DIY Thing 1 and Thing 2 Costumes

Lately I have been feeling spread thin. There have been so many demands, but not enough me. It is so weird to hear myself complain about this, in my younger days I strived on being busy all the time.

Now, as a thirty year old wife and mama I long for a slower pace.

Enough whining.

Growing up, my mom always made our Halloween costumes. (She did a pretty darn good job, too.) She was amazing, we would tell her what we wanted to be, and she would fabricate the perfect costume. (You should see the Ninja Turtle costume she made for my brother, AMAZING!)

Making my kids’ costumes is something I also look forward to every year (even if some years they are simple).

This year the holiday sort of crept up on me. I have been busy with school and other areas of life, I just forgot how close the holiday was. Sunday night I had a mini-breakdown, “I am a horrible mother…I don’t even know what my kids are going to be for Halloween…”

The hubby suggested going to the store and buying a costume. GASP! Can you believe it! What was that man thinking?



Monday I stopped at Wal-Mart on my way home from school. I had to figure a costume out now! (Thinking about it, I bet my family would have appreciated it if I had also figured something out for dinner.)

I found a pattern (I have looked and looked, I cannot find a link to this pattern anywhere) Simplicity Sew Simple 0892 ($0.97). It is actually a bear costume, I just omitted the hood, bow, and footies.

I grabbed three yards of red fleece (at 2.97/yard), two blue hats ($0.87 each) four skeins of blue yarn ($2.97 each) and two pair of red gloves ($0.87 each). I had the notions in my stash. For about $25 this is what I came up with:



I used this tutorial as inspiration for the wig. My sewing machine was not very fond of this method. Instead I looped and stitched (by hand). So sorry I didn’t take pictures along the way, maybe in the future…

I downloaded the logos from here. I printed them on printable fabric (because I had it in my stash), and sewed them on.

I am so glad I decided to use fleece. It was a cold and rainy night for trick-or-treating. The fleece helped keep my little guys dry.

This year was so fun watching the boys figure out Halloween. They were very polite saying, “Trick or treat,” “Thank you,” and “Happy Halloween costume.” Yup, you read that right. Happy Halloween costume, we may need to work on that one…



Anyways, so sorry for being MIA lately. (I still cannot promise regularity.) I hope you all had a wonderful Halloween!

Vikings

Did you dress little ones up and go begging for candy? We did! Halloween is a big deal around here. My mother-in-law comes over and hands out candy. Hubby’s brother brings his family over. We go showing off our kids to the neighborhood.
Last year, we even put my expecting sister-in-law in labor. (Story for another day…)
Needless to say, we love Halloween.
This year the twins were Vikings. They were oh so CUTE! (Even though they didn’t keep their helmets on.)

I’m sure you all have seen Cheri’s Viking tutorial over at I am Momma. Well, this is where my inspiration came from.
She uses toilet seat covers (genius!). The hubs wasn’t too thrilled with that idea, he felt it would look like carpet and nobody would be able to tell what they were. He wanted authentic-looking Vikings. After all he was a Viking fan for a year…Favre fan.
So I took him to JoAnn's, and had him pick out some fur. We also bought some leather cord, and ordered our Viking helmets from Amazon. That’s it.
The fur was cut into two oval (like a toilet seat cover) shapes, and four rectangles. Then I cut a slit, and a circle for the head of the ovals. Fasten it on your little Viking. Wrap the rectangle around their boots, and wrap with leather lace. Take pictures, and head out on the town. So simple, yet so cute.

What was your favorite costume this year?

Linked up here.