This Year's Halloween Costumes

I have really been enjoying Pinterest.  I know that it's discouraging for some people to look at, but I find it inspiring.  Even though I won't use 99% of the ideas I pin, I still find it fun to get my creative juices flowing.  And I'm finding that, when stressful things are going on around me, it helps keep me sane if I have a creative project going on in the back of my mind.  And, since there have been some stressful things going on, my kids got homemade costumes this year.  

I used this idea.  Click the picture for the link.

The idea is for a new-sew costume, but since I generally make things more complicated, I added a bit of sewing into it.  I wanted the kiddo's arms to be octopus legs, too, so I used this idea to make a pair of socks into Baby Legs, but for the arms.

Here are the socks for each costume.  Four of each kinds of sock are stuffed with plastic grocery bags.  (And, just so you know, I had to buy socks and felt for each kid, and use Elmer's glue and duct tape, which I had on hand.)

 Here are the faces for each costume.  Jonathan helped me with the designs.  They are made of felt and Elmer's glued onto the shirts, so after Halloween, the kids can just wear the plain shirts.  His was the only shirt I had to buy.  He wanted an angry face, so we copied the face of an angry Lego guy.

 For Benjamin and Grace's faces, we copied a little pumpkin that Grace had decorated with pumpkin face stickers.  I realized later that I should have copied Lego guy faces for all of them, but oh, well!

Then I duct-taped four stuffed socks to the underside of each shirt.  Here's Jonathan's.  

Here's Grace's.  I had to include this extra picture of her because she just could not stop dancing around!  Her shirt, with its babydoll shape, was perfect for the swinging octopus legs.

And here's Benjamin.  His shirt turned out to be the least ideal because it was not very loose around his tummy.  I also should have rolled his socks up a little shorter, because the octopus feet dragged on the ground and it bothered him.  He really was not too excited about his costume.  I tricked him into smiling.  It worked!

And here is the best picture of the three kids.  Most of the other pictures were not all that great.

 They mostly looked like this.

Jeff has been traveling a lot lately, and so he had to miss Halloween this year.  We were sad to have him miss out on the fun.  Getting the kids dressed on my own was a bit of a marathon!  Since I was on my own, I took the kids to a friend's harvest party instead of trick-or-treating, and they had a great time. I hope to post about that later.  I had a great time making the costumes and seeing how much fun the kids had wearing them.  I'm a little sad to take them apart and turn them into plain old shirts and socks again!