Homemade Halloween

You read that blog title correctly, I made the boys' Halloween costumes this year. Well, I made 2 of the 3 anyway. Deacon had a hard time deciding what/who he wanted to be, but while we were shopping for materials for the other 2 costumes, we checked out what the store had in actual costumes and he found one that he was totally excited about. With that introduction, here is Deacon in his Gold Power Ranger costume, standing next to his pumpkin (the one with the face):

Ezekiel, for quite some time thought he wanted to be a knight for Halloween, but about a week or so before the big day Zeke decided he wanted to be Chris Kratt. Chris Kratt, for those who don't know, is a zoologist from NJ who has an animal program with his brother, Martin, on PBS called Wild Kratts. It's a really great program and we all enjoy it - especially Zeke who wants to be a zoologist when he grows up, just like Chris. Here's a picture of Chris for reference:

And here is Zeke in his Halloween costume, next to his pumpkin:

Basically, I bought a black t-shirt and black gloves, cut out circles of all different sizes from green felt, and sewed the circles onto his shirt and his gloves (the match Chris' gloves in style). I also printed, cut and laminated 10 creature power discs, attached some velcro to their backs, and to the main circle on his shirt, et voila! Chris Kratt. He wore a backpack (because Chris does at times) to hold his baby snow leopard (stuffed animal - not real in case some one was concerned about that), and all his Halloween loot.

(I promise to talk about the pumpkins in another post.)

This brings us to Finn, who wanted to be a zombie from the game plants vs zombies pretty much forever. Here's the picture we worked from:

Attractive, yes? I had hoped that once Finn saw Zeke's creature power suit, he would want one for himself in blue (Martin's color) and he would be happy wearing that for Halloween and I wouldn't have to make a zombie costume. I was half right. He completely flipped for Zeke's suit and wanted one of his own, which I made for him, and he did wear the first half of Halloween day, but he was determined to be a zombie for trick-or-treating, so I came up with this:

I took an old pair of play pants and cut off the one leg, then scrunched it down by his foot. I put him in a "church shirt" with a tie, and then he decided he wanted his Batman jacket instead of a brown jacket so we put him in that and his ratty Batman shoes - he was a Batman fanatic zombie. The hat I actually made the day before Halloween. Inspiration for it struck around 10:30 and by 3:30 it was all the way finished (and during that time I had to get the boys from school and what's it). In case you can't tell by my little bit of bragging there, I'm really pleased with the hat.

I'm actually rather pleased with how all of the costumes came out, but more importantly, the boys were all super happy with their costumes. They also had a great time trick-or-treating, handing out candy when they were finished, not to mention the school parade and classroom parties. Finn didn't participate in those last two, but we did get some dunkin donuts and had a play date with Charlotte. So, all in all, a very good Halloween.