Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween everyone! Costumes? Candy? This is seriously one of my favorite holidays! Being 6 months pregnant, sore, and exhausted has made me tone things down quite a bit this year so we skipped hosting our usual Halloween party and didn’t do a family theme costume.*

I did put together a costume for Wesley though! He’s still a little young to fully understand Halloween so I wasn’t really able to get an answer to a general “what do you want to dress up as” question.  He has been more interested in dinosaurs and dragons lately so I asked him if he wanted to be a dinosaur or dragon and he happily replied “Dinosaur dragon!” Yeah, ok kid we’re just gonna pick one since a dragon is more or less a dinosaur with wings. Later he changed it to dragonfly (which I still came up with a plan for) then changed back to dragon before I got started on anything.

Yup, kiddo has a hoodie on under a hoodie.  That’s a Minnesota Halloween for you…actually given that he didn’t need a snow suit it was pretty warm Halloween. I put on a jacket as soon as we had snapped this picture.

They did some Trick-or-Treating at daycare and then we took him down the block later in the evening.  I wasn’t sure what he would think of it, but he LOVED it!  He even got pretty good at saying “Trick or Treat!” and “Thank you!”… with a bit of prompting.

His costume was pretty simple to put together since it was just a hoodie with a bunch of stuff sewn onto it.

Step 1: Plan your design

For a dragon costume, I wanted spikes running down the back, a tail with spikes, wings, and a contrasting belly patch.  I figured I could easily put it together with a few sheets of felt and some jersey that matched the hoodie.

Step 2: Get Distracted by all the awesome costume fabrics

I went to Joann’s to pick up some jersey and felt…. but then I saw all the amazing, shiny, costume fabrics they had out for Halloween. I found a scaley pattern that didn’t seem to fray and a coordinating iridescent fabric that I figured I could just glue onto felt for the spikes. I wasn’t deviating that much from the plan, just a little extra gluing.  Easy-peasy, right?

Step 3: Immediately regret your life choices

Wrong. The damn iridescent fabric proved impossible to glue. It was also an acetate sort of fabric, so iron-on adhesive or stabilizer was out because there was a good chance of melting.  I briefly considering sewing triangles for the spikes out of a few layers of the shiny fabric, but that would have been a PITA as well.

Step 4: Cut your losses, return to your original Plan

Back to Joann’s I went… for the felt I originally planned on.  I got 2 sheets of a stiffer green felt for the spikes and wings, 2 sheets of a contrasting standard felt for the belly and underside of the tail, and 1 sheet of black adhesive felt for some contrasting details (wing bones and belly scales). I lucked out and found a pack of super-awesome stick-on dragon eyes, but you could use large googly eyes, or even some black and white felt.

From there I cut out some pretty basic shapes and hand sewed everything to the hoodie. If you want to make it even easier you could glue everything (although I’m not sure how well that would work for the spikes) or use an iron-on adhesive (ditto). The tail consists of 3 triangles (2 gray, 1 green to match the belly color). Spikes got sandwiched between the gray pieces and all 3 triangles were sewn together to make a cone shape.

My “costume” was even easier.  My original plan was bust out my brand spankin new Cricut and cut the dragon embryo design out of glow in the dark vinyl (nothing iron-on since I wanted to be able to peel it off the shirt later). Well, time got away from me so I ended up printing the pattern on full-sheet label paper I already had on hand and sticking it to my shirt. It’s not super solid, but it got me around the block.

 

* Matt may be thankful for the last part

Happy Halloween!

I’m all about the Halloween group costume.  Last year we did Peanuts and this year I nerded it up big time! Let’s just say when you’re a nerd and your son is named Wesley, this costume is practically mandatory.

And for the non-nerds out there, no, we’re not the family from the Incredibles. We’re not anyone from Star Wars.* Nope, this costume is straight-up Star Trek: The Next Generation.

via Ex Astris Scientia

Matt makes a pretty awesome Picard, Wesley’s the cutest little Crusher on the planet (#momBias), and I’m supposed to be Beverly Crusher, I just don’t have the hair for it.

Let’s take a closer look at Wesley’s iconic ugly sweater, shall we?

If you really want to be technical, the bottom stripe is supposed to be more tealy-blue, but I DIYed this puppy on the cheap so my options were limited.

I think my son only smiles when he has a stick (then bawls when I don’t let him bring sticks into the house).

Our daycare’s Halloween Party was today, and apparently once his teacher said “Wesley Crusher from Star Trek” there was even some recognition (so I think they would have gotten it if they had seen us all together).  We went to Halloween/Birthday party over the weekend and only 1 person there got it. #nerdProblems

 

*These were all actual guesses. I also had a co-worker ask what we were doing for Halloween.  When I responded that I had a Star Trek family costume planned, she asked if Wesley was going to be the “bear thing.” My new tagline may be “May the force be so Number One.”