Hillary's Notes: A Cat, A Princess, And Some Angry Birds

This year as the kids browsed through the costume catalogs that arrived in Grandma Bolander's mail box, they were having a hard time finding something they liked. There were things that were okay, but after the success of last years Phineas and Ferb costumes, the kids needed more than just the generic superhero. The boys were willing to settle for Thor and Captain America, but they continued looking through the catalogs hoping for something a little more exciting.

September rolled around (Remember from my post last year, we start thinking about Halloween in early August.) and there was still no winner. So one night Grandma Bolander and the kids sat around trying to figure out what to do. Emily had some drawings she had done, and was hoping to turn one of them into a costume. Which seemed very possible.

Valerie is still young enough that I had a lot of influence on her, and had her convinced she wanted to be a witch or a princess. (I could never get Emily to dress up as either one of those.) It was just a matter of finding the right costume.

The boys were a little harder. Grandma sat and talked to them about some of the things they liked this year, because a lot of times you can get great costume ideas from that. I can't remember all of the things they talked about, but once the conversation got to Angry Birds, the discussion was over, and the costume planning began.

So for Halloween 2011 I give you,

Princess Valerie, Mittens the Bounty Hunter Kitten,

and the Angry Birds.

After we got all of the costumes put together Grandma and I decided that this year we needed to get some pictures taken, and thanks to Mike at Foto Fly we got some great ones. This post is a little long, so if you don't have time to read, just enjoy the pictures. If you want to know the story's behind the costumes, read on.

MITTENS

Mittens was a costume Emily designed based on a Star Wars bounty hunter and well, a cat.

While her costume looks fairly simple, if you look a little closer there is a lot of thought that went into it, and a lot of looking through stores to find just the right pieces. Luckily we were able to find everything she wanted.

The bottom layer is a black turtleneck and tight pants Grandma Blander helped her find at a sporting goods store, and we had purchased the back boots during our back to school shopping.

The next layer was a little tricky, because Emily knew what she wanted, and I thought I did, but after we started looking, I found that I really didn't know. I was picturing color or glittery, and Emily was seeing all black. Luckily there are stores like Ross, that have rack after rack of completely different things. That is where we discovered the perfect shall like shirt, all black, and she was able to adjust it just the way she wanted.

The pants were another area, where I was not quite sure what we were looking for, and I don't think Emily really knew either, but when she tried on the shorts over her outfit, she knew it was right.

Now for the finishing touches, I bought Emily cat ears when I was at the store one day, and figured we were done with that, but Emily was picturing a mask. So we headed to the Halloween stores. The first store we went to had at least ten masks to choose from, but non of them were right, so we headed to the next store. When we looked at their cat masks it was more of the same, so Emily found one that she was willing to live with, and we went to look for gloves. As we were walking over to the gloves we saw it, THE MASK. It was just what Emily had pictured. And lucky for me it was sold separately from any costume. For an added bonus it came with fake nails.

Even though it meant going to at least 7 different stores to find just the right pieces, It was so worth it to see Emily so excited about her costume. I love it!

I also love how the photographer not only captured mittens, but also captured the sweet little girl behind the mask.

Princess Valerie

On a trip to the fabric store with Grandma Bolander, we started compiling fabric for a purple witch costume for Valerie. That was what she said she wanted to be, but as soon as she saw the pattern with the princess on it, the witch was no more. Not sure if Valerie would change her mind again we decided to wait. A couple of days later, I sat with Valerie at the computer looking at both witch and princess costumes. It was clear princess was her first choice. This made me very happy.

Grandma was busy getting started on the boys costumes and realized she would not have time to make the princess dress too, so I started looking a little harder for a dress we liked. then I found the princess dress of my dreams. It was perfect, and Valerie liked it too. )

We ordered it and waited for it to arrive. While we were waiting, Valerie would ask to look at her princess dress on the computer. She started asking so much, that I finally printed the picture for her so she could carry it around, and she did.

then the dressed arrived, and it was perfect, except they sent the wrong size. I had ordered a size 3 and they sent a size 4. when I tried it on Valerie to see if we could make it work, she wanted to walk around in it, but it was too big. So I contacted the company to see about exchanging it. After a couple of days with no response, I started looking into it further, and discovered that this was a common occurrence, not to expect any reply, and in fact, I was lucky to have gotten a dress at all.

So our only choice now was to alter it.

Before I did anything I got some advice from Grandma and a couple of my friends who sew. Then I went to work trying to make it fit, and to make it a little harder on myself I wanted to do it in a way that kept it a size 4 for future use. Unfortunately Valerie had realized that her dress didn't fit, and decided that she didn't like it. Getting her to try it on so I could adjust it was a chore. But with a little hem tape and a needle and thread I got the dress to fit.

Once it fit, Valerie was a little more willing to wear it, but she still was not sure if she liked it. Now that she has seen pictures of herself in it, she has decided that she loves her dress again.

When we went to get pictures, I wanted a picture of her smiling in the dress, but that did not work out so well. In the end it was okay, because I love these pictures. They have so much of her "personality" in them.

The Angry Birds

Once The boys decided on their costume, we began looking on the internet at what others had done for costumes. There were a lot of good ideas, but Grandma and Joe had other ideas. They talked about things they liked and things they didn't, and then Grandma went to work. Grandma tried to talk me into having Valerie be a bird and even tried to get Emily in on it, but she did not succeed. However My nephew was willing to join in the fun. (at least his parents were)

I met Grandma at the Fabric store and we started looking for fabric, but it couldn't be just any fabric. We needed texture. We were excited to find some really fun fabric. One feature that was decided on was feathers. Most of the costumes we found online, did not have feathers, because in the game you don't realy see any unless they are floating in the air, but it was decided that these costumes needed feathers. Joe was very specific that he did not want the face on the belly like most of the other costumes. He and Grandma agreed that the face should be on the hat.

Grandma spent many nights after working at her job, home working hard on the costumes. The only pattern we could find was for 4t and smaller, so she had to adjust it for Joe and Josh. We had a few fittings during the process, and as we watched the costumes come together, it got more exciting, and when Grandma was finished, they were perfect.

The boys love their costumes, and I think they look awesome. Grandma did a great job. On a paper at school, Joe wrote that it is the best costume he has had yet.

It was really fun to watch the boys get these pictures taken. The photographer was just as excited about the costumes as we were. He even took the time to draw the pig face on a pumpkin they had in the studio, and build towers out of blocks they had in the waiting room.

He got some really great pictures, but the thing that surprised us the most,

Was when he had the boys smash the pumpkin.

They had so much fun, and I love how the pictures show just how great the costumes are. Grandma went to a lot of work, and they look so great. Thanks Grandma for always helping make Halloween so fun.