By the time a toddler has worn a Halloween costume twice, they've usually outgrown it. That's the small, familiar math behind the Lil' Boo Halloween Costume Swap, a free event that will fill the Ordway Auditorium at the Teton County Library in Jackson on Saturday, Oct. 10, from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m.
The premise is as simple as the name suggests. Families with gently used costumes for children from infancy through age 5 can drop them off the day before, Friday, Oct. 9, from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m. at the library. Costumes and their accessories must be contained and labeled. Then, on Saturday, anyone can come browse and take a costume home at no cost, no ticket required, no questions asked. Families on the other side of Teton Pass can donate earlier: the Valley of the Tetons Library in Victor and Driggs is accepting costumes during operating hours from Sept. 21 through Oct. 8.
The event is organized by It Takes a Valley, a perinatal resource collaborative that has spent the past several years building a support network for parents across the Teton region. The costume swap is a seasonal cousin to the group's larger, better-known project: a free maternity, infant and child clothing and gear swap that has grown into one of the valley's biggest recurring community events.
That swap is where the organization's story really begins. It Takes a Valley started in 2018 out of Charlotte Souter's experience with postpartum mental health challenges. As she navigated that period, she discovered how many Teton County resources existed for parents in similar situations, and how hard they could be to find. What began as a grassroots effort to compile a comprehensive list of local perinatal resources, including day care services, support groups, early parenting classes and perinatal mental health clinics, gradually turned into something more organized. In the fall of 2024, it officially became a nonprofit.
The clothing and gear swap grew alongside it. In its early years, the event was run out of garages, with neighbors hauling donations over to Mike Yokel Park. Alli Lane, now the organization's executive director, recalled the scale of those first efforts. "There were three garages full of stuff for the swap," she said. "I would have all my neighbors and volunteers shoveling stuff from my garage over to Mike Yokel." When the event outgrew that arrangement, it moved to Jackson Elementary School, and eventually to the Teton County Fairgrounds.
The numbers tell the story of that growth. A November swap drew more than 600 families and 195 volunteers, according to It Takes a Valley. The spring 2026 edition counted 226 volunteers, and the organization reports more than 1,200 shoppers at its 2025 swaps. It also tracks what the swaps keep out of the landfill: the last one kept a reported 11,000 pounds of gear circulating in the community, with an additional 2,579 pounds of leftover items donated to the Wind River Reservation's Community Baby Shower. That partnership, along with help from the Jackson Hole High School RoboBroncs team and the Wonder Institute, has become a standing feature of the swaps.
"Every Swap season, I'm reminded that the need is real and the generosity in this valley is even more real," Lane said in an event announcement. "We've outgrown what we ever imagined this could be and we're just getting started."
The Halloween swap applies that same philosophy to a narrower and, for many parents, more stressful problem. A costume is worn once, photographed, and then usually retired to a closet or a landfill. The Lil' Boo swap is designed to interrupt that cycle at the age when it matters most, when children are growing fast enough that last year's costume is a guaranteed mismatch. The organization frames it plainly on its website: the old way means driving from store to store, worrying whether an online order will arrive in time, and spending a lot on something worn once. The swap, by contrast, is local, free, and built on sharing between neighbors.
It is also, deliberately, more than a costume exchange. It Takes a Valley describes its swaps as a chance to connect parents who are in the same life stage and to point them toward other resources, from mental health support to early parenting classes. The costume swap carries the same intent, with a note on the event page that costumes matter but the load parents carry matters more. The organization's broader network now includes 129 collaborating organizations, health professionals and support groups.
It Takes a Valley is a project of Postpartum Support International-Wyoming, which provides educational materials and trainings to families, advocates and healthcare professionals across the state. Its mission, as the group puts it, is to be the bridge connecting young families to the perinatal support they deserve, in a community where, as its tagline has it, it truly takes a valley to raise a child.
For the families who show up at the Ordway Auditorium on Oct. 10, the transaction itself is small: a costume in, a costume out. But it is the kind of small transaction that a nonprofit built on hand-me-downs has been scaling up for years, one garage and one growing child at a time. Volunteers interested in helping with the swap can sign up through the It Takes a Valley website. Organizers note that professional photography and videography may take place during the event for promotional use.