Halloween 2010

Let me tell you about our Halloween costumes!

Last spring, Elise memorized the "Queen of Hearts" nursery rhyme to recite in front of her Kindergarten class.

The Queen of Hearts, she made some tarts
All on a summer's day.
The Knave of Hearts, he stole those tarts
and took them clean away.

The King of Hearts called for the tarts
and beat the knave full sore.
The Knave of Hearts brought back the tarts
and vowed he'd steal no more.

The students were allowed to bring a prop or wear a costume, and Elise chose this poem because she wanted to dress like a queen. I agreed to make her a dress, but only if she would wear it for Halloween! So this is the costume that sparked the whole theme. I made the dress in the wee hours of the morning before the program (when else?), but I didn't have time for all the details I wanted to add. It was inspired by the new Tim Burton Alice in Wonderland movie.


For Halloween I added the crown, the beading, and figured out the hair using red hairspray. Elise LOVED being a really red redhead! Her hair does have a little bit of natural red, especially in the sun, and she always mixes red and brown crayon/marker in her self portraits. She thinks red hair is so much more exciting than plain old brown!


I made Lydia's blue dress, but the pinafore was from when I was little. When my parents moved to their new house a few years ago, I took home a bunch of my old dresses, slips, and pinafores. Thankfully this was among them. It had never even been worn! It's not exactly like the cartoon, but it has the right flavor, and looked really cute. Lydia's favorite part about this costume was the full twirl-able circle skirt.


Tyler was the cutest white rabbit I've ever seen. I looked at bunny costumes at several stores, but they were either very expensive, very girly, or all pink! I didn't want him to feel like this:
so I kept looking :). I thought I might have to sew a bunny from scratch (ugh!), but I finally found someone selling this one in the KSL classifieds. It had sewn-in feet like pajamas, so I had to modify it a little, and I added a yard-sale vest and bow tie, and a "pocket watch" that used to be a necklace. Hopefully I made the costume masculine enough to not be (too) embarrassing to him later!


So here they are all together! I think this shot turned out so cute!


It would have been really fun if I'd had time to make Mike and myself some Mad Hatter and Cheshire Cat costumes, (or playing cards as my friend suggested too late!), but we had a (very awesome) pirate party to attend. We threw these together from stuff we had on hand, plus a vest from the DI. And I made Mike's hat with fake leather fabric. Mike did the stubble himself without any coaxing! He was trying to look more like a pirate and less like Paul Revere, ha! (Arr, the scurvy bilge-sucking Redcoats be comin'!)