demi-gods, dalmations & mimjas

For this Halloween, Rachel chose to be Annabeth from the Percy Jackson book series. She was my 2nd easiest costume this year. She wore a NY Yankees hat that we ended up making ourselves out of a plain blue hat we found at a secondhand store. Rachel practiced making the Yankees logo and used a bottle of silver 3D glitter paint to turn the plain hat into a yankees hat. We found an orange shirt at the dollar store of all places and found a template online that we printed up and then cut out the letters with a box cutter and then drew on with sharpie. She wanted an owl to represent Annabeth's mother Athena so we just found a simple image and printed it and then colored it really dark with pencil, put it upside down on the shirt, rubbed really hard so we had a light pattern and then filled that in with sharpie. Her costume was really easy. I did make trips to 3 secondhand stores looking for the hat over the month of October before settling on the plain one but the shirt was easy and the pattern was easy. I also bought owl earrings and clip on adapters but she wouldn't wear them. grrrrrr.....

Rachel had trick or treating duty. Mark and I were knee-deep in Sadie Hawkins dinner making. That will be the next post. It was the first time I haven't gone trick or treating with my kids which was really weird. I didn't like missing that. We let Jacob go with his friend Nathan. He was thrilled with this go at independence and the 2 boys really worked on quantity this Halloween which I don't usually let them do...

Mason wanted to be a "blue mimja"

(we worked on the word "Ninja" all month and I think he finally got it.....)

We already had the blue karate outfit from when Carly and Rachel were in karate. Jacob used it a few years ago for his own blue ninja costume. That year we found a blue ninja hood a the dollar store. We didnt' have that kind of luck this year so while at the fabric store for Carly's costume we found some Asian looking red fabric with a dragon on it and I bought a quarter yard, sewed it into a tube and it became Mason's ninja headband. He loved it and I got out of trying to sew a hood. Yea!!! Mason got the award for "easiest costume to make" this year.

Samantha wanted to be a Dalmatian. We had a black tail from Rachel's black kitty costume when she was a little tiny kindergartener. We had ears that we cut off of an old Dalmatian costume they have all wore for dressing up for years from Rachel on down. It was beyond repairing or wearing anymore so the ears came off and we sewed the open edge closed and sewed them onto a headband. We couldn't find white sweatpants anywhere but the 2ndhand store saved us again with a pair of karate pants. We bought them along with a white sweatshirt, 2 black permanent markers, a dog collar at the dollar store and started drawing circles every time we sat down to watch a TV show. I think I got it over halfway done conference weekend.

I appreciated the simpleness of these 3 costumes while working on Jacob's! I also appreciated the decisiveness they had this year. 2 of the 3 had their costume decisions to me before September ended so we had lots of time to look and get started so it wasn't a rush around thing.

Carly, however, was another story......