This was my thought process for this year’s Halloween costume:

I’ve been a bit uninspired about Halloween this year, and since it was happening over the weekend, there was no real pressure to get dressed up for work. But that also meant that as of Friday night, I was still mulling over what I could be and coming up empty.

So when I got up yesterday, I thought, I’m not going to bother dressing up right now. Maybe I’ll figure out something in time for trick-or-treaters. But for now, I’ll just put on my Halloween socks and the one shirt I have that has someone in disguise:

[Camouflage, from Threadless.]

However, then I thought, wait, I could do that. I do not have a bee costume. But I could totally be someone pretending, badly, to be a bee! A surprisingly meta idea, for me!

So, to my shirt, I added dark leggings, my yellow petticoat, my yellow sneakers, and Rudi’s yellow & black armwarmers.

It was a good start, but insects have antennae and wings, neither of which I had a quick fix for.

You would think deely boppers would be the sort of thing I would own, but somehow I am lacking any. (In retrospect this may because they are often attached to plastic headbands made for people with normal-sized heads and my desire for one does not outweigh my desire not to have a headache.) I did have a headband, though, and figured I could probably fashion something out of straws or the like. But, then, when I was hunting for a black headband, I opened a box and discovered dowels that had come in a pair of shoes. So I tucked those into my hair and used the bottom of the headband to keep them in place.

What to do about the wings, though? I contemplated a quick cut-out of paper, but thought they’d be too floppy. Then I mulled cutting apart a padded mailer. That thought led me to the roll of air pillows that had come in a package a few weeks back. (It was a gift sent via Amazon, of course, who couldn’t fit something into an appropriately sized box if that was the only one available.) With some help from Rudi, a piece of Scotch tape, and an extra-large binder clip, I had some make-shift wings. (Yes, with a little more planning, I could totally have created a sleeve for the pillows to hide their ugly branding. But I wasn’t trying to be a bee, but just a “bee,” so it was okay for it not to be perfect!) As a bonus, they fluttered very nicely in the breeze!

So there you have it: A last-minute Halloween costume taken from my closet and random bits of stuff I hadn’t thrown away. And a lot of joy from seeing people’s reactions to my costume (and for not having bailed on coming up with something).

Do you have any honey?