Baby Popcorn Costume

 Okay so I haven't posted in months ... years?! and I also had a baby. FYI. But Halloween is my favorite holiday and I just love having my blog to go back and look at photos from my past. So I am sharing these here! Isn't my baby the cutest in her costume? I actually wasn't planning on making this costume as we already have a family one but I looked around and literally had all the material and I was like a baby in a box super cute! Anyway enjoy, I know my future self will be glad I can find these photos someday. 

Scarecrow, Corn, Tractor: Family Farm Costume DIY

Happy Halloween! My favorite holiday of the year. I love to dress up and make costumes and celebrate the weirdness that is the Halloween holiday. Italy doesn't really do Halloween all crazy. It is becoming a little more popular but not as much as I would like. I will enjoy being back in America next fall to enjoy all the autumn things America loves! Anyways the military base here does try and do Halloween all up for the kids and Italians come too which I think they really enjoy. So I reserved a spot in the Trunk or Treat festivities and our theme was farm and we dressed up like a scarecrow and corn on the cob. Unfortunately Knox couldn't come to the event but I still made him a costume and then added a front panel to use the tractor with our trunk decorations too. We had a blast. 

Corn on the Cob:
9 - 12 egg, egg cartons
Paint
Big felt
Green leggings
Green long sleeve shirt

Felt part:
1. I bought 3 large pieces of felt at my local craft store. They measured 27 x 20 inches. Two green and 1 yellow. 2. I sewed the three pieces together. Overlapping the green a tiny bit on the yellow on both sides (this comes in later.) 3. I measured and cut armholes. 4. I then cut six more pieces of green felt (I had scrapes) into long triangle shapes and hot glued them to the sides of the green/yellow felt.

Egg carton part:
1. Cut the back side of the egg carton off. 2. Paint each egg carton yellow, might take a couple of coats of paint. 3. Once dry, tape the egg cartons together in two rows of four. I used duct take and takes the edges together on the back side. 4. Hot glue the egg cartons to the yellow felt. I hot glued each side under the little flap of green felt that overlapped the yellow. I also went back and glued in a few other spots to give it more strength.

Hat: 1. Sew two pieces of felt together and either sew or hot glue rope and/or fake hay to the top.

Scarecrow:
2 Jeans to make overalls or 1 pair of overalls
Boots
Plaid Shirt
Straw Hat
Sunflowers for pockets
Bandana
Hay
Makecup for face: eye liner, blush, lipstick,

The scarecrow was rather easy.
1. I hot glued hay on the inside of my shirt sleeves and pant legs and hat. I also added hay to my pig tails. 2. I followed a similar tutorial to this one for the overalls. But if you already have overalls then no need for that. 3. I hot glued fake mini sunflowers to my overalls. 4. I used this makeup as inspiration for the scarecrow face.

Tractor:
Big cardboard box
Paint
Toilet paper rolls
Duct tape

1. I found one big cardboard box that I painted green. Leaving a thick strip down the side for the yellow. 2. I can't give to much detail on this as I didn't write down my exact directions. But I cut out a big horse shoe shape for my dogs head so we could kind of just set the box over top of him. 3. I had painted the yellow stripe and then the letters for John Deere. 4. I cut out wheels and painted those and taped them to the side of the tractor. 

Total cost for our farm family costume:
Egg cartons: $0 (Been saving sense July from eggs I would have bought anyways)
Felt: $4.50
Hay: $1.50
Overalls: $2
Paint: $4
Bandana: $.25
Hat: $0 (from last year)
Sunflowers: $0 (from last year)
Makeup: $0 (already owned)
Plaid shirt, green leggings, green sweatshirt: $0 (already owned) 
Cardboard box: $0 (got out of recycle bin) 

Total: $12.25 
This has been one of my favorite costumes so far, it was actually very simple but effective and those are my favorite kind. Let's take a look back at costumes from Halloween's pasts.. all DIYed by me I might add.

2013: Princess and the Pea couples costume
2014: Ketchup, Mustard, Hotdog.... and our most popular family costume to date
2015: Castaway costume : Tom Hanks, Wilson, and Fedex box
2016 : Smore's family costume
2017: Gnome, Flower, and Bee family costume


love, Carlee

Paint Palette Costume

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!! For some reason I just had an itch to make another Halloween costume. I was thinking about fun things to be that I haven't really seen before and I was going through all the iPhone emojis and thought of the painters palette and while people have had painters palettes in there costumes before (mostly Bob Ross ;) ) I wanted my whole costume to be an artist palette with a giant paint brush!

I had all the supplies already on had. I guess it pays to keep craft and art supplies forever and also have a room to store them in.

Palette: I used a elmers foam board that I got at a craft store to make the palette and then looked up paint palette on google to get a basic idea of how they looked and then traced the shape with pencil and cut the board with an Xacto-knife. I then painted the spots on. 

Paint brush: I had an almost empty roll of wrapping paper so I look the rest of the paper off and used the cardboard roll. I cut it down the middle long ways so I could make it skinnier like a paint brush would be. I then painted the roll red and let it dry. The hardest thing to make was the paint brush tip because I wanted to get it right. I cut a little paper into a triangle shape like a mini birthday hat and then put a paper around the middle to make it look like a paint brush shape. Then I cut pieces of brown string to the length of the triangle and used double sided tape to secure it. For the silver part of the paint brush I used tin foil which I also secured on with double sided tape. 

I put a little handle on the back side of the palette so I could hold it in any direction that I wanted to. 

love, Carlee

Garden Gnome, Flower, Bee Family Costume

Our DIY family costume for this year! I love it. I honestly kind of knew what I wanted to do for our Halloween costume like last December just about 10 months early haha. I didn't know exactly how I was going to do the main flower part for my costume until I was re-watching Parks and Rec and April was a flower for Halloween one year so that I wear I got the inspiration for my flower hat (see photo below). I was actually just going to order a bee costume for Knox but all the dog bee costumes online were kind of cheesy and I figured I could make something just as good or better for less money. I think his bee costume turned out so rad although he hates wearing it. I did use my sewing machine for the green leaf flower necklace and for the bee body but I think you could most likely improvise with a hot glue gun if you don't know how to sew or don't have a sewing machine.

Flower costume:
-Main flower hat: Pink felt peddles. Duct tape pipe cleaners to the back of the peddles so they are bendable. Arrange around a straw hat or sun hat. Secure with duct tape.
-Green leaf necklace. Cut green felt into triangles and sewn together with green thread.
-Plastic flower pot cut out the bottom.
-Plastic fake flowers.

Dog bee costume:
-Yellow shirt. Sew black fabric/felt in stripes to resemble a bee.
-Sewn together felt for the tail of the bee.
-Use a mental hanger and black panty hose to make the wings.
-Headband and pipe cleaners with two felt balls on top for antennas.

Gnome Costume:
-Red cardstock for hat cut into big birthday hat shape. (used a elastic string from a birthday hat to make it so you can wear it. )
-White Beard (Halloween costume section)
-Blue Shirt
-Khaki Pants
-Boots
-Rope for belt
-White quilt stuffing for eyebrows (stick on with double sided tape)

So I love Halloween and I love dressing up. But I don't like spending a ton of money on something I am only going to wear once a year and never again so I try to keep the cost of our whole family costume to under $50. I already had a lot of stuff on hand so that helped. I only spent $27.50!

Cost:
Pink and green felt for flower: $4
Fake flowers: $10
Pipe Cleaners: $1.99
Head band: $.50
Blue shirt for gnome: $11

Already Owned
Flower- Flower pot
Flower - Hat
Flower - Green shirt

Bee -Yellow cloth
Bee - Black felt
Bee- felt balls for antenna

Gnome - Red card stock for hat
Gnome - white beard (got it on sale two Halloweens ago for $1.99)
Gnome-Khaki pants
Gnome-Boots
Gnome-Rope for belt
Gnome-White stuffing for eyebrows

We did a costume walk at Clark's work with the other families and we won first place for best family costume! Everyone thought we were so cute. Unfortunately we couldn't bring Knox which would 
have made it even better but still we got a really cool prize and my creativity paid off. I would still
make costumes and dress up even if there wasn't a contest it is just fun and one of my favorite times of the year!

love, Carlee

S'mores Halloween Costume

This year we decided to be S'mores! I am the Hershey's, Clark is the Graham Cracker, and Knox is the marshmallow! I actually was planning on doing a different DIY costume this year but that other one was a little too intensive and this one was way simpler and I had almost everything on hand to make it. Besides doesn't Knox just make the cutest marshmallow ever! 

DIY Costumes: 
Marshmallow
-We used a 'king size' pillow. King size meaning it is longer than a normal pillow and wrapped it around Knox with some tape and velcro.

Graham Cracker:
- Two cardboard pieces measuring about 30 in x 30 in.
- A permeant black marker to draw on the dots and dashes.
- For the straps we used Heavy Duty Duct Tape. We taped the tape together so it didn't actually stick to us and then tapes and stapled (for extra support) to the cardboard on the inside.

Hershey's Bar
-Two cardboard pieces measuring about 25in x 50 in
-Dark brown paint  (cost me $8.00 for a pint, paint here in Italy is expensive)
-Letters
      -I found the correct font that is used on the Hershey's Bar and made the letters 11in tall in Photoshop and I printed one letter per regular piece of paper and cut them all out and used double sided tape to stick them to the cardboard.
-Straps same as above: For the straps we used Heavy Duty Duct Tape. We taped the tape together so it didn't actually stick to us and then taped and stapled (for extra support) to the cardboard on the inside.

We wore this costume to Trunk or Treat and it was great. I love doing a theme with my car if we do trunk or treat so this year it was camp fire. I painted a campfire and we got actual firewood and marshmallows and acted like a real fire. Unfortunately, no dogs were allowed at this event so we couldn't bring Knox all dressed up in the marshmallow but people still got the idea. This was going to be our only costume this year but sometimes I just can't help myself. Did you see our costumes from yesterday? HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

love, Carlee

Forrest Gump, Bank Robber, and a Beanie Baby

Hey all! My favorite holiday is Halloween. I just love it. Since we just got to Naples, Italy a few months ago we don't know lots of people so I was worried that our Halloween would be fairly low key. I basically just want any excuse to dress up in costume and be festive on holidays. There was a trunk or treat placed which is the first costume I came up with, which I will be sharing tomorrow. And then on Wednesday, Clark said there was a family fun run that we could dress up for and bring Knox. Clark had to go so I was like this is perfect. So I scrambled  a little bit and came up with these costumes which turned out wonderful! I just couldn't help but do Knox as a beanie baby. I am sure you have seen that super cute dog as one floating around Pinterest. Also Clark won a 4 day weekend pass because of our costumes. That means he gets Friday and Monday off when we decides to cash it in and we can go travel somewhere! Definitely worth it! 

Forrest Gump running version
-We had the beard from last year from Clark's Castaway costume. (bought on Amazon)
-We had the hat from Clark's Forrest Gump costume last year. (bought on Amazon)
-Clark already had the shoes and white socks
-Had the red soccer shorts
-Bought the yellow polo from the NEX for $11

Bank Robber
-Leggings, tennis shoes, and shirt I had.
-Clark's black had and gloves
-Bought the mask for 1 euro
-We had the Nike bag, I just flipped it around and printed a $ sign and taped it on the bag.

Beanie Baby
-Cardboard heart (we still have a bunch of cardboard boxes from our move so I used those to cut a heart)
-T Y. I found the correct font online and printed the letters out at home.
-Red paint I already had.
-Used doubled sided tape to tape on the letters.
-I used a zip tie to secure it to Knox's collar.

These costumes all combined cost $12. I only bought the yellow polo and the mask. I kept the mask and put it in my Halloween bin, I am sure I will get more use out of it with a costume in the future. And Clark actually likes the yellow polo and it going to keep it to wear. So a win win win and didn't waste any money. I like when costumes are cheap, creative, obvious, and fun! 

I have another family costume I will be sharing tomorrow! 
love, Carlee

Carving pumpkins

We carved pumpkins yesterday! Halloween is not really a big deal here in Italy. They don't have all the decoration and pumpkins on display like in the USA. But the grocery store on base does ship in some pumpkins for Halloween which I am very appreciative of because it is my favorite holiday. While it definitely doesn't feel the same here in fall as it does in America. It is still pretty fun! So we carved up our pumpkins yesterday because even though we are adults with no children we love to keep the traditions alive. And here are a few photos from that.

Also 4 years of Knox watching Clark carve pumpkins. I just happen to take a photo the first 2 years and then last year I knew I had to do it again and of course this year. This is a wonderful tradition.

Also, it should be noted I do have a couple more posts from our ireland trip. Honestly when we were on the last couple days of our trip, I broken down my posts into 7 posts and thought "I am going to get these all posted the first 7 days of October." Well we are over halfway and it hasn't happened yet. But hopefully this week. I took A LOT of photos and it takes a while to get through them all as well as retell the stories of our days etc. And honestly sometimes I just not that motivated to write certain posts. But they are coming!
love, Carlee