Aunt Becky's First Halloween Costume Party & This Year's Homemade Costumes

 For weeks Kai has been asking for an Elsa costume, either for Christmas or sooner.

I was planning to make her one, but didn't have the fabric.

Delsin has changed his mind a zillion times since summer.  

I was going to try to make him some kind of Wild Kratts costume,

but he changed to some kind of zombie Incredible Hulk.

When we got home from the hospital Daniel announced that Mama would not be sewing any costumes this year and they would either stay home on Halloween night or figure out something from the huge costume box already in the playroom.

At first Delsin was in shock and so I told him one year I dressed as a hunch-backed person with make-up and a hoodie with a pillow in my back.

Immediately  he wanted to do that.  So for the costume party this past weekend at Aunt Beck's house he dressed this way, and also for the Cub Scout Halloween party last night.

Enoch was easy.  We already had a couple of Spiderman costumes in the costume box.  He was happy.

For Kai and Carolina, I had to go to Walmart today after Lenore's first pediatrician appointment.  I had to pick up a few essentials, so I grabbed a couple of yards of turquoise tulle, and a roll of 10 yards of turquoise tulle with glitter on it, and a roll of glittery turquoise ribbon (1.5 inch).  I was going to make hair bows with the ribbon, instead of crowns, but I just ran out of time.  I should work on those today, perhaps.
So, I took the 2 yards of tulle and cut two perfect length capes out of it.  I used this tutorial as a reference for the style of cape I wanted.

Being reminded of this tutorial,

I decided to use Carolina's old beauty pageant dress we still had in the costume box, as the skirt to her Elsa dress.
I had Kai cut up the rest of the blue and white tulle we had on spools and I tied it onto some elastic to make the skirt for her Elsa dress. 
For the bodices I made a tube out of that 10 yard toll of 6inch tulle with glitter on it and slipped that over their heads.  Underneath it all I picked up some turquoise long sleeve shirts and leggings at Walmart earlier in the day.  So I did a tiny bit of sewing, but not much really.  I was able to put a couple of Elsa costumes together, WITH breastfeeding breaks I might add, in about  2 hours.
I'll make the hair bows soon and post pictures of those too.

Lenore and I thoroughly enjoyed staying home and cuddling.  I just couldn't take her out in the night air, being less than a week old and all.  I'm not sure if the kids will get to go trick or treating at all this year.  If Daniel is working late I might wrap Lenore up in a baby carrier under my coat and let them walk up River Street, which is just the next street over.  We'll see...

Edited to add a few pictures from Halloween night.
The bottom picture in this collage shows Carolina's expression when she found out Daddy wouldn't be able to get home from work in time to take them trick-or-treating.
But I had already come up with a back-up plan.

I didn't get any pictures of anybody wearing their costumes together, because once I announced Daddy couldn't come home I quickly announced that I'd take them to the street behind our house (where 6 houses were giving out candy).
So I put Lenore in my ring sling and wrapped her up with me in my coat.

 She wasted no time in falling asleep.

 Before she knew what happened we were back home in warmth for cuddling.

Costumes!

I had fun making some costumes this year. 
First of all, Claire had taken a trip and spent some time in Amish country so she wanted an Amish costume.  I told her what I had in the way of fabric and she worked out the rest.
I made her a bonnet and an apron.  She loved her costume.

I didn't use a pattern for the apron. 

For the bonnet I used this craft project tutorial.  I just used fabric instead of paper, and hemmed the edges before I got started.

I almost didn't want to dress up for Halloween, this year. It was more that I was so busy with the baby and hadn't even had time to think up a costume. 
Day before Halloween came and we headed over to Walmart to let the kids pick something out.  The kids had already picked out some costumes when I saw a Red Riding Hood costume and had an idea.
"Hey!  How about Kai, you be Red Riding Hood & Delsin, you be the wolf...."

Daniel said, "I can be the lumber jack!"

"And I'll be Grandma!" I said.

But Delsin and Kai wanted to be their own things. (Wolverine and Cinderella)  So, we went ahead and bought their store bought costumes and drove around the city looking for a wolf mask for Daniel.  We decided to make him the wolf, me Red Ridding Hood, and Carolina Jane the basket of goodies.  We didn't find any wolf items within budget, so we came home.  I had a pattern for a lion costume I used with some grey fur fabric I had left over from the year we went as the three blind mice, and within 24 hours we had us a wolf costume, a Red Ridding Hood costume, and a Chocolate Eclair costume.

For the Wolf costume I used McCall's Costumes EASY TO SEW pattern.  MP349.

For the Red Riding Hood cape I used McCall's Costumes Medieval Magic 6775.  I can't find a link to the pattern information on their website, so I'm attaching a photo.

For Carolina Jane's Chocolate Eclair costume I only used a pattern for the hat.  McCall's M6103.  It was way too big, so I had to add a piece of elastic to the back before we rushed out the door.

I didn't use a pattern at all for the dress.  I just cut two long pieces of rectangle from some brown crushed velvet I had on hand.  I sewed the sides leaving an opening large enough to comfortably get her arms through.  Then I sewed the top on the left and right, leaving a hole large enough for her head to get through

comfortably.  Then I finished all the edges.  Easy as pie.    I put a long sleeve t -shirt on her with her booties I made from the same pattern as the hat.    I wore a dress that has my sister handed down to me, with a wig that's seen many a Halloween.  Daniel wore his wire framed glasses and his bathrobe to be the big bad wolf pretending to be Grandma.  It was so much fun.

Delsin's halloween costume

This year I only made Delsin's costume and my cloak that went with my costume. 

Delsin wanted to be the prince from Snow White.  Not the prince from Cinderella, not the prince from Sleeping Beauty.  He said he only liked the prince from Snow White.  So funny to me, because I never thought my son would be so influenced by these Disney princess movies.  However, the boy talks all the time about wanting to grow up and become a prince charming and save people.  Sigh....  He's a real sweet heart and I love him sooo much.

Delsin's first Halloween

I love this picture!

This is from the birthing class reunion. These are the babies of the other students in our class. It was so funny because the whole time we were sitting around the babies were just hanging out like they were all so mellow and loving everything. Then someone said, let's put their costumes on them and get a picture before we leave. Well everybody else reluctantly bought a costume for their babies, before the meeting, and got something small almost like a sleep n play. I spent a week sewing this larger than life costume together. Complete with wiskers and all. Delsin had tried it on before and was ok with it, not loving it, but ok. This time we put it on him and something about it just upset all the other babies. Whatever it was, everybody started crying. It was really funny, and I still feel kinda bad about it. The funniest part to me is we were so different personality wise from the other people in our class. So this was like icing on the farewell cake.

After that, he refused to wear the hood on Halloween night. We didn't trick or treat anyway. But you couldn't even get near him with it. I think he was afraid he was gonna start hearing crying babies and not be able to see them, again. Scary! LOL!

Cave Baby Delsin.

This diaper and the picture on the right was featured on the front of a cloth diaper website for at least 6 months before I stopped going there to check it. Now that site has been moved, so I can't share a link with you. But it was really cute and they had a blurb about it.

I made these diapers to match his first Halloween 2005 costume in the next post.

I made three or four. I had several mothers ask me to make some for them, but I never actually did it, 'cause one of the moms in our Mom's group said she would report me to the pattern maker for selling diapers using her pattern without a license. She had her own diaper making business and I guess felt a little threatened by my weekend warrior diaper making fun. But we had fun with ours, and I've had requests for them still.