Happy Halloween! (And FAST costumes!)

My son wanted to be a sword guy after his Mastering Knighthood Summit a couple months ago. He received a foam sword (not pictured, as swords aren't allowed at school) and a shield he decorated there. To make an easy tabard, I asked Summit's Queen Emily. She recommended using a long rectangle of fabric folded in half lengthwise, or even a pillowcase (slit the long sides). Cut a head hole and put a belt on it: BAM. You're a knight.

Like Brooke's daughter and 10,000,000 other little girls, my middle girls wanted to be characters from Frozen. We got storebought dresses from Mom Approved Costumes, which arrived JUST in time. I braided some snowflake Christmas ornaments into Elsa's hair and used gel and hairpins along with white and glitter hairspray. Anna got a white strip of hair (hiding in the back plus more glitter, of course!) and a homemade cloak. I used felt instead of fleece and made the undercape a cape (which Anna's is in the movie) instead of a vest, but mostly followed Eclectic Housewife's Anna Cloak tutorial.

The rest of the morning will be spent sewing on the trim and button.

And of course, we have our troll . . . trolling.

Her costume is a towel cut into a long rectangle. I folded it in half lengthwise and sewed up a couple inches of each side, then cut a head hole. Slip on over a gray sweatsuit, tie on a raffia belt and voila, troll!

She hates it. At least it only took five minutes.

What are your favorite fast costumes?

Halloween 2014 Costumes: Frozen!!

Someone asked me a couple weeks ago what we were going to be. I said "What do you think?" We went for the obvious choice. This is the first year that PB is old enough to pick her own costume and duh she chose Elsa. We do like to pick unexpected costumes, though so without further ado!

I have to admit that "Elsa's" costume was purchased (thank goodness) but the other outfits were DIY.

 Since I didn't have anything to make for her outfit we did kick it up a notch with the hair, makeup, and accessories. So PB always begs to put on my makeup. Well I did for her costume and she hated it! For her make up I penciled in her eyebrows, put bright pink, purple, and blue on her lids, put on a bit of mascara, blush, and lip gloss.

 For her hair I knew I wanted pieces that were swept back and then a side braid. I gave her the choice of which hair style of Elsa's she wanted and this is the one she picked. I started by putting mousse in her hair and pinned back with a slight twist, three section on one side and one on the other to look swept back. I gathered her hair to one side and braided it. I put bobby pins in to secure the style. Then her daddy got to work using a whole can of white hairspray on her hair. She loved the results!!

Do you notice her shoes? Well we have two pairs of the same shoes in a 7 and 7.5. She is wearing the left of both pairs which we didn't discover until we got home!

Isn't this the best? When we were at the dollar store they already had out their Christmas stuff and PB wanted a pack of snowflakes. I was thinking of a cute belt with them but she wanted it to come out of her hand. I tied a ribbon on her wrist and one on her ring finger and tied threads onto them which were tied to the snowflake to keep it upright. To stabilize it on her hand I glued it onto a tan piece of paper.

Can you guess what she is? (Other than extremely cute, of course!) She is a rock troll/Love Expert! I made her little shirt out of an old one of mine and splattered it with white paint. I made her necklace out of Sculpey. I used two different shades of green ribbons for her head band. 

It doesn't get cuter than her!

For the King of Arendelle, I used his regular black suit and popped the collar and pinned it shut all the way up. I made the accessories from Sculpey, red fabric, cording, fringe, fun foam, and a big of cardboard.

For the Queen of Aredelle, I made the dress (not well so I won't go into a tutorial...) with black and purple fabric along with some decorative trim. I used Sculpey for my broach and fun foam for my crown. 

What is the funniest part of all? PB instead wants to be Anna for actual trick'r'treating. Good thing we have one of those dresses too!!

Two things to find in the pictures: Where's Waldo's arm and the pumpkins from last week's post!

Are you looking for more ideas for DIY costumes?
Flintstones Family costumes
The Royal Family
Phineas and Ferb
A Prince and Princesses
X-Men
Professor Trelawny and Snape
Toy Story 2 Characters
and more!!

Fancy Pumpkins

I was asked to decorate some pumpkins for a wedding this past weekend. I had tons of ideas and looked around on Pinterest for some inspiration. I purchased the pumpkins at Aldi. You can't beat a $3 huge pumpkin...except if it is impossible to carve by hand. It took A LOT of effort to carve these and eventually I resorted to power tools but we'll get to that in a minute. Here are the pumpkins!

1. Monogram
This was the obvious first choice of pumpkin, especially because it was a wedding. I looked around on the internet for a fancy font and mimicked it on the side of the pumpkin with a washable marker. I used marker because it wouldn't leave an indent and could be wiped off. To carve this I used a knife and exacto knife. I WISH I had carved it with my husband's Dremel like I did the later pumpkins.

2. Mr. and Mrs.
I used a few fabric scraps to make the bow and veil and used puff paints for the rest. Surprisingly the puff paints didn't stay on very well and I had to emergency glue some of the letters back on last minute! The other writing on it said phrases like "Just Married", "Happily Ever After", and "M+C 4ever" For the Mr. I tried to do a block manly font and for the Mrs. I used cursive.

3. Glitter Dipped
This was the first pumpkin I made. I taped off an area and applied Mod Podge and glitter. I wasn't very patient and put on too much Mod Podge. For the second coat I used a Mod Podge/glitter mix which filled in the gaps really well. I wish I had done one more coat but I didn't have enough time for it to dry.

4. Rhinestone swirls.
So when I was getting supplies for this venture at the craft store I purchased a ton of stuff. I ended up using almost none of it. I got lucky with this pumpkin. I purchased some rhinestone border in the dollar section and it worked out great! It was self adhesive and already easy to apply since I didn't have to add each stone. It was two stones wide so I cut them up the middle and applied them in swirls. I think this one was my favorite pumpkin. That may have been because it was the easiest!

5. Spray painted
I first cut out a swirly shape out of contact paper and applied it to the pumpkin. I taped around the pumpkin to prevent over spray.  I only had to apply one coat of gold spray paint. I let it dry and removed the tape. I used puff paint to add the date and a few more swirls. Then while it was drying I had some help in the form of a little girl who thought she was helping with painting. It turned out okay, though!

6. Drilled pattern
I used three different size drill bits in a pattern to create this pumpkin. The largest one was 1". After I drilled all the holes I added some rhinestones for some sparkle.

7. Initials
This is when I figured out using the Dremel was a super easy way to get the carving done without so much effort (or at all because my hands were so tired from carving and I was having an extremely hard time).  I used the drill to make some pilot holes and used the Dremel to carve between the holes and perfect the shapes of the letters. Just FYI you will have pumpkin crumbs EVERYWHERE after using the power tools but it's worth it!

Here is a shot of how they were displayed:

Which one was your favorite? Are you going for a scary face on your jack-o-lantern or a decorated one?

2013 Costumes- The Royal Family

As I said last week we ( I ) decided to go as a current event. 

Can you tell who we are?

I'll give you a hint:

and

We took a little bit of artistic liberty with the Queen's outfit. It seriously would have been awesome if I had made a little business suit with a skirt like the queen usually wears but I couldn't justify making that. This dress would go in the dress up bin and skirt suit? No. PB wore that wig for exactly 5 minutes and I have carried it around two parties hoping she would put it on again. It is all for the pictures, right?

For the queen's costume I used a pattern to make the dress and got one yard of red ribbon and a large medallion. She had on a pair of pearls as well as the wig and a crown and we were set.

For my dress I used a pattern as well. It is light blue with polka dots which doesn't really show in the pictures.

Here are the patterns I used. In size 14 for the womens and 2T for the girls.

For Prince George we used a white blanket of course and our sweet new baby had on warm and fuzzy Halloween PJs on under.

For Prince William he just had all those clothes in his closet. Lucky!

As my niece was taking pictures for us we decided that this background was too busy but I just couldn't resist posting this one because of PBs face. Priceless!!

This isn't the first time we dressed our baby girls up as a boy/man for Halloween. It's a good thing they're little :)

Kate Middleton is seriously my style icon. Did you see what she wore to George's christening? and how skinny she already is? Seriously gorgeous! Don't you wish you could pull that hat off?

Did you see the post from last week about all of our past costumes? Do you have a fav?

What did you or your kids dress up as, for Halloween?

Our Past Halloween Costumes

I have to admit I look forward to dressing up for the church trunk r' treat well in advance each year. I've had our costumes for this year picked out for at least a couple months. Stay tuned for those next week!

In the past we have had some great costumes. Do you remember these?

McKayla is Not Impressed

Snape and Professor Trelawny

Dr. Doofenschmirtz, Phineas and Ferb, Perry and Candice

Prince Charming and Princesses

X-Men

Toy Story: 

Jessie, Andy, Woody, and Buzz

Flintstones: Wilma, Fred, and Pebbles

Goodness! Seeing my hair orange in those last pictures makes me remember the 5 washing (scrubbings) it took to get all the orange out! Are you guys excited to see this year's costumes? We have two new little ones to add to the mix. This year our family is going as a current event.

What are you going as? Jordan put together an awesome list on her personal blog of costume ideas. Check it out here.