Halloween 2012

Since I had a lamb costume for Gretchen, I decided that it would be fun to dress Reese up as Little Bo Peep. I started looking for costumes and was disappointed to find that most costumes were around $30 or more and were not the best quality. Though Reese was on board with the costume idea originally, she decided after watching the "Aristocats" that she wanted to be a white cat like "Marie". Wouldn't you know that a white cat costume would be impossible to find. Everywhere I looked, I found balck and leopard tails, ears and costumes, but never anything in white. Since I couldn't find a costume, I decided to try to make one. I just needed a white sweatsuit, which also turned out to be impossible to find. Eventually we found a white sweatshirt and leggings the Saturday before Halloween and day before trick-or-treat. I had some leftover fur from a Christmas project and used it to fashion some ears and a tail for her to wear with the sweatsuit. Though it was a fairly simple costume, Reese was ecstatic. She even thought that she should crawl on her hands and knees like a cat for trick or treat and drink milk from a bowl for her meals.

While we were uncertain about Reese's costume until the last possible minute, we had been working on Aidan's costume much longer. I brought a copy paper box home from work and taped off some boxes and the number one. Then I spray painted it blue. After removing the tape, I painted those areas red. I painted a face on a paper plate and spray painted several paper plates black and attached them to the box with hot glue. Finally, I added a striped piece of scrapbook paper on top and some black buffers to the front and back. I added some straps and Aidan's Thomas the Train costume was finished. Just like Reese he was so excited to wear his costume. I put him in it and he immediately began running around the house bashing into things.

Though Gretchen's costume was not homemade, she still looked adorable!

I hope that the kids will continue to allow me to help them create costumes in the future. It was so much fun to be able to work together to create something that they truly loved and was different from anything else that the other kids were wearing.