A “How To” Halloween

Do you know what I love about my blog? I can give “how-to” advice about things that I simply have no business giving advice about. Remember the cupcake incident of 2010? Exactly.

So, today, for your reading pleasure… How-To Do Halloween… Vicarious Chelsea style of course.

First, dream big. Momentarily ignore the fact that you have little NO creativity or costume making skills. None. Forget that fact and dream BIG.

Next, make sure to procrastinate. This year, Halloween was on a Sunday. The kids’ costumes needed to be ready by Friday morning to wear to school. So, the Sunday before was deemed to be an appropriate time to begin preparations. 5 days is, after all, plenty of time to grow some creativity, learn to sew, google directions to the closest fabric store, and get to work.

Third, make sure to be cheap. Don’t buy that expensive costume. Instead, figure it would save money to create it yourself (this one is true. It does save a lot of money and, frankly, some of the store bought costumes look, you know, store bought. Not all, but some. So making pieces can help them look, you know, homemade. Once you can find that darn fabric store).

Ok, so… the costumes. Lilly declared early on that she wanted to be Dora.

Her costume included:

-Store bought creepy Dora mask. Yep, creepy. I tried to get her to scare her daddy by waking him up with it one morning. Sadly, apparently he is used to creepy dead-eyed cartoon characters waking him up. Go figure.

-Pink shirt and orange pants (both of which can be re-worn. Bonus!). Please notice the “rolled up” pants. Yep, because Dora wears shorts, not pants. But orange shorts are hard to find at the end of October. And mommy doesn’t sew or hem. She rolls.

-Yellow socks and tennis shoes. The yellow socks should have ruffles. These do not. Lilly pointed that out to me very clearly. Sigh… mommy can’t be perfect all the time, Lilly.

-Paper “map” character from a template at Nick Jr. com.

-My personal favorite – backpack. Dora’s backpack is purple (duh, we all know that). Lilly has a brown backpack. After googleing the closest fabric store, we picked out the purple shade of purple. We bought some and took it home. Hmmm… now what? Have I mentioned I don’t sew? But… I glue like a champ, so I cut some strips and glued them around the straps. Then (and this is where it gets really ghetto), I took the rest of the fabric and tied it, in a big ‘ol knot around the brown backpack. Dora’s Backpack? Done. Just don’t look too closely.

Next up – Zackary. My sister and I decided that we wanted to dress Zac up as Bam Bam and Shyla as Pebbles. So, here we go…

I purchased inexpensive clothing – a white shirt and khaki shorts for Zac and a purple dress for Shyla. I had to turn them inside out because when shopping sales one can’t be picky.

I bought black felt at the fabric store (WAY too much by the way. Anyone need an extra yard of black felt? It’s yours.), busted out my incredibly dull scissors, and proceeded to cut enough triangles to give me some serious hand welts.

Remember how I don’t sew, but I glue? I glued like heck.

Next, I had to figure out Zac’s sash. I bought animal print leggings, cut one leg off, and tied it up. Yep, that simple.

The toughest part? The bones. One in Shyla’s hair and one on Zac’s sash. I bought a pair of white socks, cut out four bone shapes, and started… gulp… sewing the pieces together with the intention of stuffing them with cotton. Then, I gave up. Headed back to the store and found small-ish dog bones. I mean, the bones that dogs eat, not their own bones. You know what I mean. Anyhow, got them home, opened the package and… they stunk. Really, they smelled really bad. Dug the sock-bone shapes out of the trash and tried again. I did manage to sew them up and stuff them with cotton balls, then glue them into their appropriate locations.

My sister added the hat to Zac’s costume (which he left on for approximately 2 minutes), and we were good to go.

They didn’t turn out too badly, if I do say so myself…

Let’s not forget about the necessity of some inappropriate and confusing adult costumes, to make any Halloween complete. In the “Inappropriate but hilarious” category… brother in law Stevie takes the cake:

And in the “huh?” category… my dad. Apparently he dressed up like my uncle in high school. Which is a really funny concept. But, I didn’t know my uncle when he was in high school, being that I was only a gleam in my parents’ eyes at the time. Also, I don’t think said uncle was ever American Indian. Go figure.

So, that’s my HOW-TO for today. Or maybe it’s a HOW-NOT-TO. Either way, Happy Halloween!