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Halloween Costume Contest for PBS Kids Sprout

Several years ago, my kids wanted to enter into a Halloween costume contest held by PBS kids Sprout. The Contest was to dress like Chica (the little chicken on the Sunny Side up Show on PBS Kids), but both of my kids wanted to participate, so my son dressed up as Kevin (the Sunny Side Up Show host at the time), and my daughter as Chica (the little yellow chicken on PBS Kids). Basically our goal was to re-create the Sunshine barn, which is where the Sunny Side up show took place. Since papier-mache is my choice of medium when it comes to art projects, the kids and I got to work on our contest entry. Below you can see on the left a picture of Kevin; the host of the Sunny Side Up show and Chica the little yellow chicken is to the right of Kevin. Kevin, the host always wore an assortment of fun colorful fruit Hawaiian shirts on the show, the one he is wearing in the picture below is a blue shirt with Orange printed all around. 

                  

You can see below all the fun we had creating this costume contest entry. Oh, and best of all, my kids WON! Yay! They received a big basket filled with all sorts of goodies from PBS Kids Sprout.

Halloween Costume Up, Up & Away

This year I had a cute idea for a costume, except my kids had already picked out whom they wanted to dress up as so I offered the idea to my friend for her little boy.

Mario Jack-O-Lantern

My friend delighted me last night with this awesome pumpkin carving of Super Mario. I asked her how she did it, and she mentioned that she got the idea and the templates to carve the pumpkins from ZombiePumpkins.com. I just wanted to pass along this really cool Mario pumpkin carving in case any of you haven’t carved your pumpkins just yet and needed some inspiration. There are a variety of templates at this website, but of course I think this one is just Super cool.

Have a Happy Halloween everybody, stay safe, and no tricks….All treats!

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.