do I even remember how to sew?



pumpkin costumes for the boys:
Simplicity pattern 3993, orange and green fleece, black felt

---

The costumes came out super cute, but with the stuffing, the boys just became tooth-achingly sweet. They thought it was so funny when I started stuffing them and they were "getting all fat". They ended up with big bellies and poofy butts that would waddle with them as they walked. It was too adorable. Hubby and I laughed our whole way through the neighborhood behind them!

pumpkin on the way

To get in on the fun, I followed Freecia's suggestion and put a little pumpkin face on my little baby bump. Baby even had her own tiny pumpkin candy basket, just big enough for a mini-reeses peanut butter cup and a milk dud or two. Yum!

"Okay, let's go get candy!"

The Halloween costumes are done! Yesterday after school the boys cut out felt face parts.

how cute is it to see your kids be crafty?!

We put the pumpkins back up on the ironing board and the boys stuck the eyes and mouths on just the way they wanted them. Aren't they great? They drew those mouths all by themselves!

S made a nice pumpkin

B wanted a mean pumpkin

I did my part by finishing the hoods last night while they were sleeping (and while watching "While You Were Sleeping"). The boys woke up this morning and couldn't wait to try them on.

Pictures of pumpkin boys tomorrow!

The boys are in school already, so the ironing board had to stand in as model, but here's the weekend progress on the costumes. The pumpkin bodies are all done (thanks to hubby spending an hour threading the elastic through the casings!) and I'm down to just finishing the green parts. The leaf needs elastic still and then I've got the stem hoods to sew. We're getting there!

Let the pumpkin sewing begin!

first long seams down the body

armhole openings at the sides

closing up the circle

empty pumpkin shell waiting for a little person

The boys are going to decorate the faces on their own. We've got some black felt and fabric glue and they're going to cut out triangles and mouth shapes and stick them on by themselves. Can't wait to see how that comes out!!

Next up for me is all the elastic around the top and bottom and then the leaf collar and stem hood. The leaf is the boys' favorite part.

They're so excited!

wish I were so excited about cutting all that fabric!

Finally, I found the time and floor space to cut out all the pumpkin costume pieces. The boys were so curious about the process, they kept coming over to watch what I was doing. It was a lot of cutting, so they watched Charlie & Lola shows in between visits to mommy hunched over on the floor.

An hour and a half and one big scissor bruise under my thumb later, and ta da... all the makings of pumpkin guys!

twenty-six pieces to make just two pumpkins

I finally got down on the floor this week and started cutting out pumpkin pattern pieces for the boys' costumes.

I even brought all the fabric down last night to start pinning and cutting fabric, but then discovered that the boys had built a giant train track across the whole living room floor while I was getting their bath ready before bed. I couldn't take it all apart when they only got to play with it for a few minutes. So the actual pumpkin pieces will have to wait another day or two. Keeping our priorities straight here, you know.

After setting the bar very high last year, I've been dreading trying to come up with a good Halloween costume idea for the boys for this year. I asked them what they wanted to be and after rejecting their first proposal of ghost (B: "just put something white over me" - me: "lame!" - or S: "just get some white yarn" - me: "nnnooooooo!"), the boys were adamant that they wanted to be pumpkins. After knitting the Thing costumes, you know I can't just go out and buy finished pumpkin costumes. So it was off to the crap (er, craft) store for pumpkin makings.

It's not handknitted Thing One and Thing Two costumes, but it did cost more than store-bought costumes and will take hours and hours to make, so close enough!