children

I love Halloween, like love it. You get to play dress up and people give you free candy. Does it get any better than that?!?!

This was Jackson’s first Halloween. When we were having the serious conversation that was the costume brainstorm we talked about how Kyrie was Boo from Monster’s Inc. dressed as a monster for her first Halloween. Logic dictated that Jackson should also be a monster, but “just a little one!”

Jackson as Stitch, so cute I could just die.

Kyrie was Lilo, obviously, but more on that another time. This Stitch costume took about an hour and you could do the whole thing without sewing if you wanted to!!

Materials:

Hooded footie pajamas (I went on Amazon and found some that were the perfect color)
Blue and light purple craft felt (the blue should match the jammies)
Light blue polar fleece
Thread
Hot glue
Velcro

How to:

1. I started by making a pattern for the ears.

2. Then I traced and cut out two on the blue felt and two on the light purple. I trimmed the light purple slightly smaller than the blue.

3. Stitch has little notches in his ears, so I cut those out.

4. Next I ironed the ears in half lengthwise and hot glued the blue and purple pieces together.

5. Next for the tummy. I folded the light blue fleeces in quarters, measured, traced and cut out my tummy shape.

6. At this point you could just hot glue on some Velcro and call it good. I decided to sew one side on and Velcro the other. However I wanted it to appear like the entire tummy was sewn. So I marked halfway and sewed just the left side of the fleece from pin to pin.

7. Next I pinned the right side of the tummy piece to the jammies and sewed them together. Don’t forget to unzip the jammies and don’t sew across said zipper.

8. Next I hot glued the Velcro on the unattached side of the tummy piece and lined it up on the jammies. Again, attaching it with hot glue.

9. Finally, try the costume on your little one to determine ear location and attach ears. I used hot glue for this final step.

Aww, such an adorable little Stitch!

-h

“When’s it my turn?
Wouldn’t I love, love to explore that shore up above?
Out of the sea
Wish I could be
Part of that world”

Ok, if you were a little girl in the 90’s, you too probably belted out these lyrics as you pretended you were a mermaid with flowing red hair and a crush on a handsome prince. Well, not much has changed since then, little girls still dream about being Ariel. She’s my niece’s favorite Disney princess, and it isn’t hard for me to imagine why. Her Disneybounding look is next!

I had trouble thinking through how I would do Ariel without needing sea shells, or something that wasn’t very appropriate for a 5 year old, but luckily I found some inspiration… somewhere… Here’s my sketch…

Materials:

Purple Tank Top
Sea green fabric – I found a fun sequined fabric at Joann’s that the little girl inside fantasizing about being Ariel couldn’t resist. 🙂
Coordinating Thread

DIY:

I decided the overdress would be at the empire waistline. Measure the width and length from the empire waistline to the bottom of the tank top. Add a few inches to the width so you can gather. Cut out two rectangles.
Right sides together, stitch together the side seams.
Run at least two lines of a gathering stitch along the top of the overdress. Gather to fit to the tank top.
Pin overdress to the tank top along the empire waistline (right sides together) so the dress is basically “flipped up”.
Zigzag stitch all the way around around, press dress down.
To create some slight gathering at the neckline, I hand-stitched about two inches down and gathered it (securing inside the tank top).