Jasmine decided on her costume first. She wanted to be Rapunzel. I could have bought that anywhere, but she already owned this purple dress. Which she refused to wear.
It was homemade, but I didn't make it. I got it at a garage sale for 50 cents. I never knew what it was that she didn't like about this dress, but this little girl rejects clothing for bizarre reasons sometimes. Since it was going to waste anyway, I decided that "Rapunzel-izing" the dress would be relatively fast.
It wasn't as easy as I hoped. The overskirt needed to have a gap in the middle, so I just cut that section out. Jasmine didn't like the awesome bead trim for some reason, so that came off. I had to take the sleeves off to add the pink stripes, and that was the worst part. The previous person wasn't very good at gathering, and she made up for it with tiny zigzags to make it really secure. The vest was the fun, engineering part. Jasmine's favorite part was the "criss-cross" part in front. You can't quite see my favorite part- Pascal, the chameleon, plays hide and seek with Rapunzel in the movie. So I embroidered a little Pascal to hide under the overskirt. You can almost see his green feet.
Total cost = 50 cents for dress. I owned everything else and got the embroidery pattern for free.
While I was working on that, Kaitlyn decided that she wanted to be Pikachu. That one is much harder to find. There was one on Amazon that looked like a hoodie and skirt. We both liked the look of that one, but the reviews said it was made out of that awful costume fabric that snags and rips instantly. So we bought a yellow hoodie. I couldn't find one in her size, so we started with one my size.
Kaitlyn's was the easiest and fastest. I think it was less than one day. I put a Pikachu face on the hood with my embroidery machine, along with the stripes on her back. I shortened the sleeves, making them narrower in the process, and made a casing on the inside for elastic to gather a waist. Oh, and we had to get rid of the kangaroo pocket, too, since it hung at her knees. The only tricky part was making a tail.
She now wears this almost every day as her jacket for recess.
Total cost: $13 for hoodie, $5 for embroidery design.
Tyler, on the other hand, was tricky this year. When I asked him what he wanted to be, he said "Alex from Minecraft. I was Steve last time, so now I should be Alex." The only catch is that Alex is the girl character.
"Tyler, did you know that Alex is a girl?"
"Yeah," he said very matter-of-factly. "I don't care so much."
Of the girl characters he could ask to be, this was not some sparkling princess, to be sure. She just had a ponytail and a Minecraft, blocky body. And the more I thought about it, why not? We tell our kids they can be anything they want to be for Halloween, so I should have lived up to it.
The bigger problem is that we just made a Minecraft, boxy costume last year, and I gotta say I really didn't want to make one again. So I offered a few other ideas to him until one stuck. Emmet from The Lego Movie. He already owned the shirt, so he just needed some pants and a bit more to fill it out.
I looked all over Pinterest, and lots of people made various levels of costume. Some just wore the clothes, and some spent countless hours on boxes and carving foam into the hair. I decided to use the concrete form that everyone else was using for the head, and start from there. After I got the piece cut, Kaitlyn looked at me strangely. "Why don't you use the fabric Lego head?"
"What fabric Lego head?"
So she ran up to her costume box and produced a foam-like fabric head shaped like a Lego head. It was white and only had eye holes, but it was a much better start than what I had.
I tried dyeing the head yellow, but it didn't take, so I just made a yellow fabric version that I sewed onto the head. Simple enough. I ran out of time to do anything else before the neighborhood block party, but we did get him a Piece of Resistance to wear on his back, at least.
Total cost: $3 for yellow fabric. And $15 wasted on a concrete form and plastic tubes for hands that I didn't end up using. Grr.
All ready for the party!
The spent the most time at the cake walk. Favorite for all of them!
My favorite is the table the high school science teacher sets up. He had things like "zombie brains" and "ghost eyeballs", and a ghost balloon craft for them to make.
Two other friends dressed as Pokemon Trainers, who apparently run around trying to catch Pikachu. Or something. I'm not up on my Pokemon stuff, but I loved that we could get a group picture.
I thought that after this, I would add hair and hands to Tyler's costume. But I just couldn't figure out how to make three dimensional hair on a weak, flimsy head. And I realized that making him Lego hands just meant he wouldn't be able to use his hands to pick up candy. So we skipped that. Instead, I made Jasmine a satchel and Kaitlyn a Pokeball purse to hold their candy.
For the first time, I had a great day going to the costume parades. My memories from previous years were of waiting in cramped hallways with tons of other parents, trying to keep the baby/toddler happy and still while we watched tons of strangers walk by in costume. This year, Jasmine was over the moon. She was excited about just the toddlers walking in with their moms before the parade started. "Mom, LOOK! Elsa!" Every single costume was amazing, all day long.
After school, we carved some pumpkins as quick as we could. Jasmine even did hers all by herself.
I loved Halloween this year! I even dressed up, too. I found this costume on a garage sale group on facebook a few days earlier, and bought it solely because I own the white boots in the picture from high school flag team.
Convincing my hair to make two buns was not easy, but I think I got the idea across. What a fun day!
