Month: October 2020

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DIY: Branch from “Trolls” Halloween costume

I’ve always loved, loved, loved Halloween, especially planning out my costumes and every detail surrounding the day(s) of celebrating. It’s partly why some friends affectionately refer to me as the Mayor from “The Nightmare Before Christmas.” That enthusiasm must be genetic, because our girls are just as into figuring out their Halloween costumes, even going as far as saying “for nextyear I want to be…” when the current Halloween hasn’t even happened yet.

It’s been beyond a strange, scary, and disappointing year with COVID, so I was game for doing WHATEVER our girls wanted to do in terms of their costumes. Even though I’ve had a blast making costumes for my girls in the past (especially Stella’s Dani from “Hocus Pocus” costume and Tamatoa from “Moana”), I’ve succumbed to the fact that sometimes, picking out a complete costume at the store is more exciting for them and easier for me. 

Stella wanted to be Mal from Descendants this year, and considering she won’t be able to celebrate Halloween in her classroom with all of her friends this year or go trick-or-treating, I was fine with getting her the coolest Mal ensemble from the Disney store online.

Margot decided she wanted to be Branch from “Trolls,” but when we looked at the costumes at Target, I knew I could do a DIY version that would be brighter and a lot more fun than the costume they had. So began my quest to create the Branch of her dreams!

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Coping with COVID: My favorite masks for all tasks

Hello! It’s me, your delinquent blogger. My last post was in the springtime, and since then I’ve completely fallen off the writing wagon. In some ways it feels like I’ve had all of the time in the world and no time at all, or maybe no bandwidth to think about sitting down and writing. Maybe it has felt like anything I could write about is supremely trivial compared to the hellscape we’re all experiencing in 2020.

Either way, with an encouraging push from my favorite Whitmer comms team women, here I am. I’m going to have to skip past the post I planned to write over the summer about our long weekend away to the west side of Michigan and why it was the best staycation we could have asked for, because that’s a post for another day. Instead, I’m going to focus on a topic that I feel I’ve become pretty well-versed in over the course of 2020 COVID times: MASKS.

Masks are so important to our own safety and the safety of our friends, family, and local community. Unfortunately they’ve become a source of debate and frustration. There’s the battle to get people to wear them in the first place. The next part is getting people to wear them properly (OVER THE NOSE AND MOUTH PLEASE AND THANK YOU).

Back in March, my in-laws gave us each a disposable mask to have on hand, just in case. That fact feels sort of quaint now. I also ordered a few handmade masks from our friend Shana for myself and the girls, so we’d have another option. Who could have anticipated that months later, I’d have stacks of different kinds and brands of masks at home. It’s been a lot of trial and error, figuring out which masks work best for which tasks. There’s the additional challenge of finding masks my kids will wear without complaining. I honestly wish there could be a safe way of trying on masks before buying them.

Still, it’s worth it to me to have a stockpile of masks, particularly as we are all accepting the fact that we will be masking up in public for the foreseeable future.

Here are some of the favorite, tried-and-true face masks I’ve bought this year.

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