How to make a Halloween costume in Bosnia, Part I

Plan A: Wear dress-up clothes that your parents wisely brought from America. (Note: this plan is favored by our children's American friends here.)



Plan B: If your parents failed to bring dress-up clothes, dream up your own Halloween costume with stuff you find. (Note: this plan appears to apply only to our children.)

In our defense, we haven't done much Halloween celebrating when we've been abroad--knocking on each other's bedroom doors for trick-or-treating and a little bobbing for apples in the kitchen has been the extent of it--so we didn't expect to need costumes. But, somehow, our social calendar this week is full of Halloween parties. Costumes required, of course.

Eleanor figured a ghost costume would be easy. We found a white comforter cover at a secondhand shop (well, actually white on white, but you can't really see the dots much, can you? please tell me you can't) and cut it up.



She wanted to be really scary, but there's no face paint here. So we made our own.



I took the water I used to wash paintbrushes, squeezed a whole bunch of dish detergent into it, and then painted it on her face. The hardest part was keeping it from dripping all over her.



It looked very spooky and washed off like a dream.


Our first Halloween party was across the city, and she walked all the way there with a blue face. She attracted some attention, but not nearly as much as you might have thought.