Halloween – Page 3

Last Halloween, my then 12-year-old son couldn’t decide whether or not he wanted to dress up for trick-or-treating. The truth is, he WANTED to dress up, but wasn’t sure if other kids his age would be, as well.

On the morning of Halloween he finally decided he wanted to dress up regardless of what the other kids were doing. Of course, that left me little time to come up with one of my totally awesome DIY costumes. 😉 He suggested dressing as a werewolf and here is what I came up with:

I had found some fur at the fabric store earlier in the month and picked up a remnant since he had been leaning toward werewolf IF he decided to dress up. I cut the fur into wrist-sized rectangles and sewed on a small piece of elastic to the bottom so he could easily slip his hand through.

We threw together a flannel shirt, some jeans, and I used two shades of brown eyeliner and lip liner to draw fur on his face and give him a wolf’s nose and bushy eyebrows. I added a lot of gel to spike his hair and voila: Ten Minute Teen Wolf!

Here he his posing with his sister, the Mad Haute Mad Hatter (which is quickly becoming one of my most popular posts thanks to Pinterest!)

So what is he going to be this year? I hope I don’t find out on Halloween morning again! 😉

Every November, when Target has their costumes at 75-90% off, I pick up a few for my kids. These have worked beautifully in the past for the Halloween Parties, Trunk or Treats, Storybook Parades at school, and countless other opportunities my kids have had to dress up prior to the actual day of Halloween. This is not only super fun for my daughter, but preserves her “real” costume until Oct. 31.

Last year was no different. I picked up three adorable costumes at $3 each and thought my daughter was set for this holiday. Boy, was I wrong!!

We are in a whole new world up here in Virginia. We weren’t invited to any pre-Halloween costume parties and her school doesn’t allow them to come to school in costume. Lo and behold, her school DID decide to try Trunk or Treat last Friday night, and since she knew she wouldn’t get to show off her costume to her friends, I allowed my daughter to wear her “real” costume to the event.

So let’s talk about this “real” costume. Mommy has been very busy, so I assumed my ever considerate daughter would pick one of the three costumes hanging in her closet for the last 11.5 months—and she would have—had I not shown her a picture of an adorable Queen of Hearts costume on Pinterest. My kid is a mini-me in every way. Her wheels started turning, and even though we went to the fabric store intending to make her the Queen of Hearts, we came out with purple, black, and green tulle, some pink and black tights and The Mad Hatter on the brain.

What we created was Mad Haute….

I made her skirt using 9 yards of tulle, elastic and a simple tie-on method. Click here for a tutorial. I love how it looks torn and industrial…dark and moody. I added some tulle to a mini hat hair clip we found at Pier 1.

Next I made the floppy bow tie, tying in the colors of her tights. I safety pinned that into a heather-gray long sleeve top to continue that industrial look.

I cut the fingers off of some simple winter gloves we’ve had forever, and I dug up an old vest I’ve had since my hipster days. JK, I was never a hipster, but I did rock the mini vest back in 2006ish.

I tied her hair in two twisty knots, and attempted to recreate Johnny Depp’s Mad Hatter make-up, to no avail. We ended up just using lots of eyeshadow, mascara, eyeliner and lipstick to finish off the dark, Tim Burton-esque look of this costume.