Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween!!

 Phee was quite excited to wear her costume today.

She is Peg, from the PBS show Peg + Cat.

For trick-or-treating tonight, I'll be dressed up as Cat.

We highly recommend checking out the show- it's so funny!

Have a fantastic Halloween!

Last minute Halloween costumes

It never fails. Someone has a last minute Halloween party and you didn’t plan on dressing up this year. Or, your child changes gears days before Halloween. Here are a few last minute ideas to help you out!

Fairy
Get a set of cheap wings from the dollar store, or borrowed from a friend, or made out of paper/fabric covered clothes hangers. Wear shirt, tights, or pants of the same color. Wear a tutu, if you have one, or you can tie strips of fabric and ribbon around a belt to cover the belt and create a tutu effect. And then add lots of glitter, of course!

Plant or Tree
Wear a green shirt and pants, or brown pants and a green shirt for a tree. Get a green hat. Cut out leaves from construction paper, extra fabric, or even use real leaves and attach them to the hat, shoulders, arms… wherever you want leaves! You can customize this costume as a fruit tree with an apple or other fruit cut out and stuck to the shirt. Or even flowers!

Beach
Wear all tan or khaki. Carry a sand pail. Wear a blue hat and affix a printed out seagull. Print out and affix shells, seaweed, crabs, etc. to your clothes. (This is an excellent use of full page labels! Print out, cut out, and use them as stickers.)

Book
Wear all black clothes. You’ll need two large pieces of cardboard cut to the same size rectangle. Paint, draw, or otherwise illustrate the cardboard as the front and back covers of a book. Cut holes in the “spine” ends of the covers and tie them together with ribbon or fabric. Affix black ribbon or fabric to the top of the book covers so that the book can be worn over the shoulders.

So, have you ever found yourself scrambling to put a costume together at the last minute? What did you end up doing?

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Looking for some more costumes? Check these out!

DIY Snoopy costume

I love to make Phee's Halloween costumes. She's had some good ones, but this Snoopy was her favorite I think. If it had fit her, she would have happily worn it again the next year. She even asked about it this year!

I never did write it up the year she wore it, so I thought I'd share it now. It really is easy and it's something that you can take apart and use after Halloween, too. I love the costumes she picks that use regular clothes.

For Snoopy, we used a white zippered beach coverup. Until the week of Halloween, I really have no idea what the Texas weather is going to be like. I decided to go with short sleeves and then we added a white tshirt underneath when it turned out to be a cool night. If you're in cold weather, you could use a white sweatshirt as your base.

To make your DIY Snoopy you need:

• white pants or leggings
• white hooded beach coverup or hooded sweatshirt (depends on your weather!)
• white longsleeve shirt (depending on your weather)
• black and white felt
• black and white thread
• black face paint

Cut out a couple large black spots and two large black ears. Using big stitches, lightly sew the spots onto the coverup/sweatshirt and the ears onto the hood. If you use the big stitches, it's easy to pull them out after the fact and use the base piece later.

Cut out and sew together a small white tail. I stuffed it with a little bit of extra white felt before sewing it to the back of the coverup. Don't skip the tail- it's really cute!

Add white leggings/pants and white tennis shoes. Use black face paint to color your little one's nose black.

We had to use a couple white barrettes to keep the hood up on Phee's head. I made the ears a little bit too big for the hood, but it was awfully cute.

There you have it. It's really easy to put together, even last minute, and it's cute.

What great DIY costumes have you made?

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Looking for more costume ideas? I've got you covered!

DIY Tinker Bell costume

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Phee loves pirates, Peter Pan, and fairies. Last year, she was completely into those so much that we had a Jake & the Never Land Pirates birthday, complete with gifts of Jake toys. It's all she watched when she got to choose a show. And then she discovered Peter Pan, Tinker Bell, and fairies.

Of course, she wanted to be Tinker Bell for Halloween. She was adorable and she would often make a little tinkly bell sound to talk like Tink.

I love making Phee's costumes, but I wasn't sure how to tackle Tinker Bell in the best way. Matching greens when you go for separate pieces is tricky. I happened upon this adorable, sparkly dress on Amazon and that pretty much took care of the entire costume!

You can easily put together your own quick Tinker Bell costume, for adults or kids. Find a green dress, or green leggins and a tshirt. A lighter shade of green is preferable. With the darker shades, you look more like Peter Pan than Tink.

We used a pair of green wings that we found at Target. You could also spray paint a pair of wings with glitter spray paint.

To make Tink's shoes, we used a pair of Crocs that were just about too small and spray painted them with the glittery green spray paint. I made pom poms out of white yarn and tied them onto the Crocs. These were so easy to make and replace when they got dirty as white things on little feet inevitably do. To make an adult sized version, you could spray paint a pair of canvas flats or tennis shoes and then make pom poms out of yarn, or simply purchase jumbo white pom poms at the craft store. Hot glue either to the shoes and you're all set!

We added little fancy white socks for Phee and put her hair up in a bun and she was all set as a sparkly little Tinker Bell. She flew around the Fall Festival at school and then tore around the neighborhood with her friends on Halloween night. Her costume was adorable and she loved it. Bonus: it went right in the dress up closet and she played with it for months afterward!

What sort of DIY costumes have you made? Are you tackling another one this year?

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Click through for more Halloween fun!

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Snoopy

{can't get that girl to stand still}

{my little Snoopy}

{waiting for her balloon flower}

{hmm... what game should we play next?}

{mmm, snacks!}

Football player Halloween costume

Last year, Phee was a football player for Halloween. It turned out to be a pretty easy costume. In fact, it took me longer to track down all the pieces than it did to put the whole thing together. If you need a last minute costume, you can totally pull this off.

{happiest little football player ever}

Pick your team. For us, it was the Rams. (Well for Doug and his dad.) Gramp was in town over Halloween last year so we picked an old school player and design for the jersey. Phee had a gold Merlin Olsen jersey and it was awesome.

What you need

• sweatpants or knit pants
• sweatshirt or t-shirt
• sports socks (found these in the boys' section)
• tennis shoes
• face paint or sports eye black
• helmet
• printable iron on transfers
• felt
• duct tape

{the costume ready to go}

What you do

1. Find a pants/shirt combination that works. For us, it was navy blue knit pants and a gold t-shirt one size bigger than what Phee was in.
2. Create your design or find a team logo online. We used an old school Rams design from a notebook. I downloaded a block font for the back of the t-shirt. Before you print on the iron on transfers, be sure to reverse your images so that they will be right side up on the shirt.
3. Follow the directions to print and iron on the designs.
4. Phee's shirt was too big so I folded the hem under and duct taped it so she could wear the shirt again later.
5. Turn the shirt inside out. Fold up a piece of felt into a square and duct tape it to the shoulder of the shirt to create shoulder pads.
6. Get dressed and pull the socks over the pants so that the striped sports socks are showing.
7. If you're lucky enough to have a helmet, wear it!

{playing games}

Phee loved her costume. Gramp and Dad thought it was pretty awesome. My favorite moment... while jumping in the bouncy house at her school's fall festival, one of the dads did a double take and asked me if she was Merlin Olsen. Why yes, yes she was. 

{she ate like a football player, too}

What's your best Halloween costume DIY?