Halloween was a success! Our evening included the neighborhood parade and pizza party, a spooky get together with friends, pumpkins filled with candy, and happy trick or treating through a beautiful old neighborhood covered in webs and twinkling lights.
As usual, I put together the costumes at the last moment. My son had originally wanted to be an Enderman, a character from his favorite computer game Minecraft. I bought black long underwear and the cardboard Enderman box mask and was so pleased with myself for putting his costume together so simply and being prepared a few weeks before Halloween. My little Enderman was so excited to test out the box head, but I kept putting it off, because I didn't want the box to get broken or crushed (between two kids and two cats, boxes don't last long in this house). Fortunately, I finally gave in and put the box together only to discover that it was much too large and awkward and the eyes were too high. It would have been an uncomfortable disaster on my wildly active and sensitive little boy. So, I quickly scanned Pinterest for a quick and easy costume that might incorporate black Long Johns, and I found a Pin that led to this fantastic costume. I love, love Sheena's beautiful photos. And costumes. So good.
I pulled out some black wool felt from my fabric stash, drew a simple bat-like shaped mask onto two pieces of felt, cut them out and stitched them together with some black elastic sandwiched in between. I'm quite experienced in felt mask making after stitching more than twenty superhero masks together for a birthday party a few years back (remember this party?)
Because I had piles of black felt on hand and didn't have time for a trip to the fabric store, I chose to use felt for the bat wings. I cut out two wings and stitched them to the underside of the arms and on either side of the torso. But this costume would work just as well (maybe even better) with some sort of stretchy black fabric.
Coincidentally, my friend made a white bat costume for her daughter. I'm not sure if we were both inspired by the same Pin or if everyone just has bats on the brain these days. She used one large sheet of stretchy white fabric that was only stitched to the underside of each arm and hung loose across the back. Also, she made the cutest white bat ears using felt and a headband so that her little girl didn't have to wear a mask. So cute. She was the littlest white pixie bat fluttering through the night.
My little bat was thrilled with his costume and it survived a day at school and Halloween just fine. And now it's his new favorite costume to wear around the house. Because that kid is always in costume... changing his wardrobe numerous times throughout the day. It's his thing.
And the little lady once again refused to be a fairie or a princess, she wanted to be something scary. After weeks of changing her mind, she finally settled on a vampire. I gave in and bought her a dark and scary dress that she's promised to wear next year, too.
She wore fangs and creepy vampire make up to complete her scary vampire costume.
Looks to me like a picture book halloween! I made both my kids costumes as well. One was chick and her feathers kept flying off all over the place. It was great.
Posted by: KC | November 04, 2014 at 06:50 PM