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Legend of Zelda - Link & Fairy Halloween Costumes

Here is another couple costumes that I was able to complete with the good old hot glue gun. A duo you are sure to know, Link and his little fairy.  My son is also an avid Link fan. He was set on the idea of dressing up as link one past Halloween and his baby sister had to be the fairy.

If you decide to construct a costume with your hot glue gun, it is a good idea to buy the material by the yard. Add an extra yard on top of what you plan to use, incase you make a boo boo. Be sure to look for material that does not ravel, when its cut. Once you find the right color material, you need to makeshift a type of pattern. This is easier than it sounds. Use one of your child’s shirts to gauge the size of the costume, because you will need a front and a backside. You will also want to make sure you double the material so that you have two exact pieces laying flat onto each other. Make sure the material is nice and flat, then overlay your child’s shirt flat on top of the doubled material. Use light marks to trace around the shirt. When tracing, be sure to leave 2-3 inches padding from the outer edge of the shirt and your trace lines. This extra padding helps to make space for the seams when assembling the costume pieces with hot glue. Oh, and one more little tip. If your material has a front and back side, then make sure before you glue to have your material laying with the outside facing you, so once you glue the seams together, you can flip your costume inside out and the seams will be clean and tucked in on the inside of the costume. You may want to stop and gauge the measurements based on the size of your kid as you progress in creating the costume, but wait till the hot glue becomes cool before doing so.

Sewing Halloween costumes - I know how, I’d just rather not

Realizing that Halloween is just around the corner, I began to think back to some of the past costumes that my kids have dressed up in. I would have to say some that of the cutest costumes were the ones that I ended up making. Understandably so, when you hear of a mom making their kids costume, you tend to think of them hauling out the sewing machine or worse, the dreaded needle and thread. Even though I learned to sew at a young age, It’s not something I can say that I find enjoyment in. However I can say that I appreciate the knowledge that was passed down to me from my mother. It is a good skill to have but just too time consuming in my current busy mom life. With home, kids, work and some type of special occasion always creeping up around the next corner, who has time to sew? Not me, that’s for sure. I need something a bit less time consuming, durable, and fast drying. Yep, you guessed it, hot glue. My faithful little glue gun has assisted me through more than a few costumes over the years. Hey, I figure the creativity doesn’t have to take a hit just because I didn’t sew it. Actually it just requires me to think outside the box. Take a look here at one of the costumes that I achieved with hot glue.

My son requested to be Mario Raccoon one past Halloween. For the overalls, I purchased blue material by the yard and assembled the overalls by hot glue. The gloves, those are actually Mickey Mouse gloves. The big buttons, those were made from bright colored cardstock, then glued on with hot glue. The shirt was probably the part that gave me most difficulty. Finding the right color and in long sleeve. The hat was a news boy hat, painted to be red. I applied a small felt patch to the top and painted an “M” onto it. The Raccoon ears and tail, those also sent me on a hunt. I ended up finding a stuffed animal raccoon at a consignment shop. I did wait for the kids to go to sleep, before I began my disassembling of the poor little stuffed animal raccoon. Once I separated those pieces I just stuck them on in the coordinating areas with hot glue. For the candy bucket, I ended wrapping the bottom part of an old Easter basket. For the top part I used half of a paper mache balloon. I covered it with green material (held on by hot glue) and drew the turtle patterns on with permanent marker. The whole costume came together nicely.

A Surprise Mario Backpack Gift

As a surprise gift to my son, I painted Mario on a Jansport backpack for him.  I was tired of having to replace his “character” back packs twice, sometimes three times a year. Even though his past back packs have been trendy with some kind of character like Spiderman or Batman, they just don’t seem to be very durable, am I right? Either that or my kid is just extra hard on his back pack. Well whatever the reason, I needed a better solution for his back pack. Then I remembered when I was growing up that the cool bag to have was a Jansport.  I don’t know who started that cool rule, but I know I had a Jansport, and loved it! They came in a variety of colors and were made very durable, oh and did I mention waterproof.  So it looked like I had my solution, so off to the store I went, on a hunt for a Jansport. I found a nice bright red one (one of his favorite colors), which I knew thought my son would like. I bought it, brought it home, only to present it to my son’s very unimpressed little face. He said it was nice, but very plain. I felt terrible. I should have thought about that coming from back packs that have been heavily decorated with characters. So, that night I stayed up late trying to think up a way to reinvent my solution. I needed to incorporate something that my son enjoyed; something to do with basketball or soccer and it had to coordinate with the color red. And just like that, Mario popped in my head. He loves Mario, as you probably already know based on this site alone. :o)

Yoshi Egg Smash Birthday Party Game

Sure kids love party games! But what makes a party game truly fun is if it is coordinated to the party theme. Here is a game that I developed for my son’s Mario Party birthday party theme. We called it “Yoshi Egg Smash”. This game was simple and lots of fun! Each child chose a Party Egg, and took turns smashing/throwing the egg at a simple target I put on the wall. If the egg broke open to reveal a golden star, then that child won a prize! The kids really found this game to be exciting mostly because they got to smash something and maybe even win a prize for doing so. Learn how to make these cute Yoshi eggs yourself. By the way, this game is definitely recommended as an outdoor game, between the confetti and the smashed egg shells it makes for a small "fun" mess.

               

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Do you want to see how the game is played? Click here to see a video on How to play!

 

Looking for Sparkly Confetti for the Winning Eggs?

 

Don't Forget The Envelopes.

Whenever you choose to hand craft invitations, it is important to find envelopes that coordinate to the invites. You want to find envelopes that will help complete the invitation presentation. Spending all that time creating unique invitations, only to send them out in a plain white (boring)envelopes, is not what you want to do . The trick is to find envelopes that have a little something special to them. I was lucky to find some silver metallic envelopes at a dollar store. I found them in an invitation pack of 8. I only needed to spend $3.00 to get enough envelopes to send out my 20 invitations. That is a fantastic deal! You wouldn’t be able to find a package of specialized envelopes for that price at most other stores. So be sure to check those dollar stores, sometimes it pays to go to the places you wouldn’t normally think of to buy specific items.

Nintendo Gameboy Mario Party Invitations

They say First impressions go along way. Well, in the case of parties and celebrations, the same idea applies. With that theory in mind, think of invitations as a sort of promotional ad for an event.  Almost like a marketing advertisement.  A good ad won’t read “Please come to our store”. Instead it will read “Come and see all the great things we have at our store!” The idea is to try to turn it around on the invited guests, and make them want to attend your celebration from the moment they receive the invitation. This is a different approach that actually works. You have to impact the invited guests from the very beginning, and that means your invitations have to be set apart from all the rest.

Creating a Mario Party Themed Birthday

Decorating for a celebration can be overwhelming, especially if your party theme is hard to find, or non-existent. Like for my son's Mario Party themed birthday party. Specifically Mario party 5 per my sons request, because my son was turning 5 at the time. I think Nintendo since then has re-released Mario Party the game up to 9 times. Hey, it actually makes for a great party theme to recycle through your child's adolescent years. I mean do you ever really grow out of Mario? Plus once you spend good time creating your decorations you probably will want to keep them, and reuse them. To create your own decorations, I suggest using an overhead projector. It makes drawing decorations at a large scale much easier. Plus in doing so, you don't have to spend too much time trying to draw out each character and it allows more time to spend coloring the decorations. You might not have access to an overhead projector but maybe you may know someone who does. Maybe a teacher. If you have school age children, maybe their teacher will allow you a little time afterschool to trace your decorations out onto poster board off the projector. Perhaps you can barter time using the overhead projector in exchange for time helping grade some papers. I'm sure the teacher would jump at the offer!

If you don't want to go the teacher route, then you might be able to purchase a Small Projector from your local Arts & Crafts store. I found one for kids, and it was around $35.00, which is a great price compared to a standard overhead Projector. The draw back of the kids projector is you won't be able to get your decorations to be too large, simply because the kids tracing projector does not project as crisp of lines, and the further away you place the projector from the wall, the image becomes fuzzy and it becomes hard to see where you are tracing.

Mario & Sonic Birthday Party

You need not spend a small fortune to make your child's next celebration awesome. Understandably so, there are milestone ages throughout life that some would agree deserve bigger celebrations. However no matter what age a child is turning, I think most parents will agree that they want to make their child's birthday a little extra special than most other days. Some parents go all out, and others stick to more simplistic ways. But all parents go out of their way to some extent to make their child happy on their birthday. To what extent is the question?

What I have found is that if you really want to plan a memorable party for your child, let your child pick the theme, and focus in on the details of that theme. The child will appreciate the details that he/she and their friends notice throughout the party. This sometimes requires you to get creative and do a little research on the theme. Well worth it though. Look for details from the theme or character and try to find ways to implement those into the party. I personally choose to spend more of my time on my child's birthday as opposed to more of my money. He loves it, and his friends love coming to the Party because the theme is unique, and also because the details are noticeably carried throughout the party, in the games, pinata, invites, loot bags, etc. Take a look at this party I just threw for my son's 9th birthday. He chose a theme of Mario and Sonic at the Olympic Games, and I knew I had to get creative to pull this off.

This 20 foot banner I made from butcher paper and colored with marker. I stretched it across two poles at the park, where the party was.