DIY Costumes

I love this time of year and, the possibilities for DIYS are endless between the costumes and decorations. There are so many fun things to make this time of year. 

I especially love when my kids ask me to make their costumes. The other day I asked Little Man if he remembered the year I dressed him up like a lion. He said no, the only costumes that stood out to him were the ones I made for him, or bought ones that I enhanced to make the character that he wanted.

This year Little Man wanted to be cousin It from the Adam's Family, to match his friends costumes.  Little Miss wanted to be Gabby from Gabby's Dollhouse, specifically the Halloween Gabby, dressed in a rainbow dress complete with cat tail. 

Little Man's costume was fun to make. My initial idea was to use a grass hula skirt but I couldn't find a grass one, I found lots of plastic ones in green, blue and pink but no brown or grass ones. Pivoting slightly, we wandered the isles of the Dollar Store for inspiration. We hit the jackpot, we found the perfect cousin It hat in the Halloween section and decided to make the hair from dark brown yarn. The hardest part of making this costume was measuring out the hair. Using the top of my dresser, I measured out a length of tape, I taped an end of the yarn on the tape measure it out to the same length as the rest of the strands and started over. I did this until I used up all the yarn. I then hot glued the long tape with the yarn hair strands to the inside of the hat.  Little man completed the costume with sunglasses. Tip for making this costume, one ball of yarn was good coverage for the front of the costume. If you want to have full coverage all around I would use two balls of yarn.

I lucked out for Little Misses costume this year. I was searching stores for a rainbow coloured stripped shirt. I found the perfectly coloured stripped dress at a local thrift store. It was a size too big, which is good if you need to put a warm jacket under the costume for trick or treating. It was a little too long though. I cut about 5 inches off the bottom of the skirt and a few inches off the sleeves. I used the long strp of material from the hem of the skirt to make the cat's tail. I used a peice of the scrap material to make a cat shapped patch for Gabby's pants. I used my sewing machine to hem and make the cat's tail but it could all be done by hand. We finished off the look with a Gabby cat ears headband (we took one from a Gabby's Dollhouse board game that Little Miss got for Christmas last year.)