Sunday, November 8, 2015

Halloween 2015 - Peter Pan Characters

Ellie, Abby, Elijah, and Caleb

Dressing my kids up for Halloween has admittedly become one of my favorite annual activities. :D It's hard not to enjoy taking on the project of coordinating cute kids!

Unfortunately, this may be my last year getting to do a theme with them. I have to tell you, I worked HARD to pull this year's theme off. It was easy to get Caleb and Abby on board with dressing up as Captain Hook and Tinkerbell, but the other two proved to be more difficult. It only took a little sweet talking to get Elijah on board with Peter Pan, but Ellie? She was not having the idea of some nobody named Wendy when Hello Kitty was on the table.

So we sat down, watched the classic Peter Pan movie, and discussed Wendy's role in it....and she decided that she loved the idea! Happy Mama! So we have at least this last year of coordinating, and then it's all up in the air. That's fair, I suppose. :)

I thoroughly enjoyed this (maybe last) year of doing themed costumes with the kids! And I thought this was one of our best years anyway!

Caleb

Caleb has been really into the pirates lately. We have a dress up trunk that we gave to the kids for their 2nd birthday, and the kids still love playing with it! Because our kiddos are still so tiny, they can actually still get away with wearing 2T and 3T costumes in a pinch. We had a boy pirate costume in our trunk, and Caleb had been playing with that, so it was easy to ask him if he wanted a new pirate costume more his size.

In past years, I've always at least partially made their costumes, this year, I didn't do a single thing. I've finally come to terms with my total lack of sewing skills and mediocre stitch witchery skills, so it was all store bought (with the exception of Ellie's costume!) It actually took two tries to get Caleb's costume correct. The first time I ordered it, it came in a size 12 Boy. I put it on him and he was swimming in it. Haha! It was also a really weird Captain Hook costume with way too many little pieces to tie into place, so we sent that one back and came up with this one. It came in the mail and he said, "I LOVE IT!!! I love it SOOO much!!!! Thank you, Mommy!!!"

Pure delight!!

Abby

Deep down inside, I think Abby considers herself the real Tinkerbell. It's been this way for a good year or so now. The Halloween conversation when like this:

Me: Abby? Do you want to be Tinkerbell for Halloween?
Abby: YEEEESSSSSS!!!!!! And can I wear wings????
Me: Sure! I bet we can make that happen!
Abby: I'M TINKERBELL!!!!

And the rest is history! We bought her little sparkly fairy shoes to go with her dress. Her day was pretty much perfect!

Elijah

Elijah....oh my stars. 4-years-old is such a literal age. Crack me up! After Elijah agreed to be Peter Pan (which wasn't hard) he started to work on his method acting to fully embrace the role.

One evening in mid-October, Sean and I were cleaning up the kitchen after dinner, and we suddenly heard this huge THUD come from the living room. We ran around the corner to find Elijah face down, limbs splayed on our hardwood floor behind the couch. "Elijah! What happened? Are you okay?!" Elijah sadly lifted his face up off the floor and looked at us, "I can't fly."

He had apparently decided to stand on the back of the couch and LAUNCH himself off of it because since Peter Pan can fly, he needed to be able to fly as well. We had a similar tragic moment when his costume arrived without wings because.....HOW WAS HE SUPPOSED TO FLY? I think we somehow didn't fully explain the idea of "pretend", "costumes", and "imagination" to him.

And then....oh yes, Elijah's costume had a lot of drama attached to it.....and then, there was the part where the picture on the costume showed Peter Pan with a sword, yet the costume did not come with one. Neither did we own one that he could carry. Really, what kind of a mom am I? Asking this kid to be a non-flying Peter Pan with no wings or sword. Seriously, unacceptable. So in an effort to provide a "sword", I handed him the pie server that we were given for our wedding 7.5 years ago. "Here....do you want to carry this pie server as your sword?" "YES!!!!"

So Elijah carried a pie server around and flashed it at appropriate times....and I will be showing this photo and telling these stories to his future wife someday. :D


Ellie

After all of my campaigning with Ellie, once I had her falling in love with the idea of being Wendy....I found out that no one makes Wendy costumes. What???? Apparently, all of the little girls want to be Tinkerbell, and Wendy just isn't high on the list of costume choices. Hmm....must be why I had to explain that character to Ellie.

So I started my hunt for a costume. First I check Etsy and found a few Wendy costumes that were WAY out of my price range. I knew we would get some mileage out of the costume in the dress up trunk....but not that much mileage. Then I decided to look for a "plain blue nightgown" or a "plain white nightgown" and just dye it blue. No luck unless I wanted a granny-style nightgown. Then I tried "vintage style blue nightgown" or "vintage style white nightgown". Then I tried going to Mennonite clothing websites to see if they had anything remotely close that was in my price range.

What I discovered is that I could find the correct CUT of a nightgown in my price range (about $20) but it was covered in licensed characters, mostly from Disney movies. Or I could find the correct plain STYLE of a nightgown, and it would cost me upwards of $70 plus shipping and a dye job.

How is it that Wendy costumes are this hard to find?! So I put it out on FaceBook, which is where I should have started, and a friend offered to whip up the simple dress above if I would go shopping for the materials for her. It was the most DARLING little dress ever! It came in the mail and Ellie simply glowed from head to toe in her perfect Wendy costume, complete with sash and hair bow. I wish I could have really caught a photo of how much she adores this dress! (Special thanks to Amanda for not only saving the day with her sewing skills, but giving Ellie a dress that she adores!)

In fact, Ellie and I love the dress so much, it didn't end up in the dress up trunk after all. I snagged it from the costume pile, and I asked Amanda if she would make a second one for Abby in a "Tinkerbell green" color so that the girls can wear these dresses as regular clothes. I wanted mileage out of their costumes? Done!

This year, we managed to make a three day event of Halloween. We must be making up for the lost years that we spend on lockdown when they were little. We started on Thursday afternoon by visiting the "Boo Fest" at Sean's work. Sprint had little booths set up around their courtyard that the kids could visit and "trick or treat" at. On Friday, we went to their preschool's Halloween Trunk or Treat. Then on Saturday, we went and had pizza with Sean's side of the family before taking them on their first real house-to-house Trick or Treating experience. We were in a safe neighborhood and only stopped by a few houses, so it worked out well. Other than the life size mechanical Angel of Death that came to life at that one neighbor's house. That was a bit....startling. But other than that, it was a fun little venture! It was also *my* first time trick or treating, so I may have had a bit more fun than normal parents do. *smile*

So there you have it! Peter Pan Costumes for the family, and I'm crossing my fingers that maybe everyone will want to theme it up again next year. But if not....I'm going to be okay with that. Still, a mama can hope, right?

Want to see previous year's costumes?
Halloween 2011: The Four Seasons

Halloween 2012: Superheroes
Halloween 2013: The Peanuts Gang
Halloween 2014: Frozen Characters

This post may contain affiliate links. For more info, please see my disclaimer page.

5 comments:

  1. Honestly? At this point, I think it is pretty selfish to force your kids into coordinating costumes when they are capable of expressing their own desires as to who they want to be for Halloween. Your daughter wanted to be Hello Kitty-let her!

    ReplyDelete
  2. It was my first time trick or treating too! It was in our church friend's neighborhood and it was nice because all the neighbors were out in their front yards having friendly parties. Not too many scary decorations about. I might have preferred a church party like I grew up with, but if I live in a neighborhood like that I can see the reason to trick or treat there for the sake of community.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Those costumes are absolutely adorable! I love stories attatched to each of them giving us a glimpse of their little (or Big!) personalities. Keep up the good work momma! I also love trick or treating.... I am positive I have just as much fun as the kids! Rebecca S.

    ReplyDelete
  4. So cute in their costumes. Looks like they had lots of fun!

    ReplyDelete

We would love to hear what you think! Please know that all comments are on a slight delay as we approve them on our end. Thanks for commenting!

Related Posts Plugin for WordPress, Blogger...