It's no secret what makes a good dress-up costume is a personal affair. When Mimi was invited to a fifth birthday party the invitation included a slightly famous cowgirl. "How exciting," I sad to Mimi, "you could wear your denim dress and some boots, with Daddy's sombrero and take your ride-on-unicorn as your date... I mean horse."
"No," she replied," I'm going to be a cowgirl-princess."
The costume she finally settled on was anything but cowgirl-anything. She wore her mermaid-birthday-party-dress from last year, teamed with one of my free ebook printable crowns, and at the last minute left the unicorn behind... if anything she looked like a 1920's flapper dancing away in our living room, all swing and attitude, and not a pony in sight...
(To make your own crown - simply pop across to the Partycraft website and download the free ebook - the crown template is on page 44.)
Was she worried when she arrived at the party and found cowgirls a plenty? Did she look squeamish when she sat down at the table covered in cowboy hats and denim-colored napkins? Not a bit. Aside from the usual anxiety of arriving in a new house, surrounded by unfamiliar faces, she was still a cowgirl-princess in her mind, and I'm pretty sure that as far as she was concerned, if you couldn't see that, you just weren't using your imagination. Fair enough too. Dress-up is all about imagination, and being something all together different for a moment in time.
Hooray and howdy to all you mermaidy, flapper, cowgirl, princesses out there!
And good luck everyone with Halloween trick-or-treating right around the corner - make the costume-fairies be good to you - especially if you went all out and made costumes this year!
Linda.
