Halloween Costumes!

What do you get when you combine a small town filled with lots of families with young kids,

a grad student with a head exploding from way too much academic work,

and a busy October for all?

You get a perfect situation,

because the grad student decompresses from school stress... by sewing.

Especially sewing fun and silly things, worn by her favorite joy-bringing small friends.

And, though I (the grad student- did you guess?!),

truly find this hard to believe,

apparently figuring out Halloween costumes is not most parents of young children's favorite thing ever??

I came to this difficult-to-understand conclusion after I kept saying,

"Are you sure you don't mind that I'm doing this??! Really, I'm not stepping on your toes??! You don't feel like I'm stealing your joy of parenthood?!!"

And they kept saying things like

"OMG THANK YOU HERE TAKE MORE MONEY FOR MATERIALS MAKE WHATEVER YOU WANT THANK YOU THANK YOU"

...You'd think it was like, a stressful time or something.

(I was informed that my lack of comprehension on this point could potentially have something to do with the fact that while the aforementioned adorable joy-bringing small friends were going back and forth on exactly what costume they wanted, getting hopped up on sugar, and feeling super tired from being up too late, I was not the one who had to do bedtime. Or parent them the next day. Aha.)

Anyway, so I am grateful that throughout the month of October, whenever I needed to feel as far from psychology textbooks as possible, I got to hit up Goodwill and the fabric store and Pinterest and get creative.

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Inen (4) has been announcing for months he wants to be Santa.

He LOVES Santa. He frequently "plays Santa" by sitting on the couch with the reindeer (kitchen chairs) arranged in front of him, while he chants "Go Dancer! Go Blitzen!", etc.

(Plain Hanes sweatsuit + white fur, sold by the yard at Joann Fabrics)

I lined it with candy cane fabric where I sewed on the fur, to keep it from being itchy.

And also because finding the candy cane fabric made me happy. It's the small things, dude.

We weren't sure Louisa (22 months) would actually put up with a costume for long, but I found a red velvet toddler dress at Goodwill...

and...

Meet...

Santa and Mrs. Claus!!!

(Don't you just want to EAT THEM UP???!!!! Okay, I'm sorry. This blog is totally becoming "The blog of Emily and her deep love for all of her friends' small children". But seriously. I know the cutest ones! It's not my fault!)

The Santa beard was KNIT by Korie. Because she is a ROCK STAR.

Omigosh. They were so cute.

Here they are ringing the bell at my house!! Yay!! Inen was all, "HO HO HO. I mean... trick or treat. Ho ho ho."

Please note that I had my Santa socks on for their visit. Also, that Inen's red t-shirt (not made by me) says READ. Because Korie is the town children's librarian. I'm sure it's really hard to figure out why I love them so much.

One more Inen picture, just because I love his expression here. Oh man he is fun. This is the night he was trying his costume on to see if it fit, and the whole time he had it on he insisted on referring to everyone else there as "Elf". As in, "Inen, please pick up your toys." "Okay, Elf!". "Night buddy, love you!" "I love you too, Elf!"

*******

A. (5) was very sure he wanted to be a T-REX... "A green T-rex with orange spikes and orange and black spots AND A TAIL".

Green footie pajamas (Goodwill, like $3) + cardboard cut into triangles + orange fleece sewn into triangle-shaped pockets + foam peanuts to stuff the tail...

...and you get one ferocious T-Rex.
And a really cute one, but he was much prouder of being ferocious.

(PS, I have no idea if this is really a T-rex. I just went for dinosaur. Don't tell him, he was happy with it.)

His ROARS at every house as we trick-or-treated were definitely absolutely terrifying. What a dino.

*******

Irene told me I could make whatever I wanted for M., 18 months. I think little girls dressed up like ladybugs are the cutest thing that ever happened.

Goodwill finds...

Siss was over one Sunday and did an awesome job cutting out red spots for the black dress and black spots for the red hoodie.

One crazily adorable ladybug!!

(You can just make out the black pipe cleaners her mama tied around her pigtails for antenna. It was SO FREAKIN CUTE.)

*******

Unfortunately there aren't any Will pics that actually turned out of him IN the costume, but picture those cheeks on the left...

As this scary lion.

(Yellow hoodie from Goodwill with fleece cut into strips and sewn around the hood.)

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I'm not sure anyone who is not related to one of these children actually read all of this,

but if you did,

thank you for letting me geek out over my sewing + children + friends fun.

Sometimes my life just feels like way more fun than should be allowed.