Halloween 2014 Costume Party

Pretty self explanatory, right?

Link up your family friendly costumes

anytime between now & November 8th (:

An InLinkz Link-up

xoxo

Halloween 2013

How was your Halloween?

Ours was windy & rainy all day long...

Because we've had such a crazy month:

I didn't get out any decorations,

I didn't have costumes ready,

we didn't carve/paint pumpkins,

we hadn't had our traditional Halloween dinner,
we hadn't watched The Nightmare Before Christmas,
(or any Halloween movies for that matter)

we hadn't enjoyed caramel apples,

(even though we picked 1/2 bushel at a local orchard)

& I didn't have candy until the day before.

It just didn't feel like Halloween.

So when it came time to make lunch for the kidlets,
I decided to pull off an impromptu Halloween muffin tin meal.
This is what happens when I don't plan ahead of time...

We watched The Nightmare Before Christmas while eating pumpkin shaped cheese, ghost shaped pb&j, apple slices, a banana ghost, a pumpkin orange with an apple stem, & of course caramel sauce to dip the apples in.

Simple, cute, & mostly fruit.
Not quite as 'themey' as my usual,
but I like how it turned out.

After the first couple handfuls of trick-or-treaters came by,
I finally pulled out our Halloween bin to decide on costumes.

I wasn't sure how well the paint on the Calvin & Hobbes costumes would handle the rain
(it might have been fine, but we didn't want to take the chance that it might run)

so we decided to take the simple route
& go as student witches & wizards.

Yes, I understand that our school uniforms are not up to Hogwarts standards.
We're working on adding to them little by little,
& eventually will have our complete uniforms.
We received plenty of compliments on them "as-is" last night,
but that was probably because of those adorable red-heads that were wearing them.

We lost a wand while we were out & about,
so today we're going to retrace our steps to try & find it.
If we can't find it while we're on our walk,
We may have to make a trip to Ollivanders in the near future for another one.

Tonight we're going to have our {belated} Halloween dinner,
then make caramel apples.
We're going to nix decorating pumpkins this year,
but I think that will be okay.
Don't you?

Oh, & if you missed my Harry Potter party posts last month:
Part 1 - Part 2 - Part 3
Check 'em out!

xoxo

Halloween costume 2013 - Possibilities

Halloween really sneaked up on us this year.

I'm sure that's partly because we're still trying to get settled,

but mostly because Gram passed away a couple weeks ago.
I can't believe it's already been two weeks

We've had a lot going on with the funeral & everything...

Since Halloween is only one day away at this point,
instead of creating/finishing our Wreck it Ralph costumes last second

I think we'll be taking the easy route

& wearing repeat costumes this year.
That's okay, right?
I'm thinking yes.

Besides...

Nobody in our new area has seen us wear these costumes before!

We probably won't decide until tomorrow,
but here are some of our easy options...

Chances are that Hubby & Little Dudeman will be going as Calvin & Hobbes again.

Little Princess will either be rockin' the Perry the Platypus costume,

the butterfly fairy costume,

or she may go as a little witch from Hogwarts.

I'll be Isabella again if Little princess is Perry the Platypus.

I never finished making my caterpillar costume to go with her butterfly one,
but I can always throw on a muumuu & lei like last year
or just find something in our costumes bin.

OR
We may ALL go as witches & wizards.
Fresh from Hogwarts.

It will be a surprise.
Don't worry, I'll post pictures of what we actually end up wearing.

On a complete side note...
Keep your eyes out for my review of K5 Learning.
Coming soon.
K5 Learning has an online reading and math program for kindergarten to grade 5 students.  I've been given a 6 week free trial to test and write a review of their program.  If you are a blogger, you may want to check out their  open invitation to write an online learning review of their program. - See more at: http://www.k5learning.com/review-k5

xoxo

Halloween costumes 2012

I know this is a couple weeks late but better late than never, right?

Sooo...

Happy {belated} Halloween!

 Our little princess was a butterfly fairy.

We already had the purple onesie, found the tutu at Deseret Industries, and my grandma gave her the wings.

Absolutely adorable!

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And now for the guys...

Little dudeman was Calvin and hubby was Hobbes.

The Calvin costume started out as a red t-shirt and black pants, and Hobbes was just an orange sweatshirt and orange sweatpants that I ordered on Amazon. Hobbes' belly was made from a pale yellow t-shirt from Deseret Industries. I basically created my own pattern by masking off where I wanted it on the sweatshirt,  then marking it on the t-shirt with chalk (accounting for seam allowance).

Then the cutting and sewing began...

I am definitely no professional when it comes to sewing, and I get REALLY nervous every time I do it. If I had a real pattern for this, I'm not sure I would be able to figure it out and I would probably get a headache trying to do so.

So please excuse me for my lack of correct sewing terminology.

I tend to do better eyeballing it which makes no sense, but it works for me. For now.

Next, I painted the stripes on the Calvin shirt and the Hobbes costume by using masking tape and slightly watered down black acrylic paint. Unfortunately, I think I watered down the paint a little too much a few times that I mixed it, which made the paint bleed underneath the taped off areas as you can see with the top of the Calvin costume. :(

I was able to fix the areas that bled too much on the Hobbes costume since they didn't need to be evenly spaced, but couldn't do anything for the Calvin shirt.

The tail is probably my favorite part of the costume... haha

I made the tail out of an orange t-shirt that I got at Deseret Industries that was a pretty close match to the color of the sweats. I cut out one long, wide strip (making sure to account for room for batting so it would be big enough all the way around). Then I used my sewing machine to sew it together on two sides & turned it inside out so that it was a long tube. I stuffed it with batting and scraps (since I didn't have enough batting on hand), then I taped and painted it. Once the paint was dry I sewed it onto the pants.

The ears were made out of black felt, the pale yellow t-shirt scraps, and pipe cleaners. I got the idea for the ears here, but since I didn't have any no-sew fabric glue I attempted sewing them. I sewed two pieces of felt together, turned them inside out and placed the pipe cleaner inside, then sewed the inner ear on, which held the pipe cleaner against the edge of the ears. I cut the slits into the hood of the sweatshirt and hand-stitched them on. They turned out a little bigger than I had intended, but not too bad for not knowing what I was doing.

In the end, nobody knew who they were. Everyone thought Hobbes was Tigger.

Oh well... I still think they turned out pretty awesome!

Here's a couple Calvin and Hobbes Halloween strips for you to enjoy:

I found this awesome comic strip here...

...and this funny was found here.

What about me? I threw on a muumuu and handed out candy. I didn't have time to make myself a costume. Maybe I'll have time next year...

Oh, there you are Perry!

We LOVE watching Phineas and Ferb at our house...

In fact, we never seem to be able to get anything done while it's on.

This is why we decided to have a Phineas and Ferb themed Halloween last year!

Halloween 2011

Phineas, Perry the Platypus, & Isabella

Click here to vote for our costumes over at the Dating Divas website!!!

PLEASE do it! Just click on the link, find our picture, & VOTE!!! It will take maybe 5 seconds of your time, it will make me very happy, & you get a chance to explore one of my favorite sites if you still have some time!

We had actually planned these costumes for Halloween 2010, but couldn't get all of our outfits together in time...

Perry was ready. My mom & I had made the main part of the Perry costume by altering a pattern for a lion costume. I made my own pattern for the eyes, bill, tail, & feet and then hand-stitched them onto the main part.
It was actually a lot of fun to make!

It was pretty big on him even after the alterations, but it ended up working out fine. He got to wear it for Halloween two years in a row & on Platypus day at Disneyland!

Platypus Day 2011

We had Phineas's shorts which I had found at Goodwill, but were still missing his shirt & shoes. We bought some blue Shaun White shoes only to find some even more perfect blue Converse shoes after he had worn the others all over the place. Oh well... We ended up getting his shirt on ebay but the one we got still isn't our ideal Phineas shirt. Ya see, Phineas doesn't wear a polo, & his stripes are larger. I'll find one someday. Oh, and just fyi... Spraying red color on your hair is something that should be done outside if you don't want your socks & feet to turn red. At least we were smart enough to use a towel so that he wouldn't get it on his clothes.

We also needed Isabella's bow, belt & shoes. I had found a dress at Goodwill, and already had a white shirt to go underneath it. Her socks weren't too hard to find, but I never did find a belt {Le sigh}. I ended up making the bow out of blanket binding (which I think turned out rather cute for not knowing what I was doing), & spraying some shoes with fabric spray that was the completely wrong pink.

Now... what to do THIS year?

Just in case you decided to finish reading about our fun costumes & forgot to click on the link to vote for them. Here's another link...
Click here to vote for our costumes!!!