Halloween 2012 - No Tricks, Just Treats!

This year for Halloween, Lydia had the idea to be a lollipop, with her face peeking through a hole, and her legs as the stick.  I love a family theme, and I'll keep doing it as long as all the kids agree, so I took the candy idea and ran with it.

Here is Lydia's concept art, and the finished product:

Lydia's costume was the most time consuming to sew.  The swirl pattern is 66 separate pieces (33 each front and back), plus the stripes of white, all pieced together like a quilt.  Insane!  But Lydia loved it and I think it was just what she had in mind.

Elise recently bought a little gumball machine with her birthday money, and wanted to be that.  The globe is made from 2 extra large disposable cake domes, and the gumballs are foam craft balls with balloons stretched around them.  They are hot-glued to the globe, and some are tied to her pigtails.  Elise could really dispense gumballs to her friends too!  I made the dress with pockets so she could carry a supply of gumballs, and there is a tube behind the silver part  so she can lift a flap at the top, drop in a gumball, and it comes out the chute.  The handle could really turn, and if anyone happened to want to insert a coin, there is a pocket with a round coin opening.  I really loved figuring out the details on this one!

We asked Tyler what kind of candy I should make him, and he definitely wanted to be a candy cane.  At first I tried to convince him to be something less Christmasy, but I'm so glad he was stubborn about it because I love how his costume turned out and he got the best reactions!  Inside the hat is a lightweight framework made out of stiff foam packing material.  It was a little floppy, but he didn't mind too much.  While we were trick-or-treating he told me, "If you're a candy cane for Halloween, and you run, your hat falls sideways."  I'll have to remember that if I'm ever a candy cane for Halloween.

James was a Hershey's Kiss.  I so wanted to teach him to blow kisses to go with his costume, but his kissing talent remains more the attack-your-face-with-an-open-mouth style, which I also love!  He is still just barely learning to take a few steps, and he wouldn't even try to walk in the costume because it threw off his balance.  He also hated his costume at first, I think because the silver fabric was scratchy around the openings, so I added a bit of soft gray fabric to make it more comfortable and he seemed to not mind after that. (You're seeing the back side of the "KISSES" tag, just so you know I didn't write it backwards)

Mike's costume is just brown fleece with white fleece letters stitched on.  We originally had planned on a different candy (Pop Rocks) for his costume, but it came down to what would be fastest to make, and I'm glad I did the Big Hunk, because he is definitely that!

My cotton candy costume is made of pink fleece covered in quilt batting, sprayed with pink spray paint.  My favorite part is the hat, and the scent!  At first I smelled strongly of paint and spray glue and wanted to mask it with something more yummy smelling.  So on Halloween I went to the drugstore, and they actually had cotton candy scented body spray!  It was kinda expensive, but they also had a tester on the shelf.  So I tested it (ahem, right on my costume which I was wearing) and it really did smell like cotton candy!  (Why would anyone want to smell exactly like cotton candy in their everyday life?)  And then I felt kinda guilty walking out of there smelling like their perfume without buying anything, so I bought a swirl lollipop and called it good!

The kids all together:

The whole family:

Happy Halloween!  I hope it was SWEET!

Halloween 2011 - A Circus of Costumes!

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls, children of all ages, prepare to be amazed!

Ooh and aah at the adorable sight of James the World's Tiniest Elephant!

See Tyler the Strongman perform astounding feats of muscular power!

Behold the human canvas, the wonder-in-ink, the Queen of Tattoo... Lydia the Tattooed Lady!

Witness the death-defying highwire acrobatics of Elise the Tightrope Walker!

Dare to look at the lovely yet repulsive curiosity that is Shayla the Bearded Lady!  And wonder at the many talents of the Amazing Mustachioed Mike!

Come one, come all!  One night only, October 31st, 2011!

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'!)

T-Shirt Princess Dress Tutorial

We love these t-shirt dress-ups.

They are fairly easy and cheap to make, modest, machine washable, durable, easy-on, and easy-off.

Today my sis-in-law Krista asked me to explain how I make them. It was really hard to put into words over the phone, so I decided to make one today and take pictures as I went.

First, you need to measure the little girl you're making one for. In this case the measurements (Krista's daughter's) were: shoulder (or collar) to waist=11", waist to floor=17".

Next, you need a T-shirt sized to fit your little princess. Cut off the bottom of the shirt about 1/2 inch below where you want the waist. I cut mine 11.5" down from the shoulder.

Now measure your t-shirt across the waist (mine was 12"). Double this number (24"). Divide by pi (3.14), which gave me 7.6". Don't round up! That is the radius of your waist hole.

Now, you need a rectangle of fabric big enough to make the skirt. Figure out how long you want your skirt, including the seam and hem (mine is 16"). Now add the radius of the waist hole to the skirt length (7.6+16). Round up (24") and that's the width of your rectangle. The length of the rectangle will be twice that (48"). So my rectangle in this example is 24"x48".

Here is the easiest way I discovered to cut that half-donut shape. Fold your rectangle in half to make a square. Now fold the square in half diagonally to make a triangle. Two edges of this triangle will have folds. Fold the triangle so the "fold" sides meet, making an even pointier triangle. Think about making a snowflake out of paper.

Now, you want to measure your radius from the point of this triangle, which will make the half-donut hole. I cut off 7.6" (my radius) from the point. Unfold the piece you cut off. If it is shaped like a half circle, hooray! You did it right!

Now, keep your "snowflake" folded. You're going to measure the length of your skirt (remember mine was 16"), from the edge you just cut. Measure (16") along each fold, make a mark. Cut a straight line connecting your 2 marks.

Unfold this piece. Hopefully it is the shape we were after!

Okay, so now you have a cut off t-shirt and a half-donut of skirt fabric.

You need to sew the center back seam of the skirt. I like to do a French seam so it won’t fray. Line up the 2 straight edges, WRONG sides together, and sew 1/4” from the edge. Turn the skirt inside out. Now with the RIGHT sides together, sew again 3/8” from the edge. Your 1/4” seam should be encased in the 3/8” seam.

Pin the waist of the shirt to the waist of the skirt, RIGHT sides together. I like to sew it with a straight stitch at 3/8”, and then go back and do a zigzag on the edge of my seam allowance


Finish your hem, add embellishments (like a ruffle on the sleeves and shiny rick-rack trim), and VOILA! A t-shirt dress fit for a princess.

Are you a good witch, or a bad witch?

If I remember how the story goes, when I was four-almost-five, I decided I was going to be Tinkerbell for Halloween. So I insisted that David be Peter Pan, Shaunda was Wendy, Eric was Mr. Smee, and little baby Chris had to be Captain Hook. Sorry Alan, you're not in this story. You were still a twinkle in Dad's eye. But if I had known about you, I would have declared that twinkle to be pixie dust, to fit the theme of course.

Elise has apparently inherited this from me: deciding everyone else's Halloween costumes for them, and sticking to a theme. She got her inspiration from a pair of hand-me-down ruby slippers, currently Lydia's size.





Elise chose everyone's costume except for Mike's. That was totally my idea and I'm pretty proud of it. It had to fit the theme, but not be hot or uncomfortable. So, no tin man, straw-filled scarecrow, or flying monkey. He thought it would be funny to be a wizard like Gandalf or Merlin, and then just say he was the wizard... of Oz. If we had already had a long wizard robe, I would have considered it, but we didn't. The night before Eric and Mare's party I came up with this Yellow Brick Road Concept. I ran to Walmart planning to buy a yellow t-shirt, but no such thing existed in his size. So I bought some yellow fabric and a scrubs pattern, some duct tape, and some black spray paint. After cutting out the pattern pieces, I masked off the "bricks" with rectangles of duct tape, and then spray painted the "mortar" in between. I don't recommend trying to execute an idea like this the night before a costume party. Unless your costume could benefit from you being in a "bad witch" type of mood.

The Pumpkin and the Pine Tree

Elise and Lydia's costumes have kinda fun back stories:

One day in early October, as I was walking Elise to school, I asked her what she wanted to be for Halloween. I think she must have looked around and said the first thing she saw, because the answer was "A tree." A few days later I asked her again, expecting her to have forgotten, and she was definite this time, and even more specific: "A pokey-pine tree" (somehow merging the word porcupine in her mind with pine trees). I suggested several alternatives as the month went on, but she was sure she wanted to be a pine tree.
The idea behind making it all frou-frou was that if I was going to all the work of making a pine tree costume, she had better not change her mind. I figured she probably couldn't resist a tutu style tree with a pinecone necklace.

Lydia's costume was not decided upon until much closer to Halloween. Up to that point, she didn't quite get the concept of "being something for Halloween." I don't know how she figured it out, but out of the blue one day she said "Mommy, I wanna be a punkin for Halloween." A couple days later when she was wearing a shirt with a butterfly on it, I suggested maybe she could be a butterfly for Halloween. "No, a punkin!" came the reply. I bought an $8 pumpkin costume at the grocery store, but returned it a few days later when I came across the pumpkin costume I wore as a toddler. Yes, my mom made it, and she saved it! How lucky for me. Isn't it cute? I just love that hat.

Here are the girls with their cousins, visiting Mike's mom in her classroom. I had to laugh at the contrast between what most 2 and 4 year-olds would choose for costumes, and what my kids chose.