Dress-up

We love dress-up time in this household, and take it very seriously. Alas, Jeremy and I weren't able to swing real costumes this year. It's like there's more important things going on in our life right now. Like . . . finding a job, or something.

But with a little bit of luck we did get the kids all costumed for parties and festivities in October. Everything was super low-key, using mostly things we already had.

Baby Rory got to wear the little "Sweet Pea" costume I made for Owen when he was a baby 8 years ago.  I went along with the theme as his "gardener" and tied tools to my belt. 

Wyatt dressed up as Super Why!  I photoshopped the book symbol and printed a t-shirt transfer to iron on his green shirt.  I cut out a quick cape and just pinned it on his shirt collar. 

I actually really love him in this costume though, because when I was pregnant with him we were considering the name Wyatt, but I couldn't decide if it was a good "little boy" name or if it was too old-sounding.  One of the older brothers was on PBS Kids and started watching this show--I'd forgotten about it.  I heard the mom talking to Wyatt and decided it was super-cute for a little boy!

Wyatt loved the costume and has now taken to calling his regular hand-me-down blue shoes his "Super Why shoes!"

Jonas is our little Doctor Who.  He's wearing his own clothes, and Jeremy's suspenders that I pinned up in back. 

 Jonas' costume had the most disasters tied to the making of.  The first involved an add-on to his sonic screwdriver that I made out of FIMO and tried to bake.  (I should learn my lesson from my grandma baking the Thanksgiving rolls--just stay there and watch them--but I don't, so they burn. . .)

Then we tried to dye a yellow bow tie he already had red. . . I won't go into the details of that disaster, I'll just say that my soup pot is once again the color of stainless steel, and thank goodness Dillard's sells little boy bow ties. 

We made his light-up sonic screwdriver from a light-up pen Jeremy got from a presentation recently--it was perfect!  Though it ended up looking more like the tenth Doctor's screwdriver than the Eleventh's.

What you don't have a frame of reference for Jonas' awesome costume? 

You're welcome.  And yeah, we tried to find him a jacket, but apparently brown jackets are not in style this year.  We could only find black and grey. 

Owen happened to be telling my mom that he wanted to be Link (from the Legend of Zelda) for Halloween, and she said--"Hey, I have a Link costume!" 

Yeah, throwback to the year 2000, my 12-year-old Brother was Link.  Sweet!  Less sewing that I needed to do.  Then we just used a tutorial for making a shield for Owen. 

The night before the party, we found out Owen's friend was dressing up like Zelda!

It couldn't have been better if we had planned it!

Steampunk Merida

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I've never gotten to talking about my steampunk Merida plans.  

The first thing I bought was a pair of army gaiters off etsy. They're like spats-kind of, they cover the top of the shoe and protect the ankle. 

Jeremy has a steampunk book that shows a pair of gatiers turned into a corset.  We liked that idea, and in theory it works--for a certain (non-existent) body-type--but I would need to alter them a bit.  But at the same time--I kind of like the idea of wearing them just straight up as gaiters under the dress as well. 

Yes, the dress.

It's amazing how when you know exactly what you're looking for you can't find it.  In the end I purchased Butterick B4827.

 

It's a beautiful dress.  I will need to work with the sleeves a bit.  Merida's dress is split under the armpits and at the elbows to expose her under-tunic/chemise/whatever.  Also, there is a teensy "v" cut into the front as well, and her underdress thing shows a small bit of ruffle all around the neckline and wrists as well. I could pin the front of the dress up like in the example, but without an underskirt my boots and gaiters would show well--I kind of like that idea. 

I really love the green fabric in this example dress--it's like a dream dress of my childhood or something.  I love wearing green because my eyes are green, and of course green looks great with red hair.  But Steampunk Merida needs to be a little less refined--a little more "earthy."

So I went shopping.  I found a fabric I really liked at Joanns.  It was an olive green "linen look" fabric.  Since it wasn't actual linen It wouldn't look all wrinkly but still had that really textured natural look to it.  

Here comes the first of my hurdles to actually making the costume this year.  They didn't have enough.  There was two pieces of fabric on the bolt, neither one had enough, and they were different colors, so I couldn't combine the two.  I asked the girl for some help in finding something similar to what I was looking for.  She showed me a number of options, and literally, the other two that I was most interested in--there wasn't enough fabric.  I really wanted to ask, "I'm sorry but is this a fabric store? Are you actually trying to sell fabric to people that want to use it for sewing projects?" 

The other major thing holding me back from making the dress is my expanding waist-line.  We are expecting again:-)  And really I wasn't sure how much different my waistline would be at Halloween, and if I could make the dress work or not, and the point is--I really want it to be cool.  I am so excited to make this dress, and so I want it to all work out, and didn't want messing around with the waist of the pattern make it not turn out well.  

So the project was postponed--'till next year Merida.

 Don't worry, we'll mod you a totally rockin' steampunk compound bow. 

And Jeremy has been in on the fun as well.  We did a bunch of research on sewing authentic kilts, and the WWI uniforms of the Black Watch--whom the German soldiers called "the ladies from hell"! 

Hahahahahahahahaha! Ahahaha. . .

Jeremy really likes these aprons they wear, and they fit well with his ideas for a steampunk wartime mechanic he's been working on. 

So although they will be from totally different time-periods our costumes will at least be from a similar region of the world, and the time-barrier will be crossed by the steampunk built into the two costumes.  I totally don't have too high of expectations for myself on this project. . . Good thing Halloween is still 10 months away.   

Ninjago Family

I've been waiting on this post to receive a certain family picture by e-mail, and now I've received it, so here is our annual Halloween family costume parade.

I'd mentioned before my idea for a steampunk Merida costume this year.  It didn't work out this year for a number of reasons (which I'll post another time along with the plans and progress I HAVE made on the idea.) But the boys had an idea for their costumes.  They wanted to be LEGO Ninjago Ninjas.

As a designer Jeremy has strong opinions about toys, and LEGO is one company that gets his "Stamp of Good Design Approval".  (NERF is another one--we have way too many NERF blasters in this house.)  But Simply put: Ninjago is a LEGO series that has ninjas that hold weapons and fit on these special spinners, and you play a game in which you spin a ninja towards your opponent and try to knock his ninja off his spinner to win the battle.  And then they made it into a cartoon series as well that we've checked out from the public library.

 

Owen was the black ninja Cole with a golden scythe of quakes.  Jonas was the blue ninja Jay with the golden nun-chuck of lightening.  Everyone was assigned which ninja they were going to be based on what color hoodie they already owned.

Then we bought plain t-shirts from the craft store and painted on the design--which actually works pretty well for LEGO-like details.  I sewed them all black belts.  Jeremy made their special crest-things, and I tried to make the brown belts to hold them on--but that got pushed to the end and were less than what I wanted, so Owen was the only one who cared enough to want to wear it anyway.  (Maybe I should finish them and they could use them for dress-up.)  Wyatt's shirt design is different from the other boys'. 

Because his character was Lloyd, the green ninja, who --appropriately-- is just a little kid in the beginning of the show and more like a ninja-in-training. 

If you look back in that first picture you can see Sensei Wu in the lower right-hand side.  Jeremy already owned a white gi, so he just colored the red symbol on it, and wore that.  Here the sensei is mentoring his young green ninja in the ways of 2-litre kick-bowling at the Halloween carnival.

Strangely, when we went trick-or-treating people kept asking Jeremy if he was "Raiden."  I asked Jeremy what they were talking about--Mortal Combat I guess.

Frankly, if he was trying to be Raiden--I'd say he failed. 

As for me, luckily there is a female member of the Ninjago team. 

Her name is Nya; and also luckily,  I just happened to have a red Asian-themed dance costume in my basement.

Yeah, that's right. Red pointe shoes.

So though, Jeremy and I had other plans, in the end we both already had clothing appropriate to quickly become Ninjago.  I just wore black yoga pants under my dress.  I thought about getting red leggings, but I wasn't trying to go for a "sexy-ninja" costume (if-you-know-what-I-mean), so I nixed that idea--though it might have been better for cosplay accuracy.

So here's our family picture (which doesn't give a great view of our costumes).  There were seats so we sat, but we should have just stood.  You can see the cowls that I made out of old t-shirts for the boys to wear over their hoods and pull up as face masks. That worked really pretty well.

So there is our Homemade Halloween 2012 Ninjago Family Portrait:-)

Was It Halloween Out There?

It was Halloween here as well. According to Harry Potter, Robin Hood, and the Great Pumpkin.

All our costumes were simple and low-key this year, and I liked that!

Baby Wyatt was a pumpkin.  In fact the same pumpkin that Jonas was two years ago.  And the same pumpkin that Owen was five years ago.  It's fun--and I feel the need for a photo montage of the three pumpkins. . .

Jonas was Robin Hood.  I sewed up a green tunic and made his little hat.  My Jo-Ann's receipt sitting right here says I spent a whole $2.44 on his costume for the green fabric and two sheets of brown felt--not bad. 

I let him choose his feather out of a bag of multi-colored ones I had.  Owen thought it needed to be red-but Jonas loved it. 

Owen was Harry Potter.  (Here he is striking his best "spell-casting" pose.)

I just sewed up Jeremy's Masters regalia about a foot to make Owen's Robe.  He really wanted glasses, so on the day of our Halloween party Jeremy went to the mall and found a set of Harry Potter glasses and wand for like $10.  (I can't argue I guess--he does bring home the bacon around here.)  The sad thing was Owen had a really cool knobbly stick from the backyard for a wand, but when he saw the lumpy plastic one we couldn't convince him that his old one was way better. 

For the party he wore my Griffindor t-shirt from back in the day (when I was a cool nerd) and his wizard cap.  Of course three days later on Halloween night he couldn't find a wizzard hat in our house to wear--even though there are two of them. . . a mother can only do so much.


Come back next time to see what Jeremy and I were wearing (and the detailed description you will need in order to "get" what we are wearing at all!)