Costumes 2013.

Making costumes has become a fun tradition for us the days leading up to Halloween. Our church Halloween party was last week, quite early to have costumes ready, but luckily we found lots of short cuts and got ours together mostly in one day.

(That's not Isla, although it kind of looks like her! You can tell because my babies never wear shoes.)
Faye loves to hear the story of The Enormous Crocodile (Roald Dahl) over and over again. After changing her mind about the big costume decision a million times a day, my suggestion of the enormous crocodile finally stuck. We visited Thrift City (new favorite store!) and picked up a green hoodie and green fleece pants that were way too big for Faye. Then I just cut off half the pant legs and used that extra fabric to make the belly. The cut-off arms became the crocodile's mouth, stretched over a baseball cap and cardboard to make it stick out. 

Felt for the teeth and eyes. Lots of hot glue here; no sewing. (Will have to take better pictures on Halloween.)

Such great games at the church party. Here it's the donut on the string; apparently Faye got to use her hands.

This one was ghost bowling.

I was happy that Isla fit into the peacock costume I made for Faye two years ago. (That one was a little labor intensive, but worth it!)

Cute Everett wanted to be a pumpkin. I found an easy Martha Stewart tutorial to make one from a pillowcase and didn't bother hemming the arm and leg holes, so it was really quick and easy! Everett and I were just pulling out green felt to make a stem hat when we glanced over and saw one of the discarded green legs from Faye's fleece pants. It fit right on his head, so there's the stem!

So, I am pretty proud of myself for how this one turned out. For some reason, Carson was determined to be a bowling lane. Not a ball, not a pin, the whole lane. I took an old white T shirt and white pants and died them tan (used RIT dye for Everett's pillowcase too, love that stuff.) Then used a sharpie to draw lines and felt for the markings on the lane. We happened to have a couple of little toy pins that we hot glued onto his sandals. I wish I could have made his head look more like a bowling ball, but it's what we had. I still don't know why he wanted to be this, but he was really happy with it!

So, with minimal sewing, lots of hot glue, and really only a couple hours of working on them, I think we have some great costumes here! The kids even could participate a lot with dying the clothes, gluing the felt pieces on, etc. Let's hope they hold up through one more party and then Halloween night!