Tricks and Treats

Happy Halloween everyone! Our Halloween fun started yesterday when we went to the trick or treating costume parade at the CEU San Juan campus. It was fun, but a little crazy at times. There were a lot kids and some of them got a little over-excited and pushy. And some of the buildings and offices were "spooked out" with creepy decorations, so Amanda walked around looking freaked out most of the time. She scares really easily.

Getting treats from Joshua and Amanda's preschool teacher Mrs. Stubbs

As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been planning for a couple of months to do Peter Pan, Tinkerbell, and Captain Hook costumes, but my planning didn't turn into any actual doing until this week. Caleb's costume was pretty easy. I lucked out and found his shirt and shoe covers at a thrift store for super cheap. At that same store I also found a pattern for all three costumes. Despite the fact that I've never sewed anything from a pattern before I plopped down my 15 cents and bought it. I used the pattern to make Caleb's hat and pants. The hat was easy, but I was pretty nervous about the pants. I cut out the pieces and couldn't even imagine how they could possibly go together to make pants. But I followed the directions and they were actually pretty simple. Unfortunately, several people mistook him for Robin Hood. Why in the heck do Robin Hood and Peter Pan have such similar costumes!! Anyway, I thought he made a perfect Peter Pan with his red hair and freckles. He loved his costume, but was sad that I never got around to buying him a little knife to go with it. Do you think if he wears this all the time he'll never grow up?

You can fly, you can fly, you can fly!

I thought Amanda's costume was going to be the easiest, but unfortunately it provided its own set of challenges. I wasn't even going to attempt to make her a Tinkerbell dress, so I bought a new one cheap on ebay. There are tons of Tinkerbell costumes out there, but most of them are all fancy and fluffy and I wanted something simple and true to the Disney cartoon. Unfortunately when the costume arrived it was very cheaply made and looked like it would disintegrate with one wash. I figured as long as it made it through a couple of wearings it could be trashed later. Then yesterday Amanda had her costume on ready to go to preschool when I heard some fighting, a commotion, and some crying. I'm not sure exactly what happened, but the end result was a big rip in the top of her dress. It was basically shredded. AHHH! I calmed Amanda down and sent her next door to borrow a Cinderella dress (thanks Kristin!) to wear, and got her and Joshua off to preschool. I didn't know what to do with the shredded dress. Living where I do I didn't have to ability to just run to the store and buy a new Tinkerbell costume, and we don't even have a real fabric store in town. But I hurried over to the hardware store where there's a little fabric department and picked up some mending tape and lace (yes, they sell fabric at our hardware store). Back at home I was able to mend up the rip and cover it up with the lace. Not ideal, but it did the trick. Later that day the dress got another rip at the waist, so I had to do the same thing again. The final touch was her hair. Many thanks to my running pal Leslie who made me aware of this blog that had directions for Tinkerbell hair. This is a great blog for those who, unlike me, enjoy doing their little girls hair. Anyway, here's the final product:

Now on to the true beast: turning Joshua into Captain Hook. I was lucky enough to have a red pirate coat in the dress up box, so fortunately I didn't have to sew that. It was too big so I took it in some, but that was easy. I described the hat-making process in an earlier post. Once I had the hat made I tried to find a big feather plume to finish it off, but of course there was none to be found in town. Oh well! Adding the hair to the hat was another big project. I didn't have any kind of wig to work with, so I made the ringlets out of yarn. There was a lot of trial and error that went into figuring out how to make those. In the end I cut down a couple of large dowels and wrapped the pieces in Saran Wrap. Then I cut lengths of yarn, dipped them in a glue/water mixture, wrapped them around the dowels, and baked them in the oven until dry. Thanks to the Saran Wrap, the yarn slipped off the dowels in nice ringlets. I then attached them to the inside of the hat with a glue gun. I also couldn't find a plastic pirate hook anywhere, so I had to make that from the pattern. Fortunately it wasn't too difficult, just a hook shape stuffed with batting attached to a black mitten-type thing. I finished off the costume by pinning some lace to a white turtleneck. And of course, the mascara mustache. Yes, it was a lot of work, but how stinking cute is that little pirate?!

Ready for trick or treating! We were blessed with temperatures close to 60 degrees this evening. Perfect!

I took some video of the kids as they were headed out to trick or treat, then realized I hadn't actually pressed record. Whoops, but here's 30 seconds or so I managed to snag as they went on their way.

So is there a moral to this spooky tale? Yes...save yourself a lot of time, effort, and aggravation and just buy your costumes off the rack at WalMart!