Ah World Book Day. The day when parents everywhere raid their cupboards and dressing up boxes, or spend three weeks helping to make a costume out of a cardboard box. I can’t tell you the joy I felt this morning when my social media timeline was full of crazy costumed kids and talk of favourite books.

This year our eldest (a steadfast Harry Potter fan) decided that she wanted to stick with the theme, but go a little off course. No Moaning Myrtle or regular old Hermione this year, oh no. She was determined to go as a Centaur. I’m not sure she was specific about it being Firenze – any old centaur would do.

Excellent news because everyone knows how easy it is to make a costume which has the head of a pointy eared man, a naked six-packed torso and the legs and tail of a stallion. She even managed to convince her best friend to go at the back end at one point but we decided that no-one needed to be that her bottom for an entire day and that it might hinder her in PE.

Fortunately she changed her mind, possibly as a consequence of her parents sighing a lot. She’d go as the Monster Book of Monsters instead, because that’s loads easier.

She worked really hard on it (as did her Dad). A trip to Scrapstore, some modroc and two tubes of UHU and we declared it a success. When she got to the playground she was met by her friend dressed as a Mandrake plant looking relieved she didn’t have to step in as the back end of a Centaur after all. She had green hair – they are all as mad as each other.

It wasn’t wholly successful. Her music teacher, on seeing her walking to school from the other side of the road, thought she had gone to school as a slice of toast. I rather like the idea of her favourite book being ‘101 Recipes for Students’.

Our youngest daughter chose a less well known, but no less loved, book – one from the Witch Wars series by Sibeal Pounder. This outfit should have been pretty easy as it’s lots of black and white material but somehow it ended up with me actually having to sew – yes you heard that right. Total parental commitment.

I sewed some material together into a form of skirt, albeit one without any kind of fastener but everything gives a bit when you pull it on  right? Things went passably well in the beginning when the sewing machine actually had some thread in it in the right places. Of course I had measured her by going round her tummy with a builders measuring tape and left very little margin for error which resulted in me having to sew another panel in by hand at the end. By hand because by this point the bobbin had run out of thread and I have absolutely no idea how to rethread it.  It’s fortunate we like a craft project and have low expectations of my abilities.

We made a black hat from a dust mask and some black vinyl and glued a slug with a purple beehive to the brim. She lovingly modroc’ed a yoghurt pot into a fairy and had it flying from her wrist (bouncing on an elastic band). The whole process was genuinely very good fun with no tears which was a bonus…apart from me with the sewing machine obviously. It is now firmly back in the cupboard with thread firmly wedged inside it somehow (remarkable really since it isn’t actually threaded.) It’ll be at least a year until I use it again and Paul can look up how to rethread it on Youtube.

A good comedy World Book Day all round. The kids took two books in to donate for the book stall and came home with six, including Millions by Frank Cottrell Boyce and Lily Alone by Jacqueline Wilson, all for £1. Plus we have the vouchers to spend too. What’s not to like.

For more ridiculous dressing up ideas from our household here are Minerva McGonagall (as the cat), Titty from Swallows and Amazons and of course Moaning Myrtle. There is very little we can’t do with a cardboard box and some face paint.