How to win a fancy dress competition

If you have kids you will at some point be expected to enter them into a fancy dress competition, be it at school, on holiday, for a party or a carnival- if you have small fry it will happen. Best to be prepared.

I'm a very competitive mum. I try not to be, but I'm the one who, for example in colouring competitions, gets their child to create a collage to give them the edge. It's not the winning particularly, it's the prizes I love. Trophies, gift vouchers, chocolate... I'm not really fussy. I really identify with Violet Beauregard's mum from Johnny Depp's 'Charlie and the Chocolate Factory': "Eyes on the prize, Violet." That's me.

Ok, here's what I've learned about fancy dress competitions. A bought costume will never win. Much as you think they are judging the kids, they are not; they are judging your competence as a parent. It is also no good to painstakingly sew a beautiful costume. Judges will become suspicious and think you bought it on eBay. The best kind of costume is one that looks as if the kids made it. Luckily, my craft skills are such that everything I make looks like it was made by a preschooler.

Here are a few easy yet impressive ideas, all of which have been tried and tested by either myself or a close friend:

Bin liners:

• Put your child in a bin liner. Add a few white spots. Hey presto, a domino.
• For the more artistic among you, use a gold pen to scroll on the logo of an After Eight mint
• Glue on some brown cardboard spots, cover a sink plunger and a colander (with the handle facing forward) in bin liners, attach chrome salt and pepper pots for antennae (available in all good budget caravans). A Dalek.

Boxes*:

• Put your child in a box. Cover with tinfoil. A robot.
• Put your child in a box. Cover with wrapping paper and add a bow. A present
• (My own personal favourite, courtesy of one of my very best friends) Put your child in a box. Cover in coloured squares. A Rubik cube.

*If you put your child in a box costume, make sure you are on hand to help them move. A stuck child is not a winning child...


Other easy costumes:

• Cover an umbrella in bubble wrap. A jellyfish
• Stick a few leaves on a kid's bikini (girl) and swimming trunks (boy). Give the kids an apple and a plastic snake. Adam and Eve.
• Stick some yellow circle stickers for buttons on a red t-shirt. Cover a plastic toy policeman's helmet (or similar) in black faux fur. A Beefeater.
• For the intellectuals among you (you know, those of you who can afford a proper holiday and don't have to go on the £9 holidays from The Sun with all the other Lidl families): Make your child a 'dress' from newspaper. The Guardian is good for this- you will see why in a minute. Add a tiara and a Miss World style sash reading 'Miss Print'.
  

The only thing with being a competitive mum is that you will come across other competitive mums. My kids came second with my slapdash Adam and Eve costumes, and the Umbrella Jellyfish woman's child came first, which REALLY annoyed the mum who had spent ages papier macheing her child into the shape of Elmer the Elephant...

One last tip: try to get the judges to focus on the costume, not the resigned and embarrassed face of the small child IN the costume. If you feel a twinge of guilt for being a pushy competitive mum, just think how much fun your children will have when they have children of their own to dress up, and how good they will feel when their friends describe them as 'marvellously creative.' Sure, your grandkids will suffer, but that's their parents' problem.

Today: How this obsession was born
At the age of 10, my school held a Christmas Hat competition. Other kids' parents had rigged up working circuits for lights, sound and moving objects. My mum covered a straw sunhat in tissue paper leaves and stuck what I think was supposed to be a partridge on the front. It had feathers anyway. She then, bizarrely, sewed 4 foil milk bottle tops to dangle right in front of my face in the style of an Australian cork hat. No idea why, so don't ask.
My 'Partridge in a Pear Tree' hat came first. I don't even want to think about what mum did to make that happen. I won a plastic comb from the chemist, just like my Grandad's. Go me.

Mama Jax

How to get the most from your cat flap

Our house, while lovely, is full of...um...'flaws'. Windows don't fit, ceilings are falling down, carpets are beyond help and don't even get me started on the state of the bathroom! Still, it is well loved.

One of the 'flaws' is the front door. Although you can open it from the inside, for some reason known only to itself, it refuses to open from the outside. This means that to get in we have to go through the back door.

One night I had all 3 kids, the 'big shop' (Lidl, obviously), it was dark, it was cold, it was raining. Now I am usually a cheery and patient person- Waitrose fishwife incident aside- but sometimes the fates just seem to have it in for you.
"Oh look!" they say, "She's cold, wet and laden. Let's have some fun with that!" before cursing the back door so it refused to open. I wiggled the key, talked nicely to it, threatened it, then had a bit of a Tourette's moment to relieve my feelings. We were all getting colder and wetter, except for the frozen stuff which ironically was warming and thawing nicely thank you very much.

So, what does one do in this situation? The only thing one can do: choose the smallest child and post them through the cat flap.

Once inside, Phyllis jumped up saying, "I'm a cat! I'm a cat! Miaow, miaow!" to which I responded, "Darling, go and open the front door for mummy."
"I can't, I'm a cat! Miaow, miaow!"
"Darling, please open the door for mummy, we're all getting cold and wet."
I'm paraphrasing of course. I am, after all, a Lidl mummy not a Waitrose mummy.

Eventually Phyllis agreed to let us in, in return for some milk.

A few days later I was upstairs when I heard Peter shouting for me in some distress. I rushed down to see what was wrong to find him in a heap on the kitchen floor.
"Don't worry mum, I'm ok now. I just wanted to see if I could fit through the cat flap too. The answer is...not quite."
I suspect Bobby has had a secret try too when I'm not around.
(So have I! Shh!!!)

Today: Does giving birth really hurt?
This is a question I'm often asked by teens. Here's what I tell them: imagine the baby as Hagrid (Harry Potter) and your vagina as a cat flap and you're some way to figuring out the answer... If they're still keen on having babies after that, try posting them through a cat flap. It usually cures them.

Mama Jax

How to survive the supermarket shop

If you don't yet have kids and are thinking of joining the ranks let me just warn you of one thing:
You will never again shop in Marks and Spencers food hall!

There is a hierarchy in supermarkets which subliminally dictates who they welcome. M&S with kids? Forget it. Waitrose? Possibly if you have a nanny and have called your child Tarquin or Jamesina.

I tried Waitrose once. Whoever came up with the idea of mini trolleys for kids obviously didn't have them. Tarquin and Jamesina will enjoy the trolleys. They will walk next to their adult, reading words like 'Kumquat' from the shopping list whilst mentally totting up the nutritional value of each food item.
My kids pretended the trolleys were bumper cars. I spent 10 minutes trying to be a Waitrose mum before cracking with, "Darlings, please come here. You are making me SCREAM LIKE A FISHWIFE!!!!!" I went scuttling back to Asda where I belong.

When Peter was smaller I took him with me to Asda and took my eyes off him for a second. BIG MISTAKE! Children, like Doctor Who's Weeping Angels, should always be watched. Don't even blink. In that second, Peter had legged it round the corner straight into a display of cut price wine. Much of what happened next is blanked from my traumatised mind, except for the part where I'm holding a screaming Peter whilst hysterically repeating, "I'll pay! I'll pay! I'll pay" as if on a loop system. The manager was very calm. "It's fine madam, we'll sort it. You can go..." Oh the shame!

I've now found my comfort zone with Lidl. However I am very aware that I am one tantrum away from having to rummage through skips for food whilst my kids graffiti misspelled swear words on the wall. I wonder if the same hierarchy exists for supermarket skips? I might end up a Waitrose mum after all!

My tips for how to survive the supermarket shop? Leave them at home. Or bribe them to behave with sweets and comics. Not the best parenting technique, but let's face it, it works.

Today: Manners make all the difference...
Overheard in a supermarket (I'll leave you to guess which one):
Kids (about 1000 of them it seemed...): Giz it 'ere! Giz it 'ere! It's mine! Giz it 'ere!!!
Fraught mum: 'ow many times do I 'ave to tell yiz?? It ain't "Giz it 'ere!" It's "Giz it 'ere...ta!"

Mama Jax