evening of course.
Grace, who had been planning since August to be a sailor decided on Monday night to be an immigrant instead. Let me explain.


Her school does an annual unit on immigration as part of American History and they do Immigration Day every year in 4th grade. For Immigration Day, they all have to dress up as immigrants from the particular country that they’ve studied (Grace studied Italy, of course – though you’ll see she doesn’t look particularly Italian). They make their own passports and letters back home (tea stained for effect) and they each do a report on their country. The day is set up at school as if they are actually traveling to America. They get squished into one classroom which is decorated as ship’s steerage (there are 5 classes squeezed in for about 20 minutes) and then they disembark and parade down to Ellis Island (the gym) where they have to show their papers and go through their physicals. Some kids play the role of doctor and have to turn away immigrants because they have physical ailments or disease (Jake was turned away in 4th grade because his doctor friend said he had head lice and a limp.) Grace was a doctor in a skit they did yesterday. She said a line about how some of the doctors were called “6-second doctors” because they had so little time to examine the immigrants. Then she explains the procedure of lifting the eyelid with a buttonhook to look underneath, and how “most people describe this as a frightening a painful procedure.” Well, yeah!
So, anyway, AJ was going to make Grace’s immigrant dress out of a sheet or something on Monday – which was fine with me because I hadn’t started Grace’s sailor costume yet, or Jake’s scarecrow, or Bandit’s costume (never happened). We took out a pattern for a simple dress and suddenly Grace remembered that she had seen that pattern last year !! and had wanted to wear that this year for Halloween !!, and how we had discussed last year how great it would be for both Halloween and Immigrant Day this year!!! OMG!!! So, we decided to do that instead. It’s much easier than a sailor.
Thankfully, I have STORES of random fabrics and trims in my sewing stuff. I didn’t have to buy anything but her scarf!
AJ made the bonnet – isn’t it awesome! He learned to sew this week – he and Grace worked on the bonnet together while Jake and I made a burlap head (scarecrow, remember?).
So, here is the final product – about 6 or 7 hours of work all told. Completed last night at midnight; perfect timing, don’t you think? The pictures were taken this morning before our little immigrant girl headed off to school.
Can’t wait to hear how her day has gone. I hope she was allowed into the country; no tooth decay or dirty toenails to hold her back...


Would love to hear from all of you about your little spooks and ticks and treats too!
Best wishes,
Kate
Oh, and I am dressed as a sailor today. Go figure.