I've been busy...

I was in the mood to make fun costumes this year. I tried to nail the kids down to what they wanted to be around the beginning of October so I'd have plenty of time to work on them. I like sewing, but doing it last minute is stressful, not fun. Sometimes we think we might do a family theme, but it never quite works out because everyone wants to be such different things.

However we sort of got onto a food kick this year. First Tyler said he wanted to be a pickle, because he loves them so much.

This is the one that took the most time to make. I didn't have any kind of pattern - just kinda figured it out as I went along. I started out with 4 tall, skinny panels. I sewed them together and just kept tweaking it till it looked right. I tapered the top and bottom, sewed in that stiff interfacing all around the top to make it stand up straight and along the bottom to make it look finished, cut holes for the face and arms and attached fabric facing for a finished edge. Once I got the body looking right, I made little balls out of a different green material. I ripped up a bunch of squares, rounded the edges a little bit, sewed a loose basting stitch around the edge and pulled it together. Then I filled them with pillow stuffing and attached them all around with a hot glue gun. I also hot glue gunned a panel of fabric inside the top to rest on his head so it wouldn't slip down. He LOVED it, and he looked great!

Then Brennan came up with the idea of being a peanut, since it's the scariest thing he could think of. "No really, mom, I have nightmares about them!" In case you didn't know, he's allergic to peanuts.

This one was pretty simple, and it took just one afternoon. I cut a peanut shape out of 3 layers of material - a tan faux suede, batting for the middle and tan cotton for the inside. Then I sewed them with right sides together, leaving a small hole to turn it right side out, like a pillow. I sewed the hole shut and sewed rows of irregular, rounded rectangles all over to give it a bumpy peanut texture. I made two of them - one for the front and one for the back, and used a hot glue gun to connect them at the shoulders and sides with black ribbons.

Spencer said bananas are scary to him too because he hates them. Plus he thought it would be funny, and he's all about funny. He even won the award for funniest costume at the middle school. I was going to make this one too, but I started running out of time and bought it online instead.

Dallin hates tomatoes, so the boys said he should be a tomato. But what he really wanted to be was a purple slinky. In case you're wondering, there were no slinky costumes online for me to use as inspiration, and I almost gave up a couple of times. But I went to Lowe's to get some ideas, and I ended up getting some irrigation tubing (the same size we use in our yard, so we can use it later), which was already coiled like a slinky, and some purple spray paint. Dave connected the rings together with fishing line and painted it, and then I attached some black material shoulder straps. It was a little cumbersome for him to get around in, but he was very excited about it.

Levi didn't want to be anything - he is not into dressing up, like all his brothers. I bought him a cute lion costume, since he loves lions. But he screamed every time I tried to put it on him, so I returned it. On the day of the Halloween party at church we took out our bin of old costumes and had him choose one. He got excited about the vampire bat and flew all around the house roaring.

I looked online for good pregnant costumes, and then I remembered my friend Carol being a pregnant skeleton a couple years ago.

I looked it up online and found an awesome tutorial that included a matching husband skeleton, so of course I had to make that for Dave. First I had to draw stencils for all the bones freehand onto freezer paper, using the online picture for reference. Then I cut them out, using suture scissors for the tiny little finger bones. I ironed them onto our shirts, which worked great. I want to find more freezer paper crafts to do! The easy part was painting all the bones, which didn't bleed under the stencils at all. I put paper bags inside the shirt to prevent it from leaking to the back. I did three coats and let them dry. It took about 3-4 hours, and then I just peeled off the freezer paper.

I love that they chose such unique things to be this year. It was a lot more fun for me.

Banana vs. pickle. Funny boys!!