Halloween 2012: Return to Oz

With moving busyness this summer/fall, we decided to simplify Halloween by only adding a few costumes to last year's line-up.

Since Joshua outgrew his Toto costume that he wore last year (when he was 2 weeks old), he got a new-to-him costume.  I'm pretty picky as far as costumes go.  I like to make them myself, but my friend Sara, an amazing seamstress, was selling the cutest little Tinman costume at her yard sale and I had to snatch it up.  Her 9 month old wore it a while back.  It was definitely on the small side, but we squished Josh into it.  It was a hit.  I forgot to put the shoes on him.

Eliza and Caleb wore their adorable Dorothy and Lion outfits from last year.

Mike wore my Scarecrow costume from last year.  I added some felt boots at the last minute to go with it.  They really seal the deal, I think.

My costume was the big one this year.  I decided it would be fun to be Glinda, the good witch.  I didn't want to spend a lot of money on it though, so I held off buying fabric for a while.  I was blessed to find a queen size sheet set in the exact shade of peach that I needed at the thrift store.  And to make a great find even better, it was half off!  (It reminded me of my experience getting fabric for the Queen of Hearts dress a couple years ago.) I used it for the skirt of the dress, with the finished edge on the bottom, so I didn't even have to hem it!  I had some peach satin that a friend gave me a while back that I used for the bodice and sleeves.  I got some peach netting from a friend of a friend who was destashing her fabric inheritance. The only fabric I ordered was peach tulle.

I ordered a pattern on ebay, but when it arrived, it was incomplete (though, to the seller's credit, it looked complete, unless you looked for all the pieces you wouldn't know there should have been another folded tissue section).  She refunded my money, but by the time I realized I only had two pattern pieces, it was too late to order another pattern (remember how I live in the boonies and can't just run out to the store?).  So I had to kind of wing it, but it worked fine I think.

I wore two fluffy wedding dress slips underneath, but the real body of the dress (which is so Glinda) comes from the body pillow that I belted all the way around my hips.  Sure, it made getting in the van and driving quite difficult, but it was worth it.

The crowning jewel of the costume was, in fact, the crown.  Mike volunteered for the task of creating all my accessories.  You'll remember from his Mad Hatter hat and Big Bad Wolf nose, that he takes his creations seriously.  He likes them to be as authentic as possible, so he did a lot of studying up on Glinda's crown.

He used four 9x12 lamination sheets (for home/office laminators) and latminated them empty and taped them together with packing tape. He created a stencil for the top and cut carefully.  He sprayed the whole thing with spray adhesive to give it a little more stability and a texture to help the spray paint stick.  He spray painted it lightly in silver spray paint.  He strung large iridescent beads onto a wire for the large front adornment.  He used glitter glue and puff paint for the design and topped it off with sprinkles of glitter.

Here he is working late into the night to bedazzle my staff.  He also made fancy butterflies for the dress.  I cut out snowflakes and stars that we hot glued to the tulle of my dress, but I lost about half of them throughout the night.

We stopped by to visit Mike's Great Grandpa at his nursing home on Halloween.  As we were leaving we got pulled into the resident Halloween party where we were treated like celebrities.  The witch in the background kept telling Eliza in her thick Russian accent "Kiss the witch!  Kiss the witch!"  Eliza obliged, but then got a little weirded out.  They radioed for the piano guy to come back and play "Over the Rainbow" while we sang with the residents.  It warmed our hearts to see their smiles and talk with them.

Earlier in the week (long before the Glinda costume was created), we went to Trick-or-Treat after storytime at the library.  We even made it in the paper with this picture.

Halloween is so much fun!