Create-Your-Own Costumes

"You're going to make their costumes?" asked my husband, not even bothering to hide his surprise. Then, without missing a beat (and deftly stepping out of striking distance), he added, "So will you be fixing my pants, too?" referring to the time I promised to sew a button on a pair of khaki pants when we were newlyweds. Ten years ago.

"These are no-sew costumes!" I said, not bothering to hide my defensiveness.

At 7, our oldest son wasn't too cool or easily bored to indulge his little brothers by watching their TV shows, including Pingu, the lovable claymation penguin featured on PBS's "Kids Sprout." I humored him by not sharing this fact with his school friends.

"Can we be Pingu for Halloween, Mom?" asked Jackson. When I showed him FamilyFun's penguin costume, he requested a few tweaks — behavior typical of this first-born child. "We have to make the feet and beak orange, like Pingu's."

One trip to the craft store netted most of the supplies — enough sheets of orange, white, and black craft foam to make three costumes, black fuzzy fabric for the wings, and double-sided foam tape. I found black sweats and hoodies and skipped the costume's bow ties, since that's not how Pingu rolls.

When it came time to cut out and assemble the costumes, Jackson helped cut the foam shapes for the wings, feet, and eyes using the template.

It didn't take long 'til we ran into trouble: the double-sided tape didn't stick. I began picturing the boys dropping body parts around our Victorian town square like penguin zombies.

Then I remembered that my mom, perhaps hoping to pass on her crafty aptitude, had given me a gift a few birthdays back that I could finally use. Like a desperate action-flick heroine, I dug into a dusty box hidden in the basement and recovered my weapon: a pink plastic glue gun. Only one glue stick of ammo remained, so after dashing the boys' hopes of using the super-hot glue gun, I quickly glued eyes and beaks onto the hoodies.

The results would've made any claymation penguin proud.