Well, this is take two of this post since all those times I pushed save did not apparently save the last version.
We carved the twin's pumpkins the day before Halloween. I used the girls' shape toys as a template for some neat star and cross eyes. The little saws in those carving kits are cheap and easy to bend but they do a great job maneuvering around corners. The girls were very proud to help carve this year.
The Halloween costumes turned out great. Oma was a trooper. She made little H's Dorothy jumper, Big H's tinman tunic and helped me out a enormous amount. They all look so adorable together. We mommas also got to dress up this year. I found some witch's hats at Target for my sister and me, and I wore striped socks like the Wicked Witch of the East.
M's onesie, that I dyed, didn't look great and it was a little chilly, so she ended up in a brown First Thanksgiving bodysuit turned inside out. She didn't really want to cooperate with wearing the lion's mane I had knitted around her face (and I don't really blame her), but she did keep it on when I set it on top of her head while trick or treating so that was something at least. I drew a cat's nose and whiskers on her and she looked absolutely adorable. But then she does even when she is not dressed up as the Cowardly Lion.
Miss D loved being Glinda the Good Witch of the North (and yes, she says the whole title every time someone asks her what she was for Halloween). The costume turned out really well, but if I had had more time I would have tried to make some big puffy sleeves out of tulle like Glinda had in the movie. I did get a little bit of pouf in the peasant top but much less than I was hoping for.
I made the peasant top of the dress using this
tutorial. Oma came for a visit the weekend before Halloween and by the time she left, all that was left to do was sew the body of D's dress together and hem it. I cut out the material and pinned them, she sewed it together and made the casing for the elastic while I took care of the kids. Then while she held the baby, I threaded the elastic through the casing, gathered the skirt and sewed it to the top and made a tutu. Oma checked the length on T and hemmed hers while I nursed Baby M. It was a great tag team approach that made it go by so fast. I am so thankful I wasn't stressing about these costumes trying to finish them at last minute. Thank you, Oma!
I had hoped to sew the tulle material into the dress seam so it was all one piece but it would have taken more time and planning to figure out how to do that. So instead I made a separate tutu to wear over the dress and pinned it in place with safety pins. It is nice now because they can play in their costumes at home and take off the tutu when it gets in the way.
For the crown, I (for some strange reason) thought that two paper sized sheets of pink felt would be enough, silly me. Luckily, I was able to find a little more from previous craft project and was able to sew together a sturdy and pretty decent looking crown. First, I sewed all the pieces into a cylinder that fit her head. Then I folded that in half, wrong sides together and top stitched along the fold to make it sturdy. I used the handy star shape toy that I had also used on the pumpkins to trace stars on the felt and then I sewed just inside the line I had made. I trimmed everything from the line out to complete the shape. I had bought some spray on glitter but the can jammed almost immediately, so sadly only a small part got any glitter. If I had not waited til last minute, I could have gotten more glitter or something else shiny to glue on it.
Oma and I made T's dress the same way as D's with orange cotton. The only difference being that I didn't gather the sleeves with elastic. I love all the colors in her tutu and the sunflower clip I bought to go with it. Oma also sewed a few fall leaves on the top.
Her hat was an interesting mess but it looked great. I also only had two sheets of tan felt. I used their current sun hats, that are a little snug, for sizing since they were asleep when I made it and it turned out a little too small. I just sewed all the scraps together after cutting out the brim, which made an interesting shape but turned out pretty flat due to lack of materials. I twisted some yellow tulle leftover from the tutu and sewed it to cover the seam and sewed a few puffs on with fall leaves to look like straw. Then I made cuts on the brim about an inch an a half in and a centimeter wide so it would look more ragged. It was too small and also too short but looked good perched up on top of her head anyway.
The costumes all looked so great together. We only made it to about four houses in my sister's neighborhood because of tripping, falling into a rose bush to avoid a little sniffing dog, trying to eat the candy--wrapper and all--and anything else you could think of that would slow a group of pre school/toddler/babies down. But they enjoyed it and got to watch Wizard of Oz afterward. So all of the pink for Glinda's dress and the slippers being red instead of silver like in the book finally made sense.
Next year we'll have to come up with another great theme and hopefully I'll have my act together a bit more and get everything done ahead of time.
