Halloween!

Today is Halloween! Not my favorite holiday, but a pretty fun one nonetheless. Growing up we had a combination of store bought, self-made and Goodwill assembled costumes. We also carved pumpkins, but truthfully, I never really liked it. I don't like the stringy, slimy, smelly insides of pumpkins. But I do love roasted pumpkin seeds. So I was super psyched to find some for sale at our local grocery store (surprisingly, most places don't sell them because they assume you'll do it yourself). 

And we found this awesome kit at Target for $5 to turn our pumpkin into Cinderella's carriage! I had actually thought of doing this, albeit more elaborately and thus probably more expensively. All of this came in one nice little box, super cheap, with everything you need (except the pumpkins) and instructions. And Lily had a blast helping make it. She really liked painting it, sticking all the glittery stickers on, and stabbing the small pumpkins with bamboo skewers to use as wheels. All in all, a total, cheap success. 

I've been feeling like Cinderella has been taking over our life recently, though, so I was determined that Lily was NOT going to be Cinderella for Halloween. So instead, we decided to dress up as a family as The Wonder Pets, probably my favorite of the Nick Jr. shows that we watch on Netflix. But for some reason they don't sell a lot of Wonder Pets merchandise any more, at least not at reasonable prices, so I decided to use my newly acquired sewing skills to whip us up some capes and find the other pieces at thrift stores or wherever. Easier said than done. 

I found a pattern for the capes online, and didn't actually read the instructions just bought some cheap cotton fabric and went at it. Turns out I was supposed to use fleece so as not to need any hems. So I ended up sewing the edges of all of them, and adding a piece of ribbon to tie at the neck. Turns out that pinning and sewing circles is hard. But they turned out okay. Making the Wonder Pets badge to put on the capes was easier because I used felt and fabric glue. Then my plan was to use fusible webbing just because it was going to take less time. I should know that's never the case. It wouldn't really stick at all, so I ended up just hand stitching them on. I think that actually was a good thing because they look cute and homemade. 

As far as accessories go, Ming Ming Duck wears an aviator hat with goggles, Linny the guinea pig wears an orange baseball hat, and Turtle Tuck wears a red and white sailor hat with blue water shoes. I was able to get most of them from Goodwill or borrow from family. Then the night before we went to Boo at the Zoo I decided Lily needed some duck feet to complete the costume. So I used some left over felt from the badges to make little shoe covers. Lily calls them her Ming Ming slippers. 

And here's the whole outfit together. Ming Ming Duck! I think she looks pretty cute. 

And here's all three of us. Joe was a super good sport in wearing the blue fleece slippers I got instead of water shoes and my Where's Waldo hat from the Monster Dash last year. I look particularly special in this picture, but remember, I'm a guinea pig so it's kind of appropriate. Lily wanted to fly like Ming Ming, so she did. I like how her little duck feet hang down. 

And here we all are together at the zoo. It was really nice to hear people say 'Look! It's the Wonder Pets!' when we were all together. Totally validating. This was taken right before the costume parade that Lily was willing to be in for all of 20 steps before she realized we were walking AWAY from her grandparents. She decided she would rather just stay with them than keep walking. So we ducked out early (ha!) and rejoined our families. 

As for Halloween day itself, Lily and I dressed up to go to a little kid party at the neighborhood club. She wore her Ming Ming cape for all of 2 minutes before she found a Cinderella dress she would much rather wear instead. She got her face painted like a cat, made a glittery pumpkin, ran around with lots of other little kids, and didn't eat too much sugar. We didn't actually go trick-or-treating because our neighborhood isn't that accessible. And no one came to our door because we live on the 10th floor of a locked apartment building. So it was pretty chill. 

Happy Halloween!