I worked on Pandora's costume first. She chose her costume early, so I was able to pick up a matching red jacket at a consignment sale & removed a logo from its chest. Then I found these cute tiger ears and tail cheap on Amazon (the picture is totally wrong), and after giving up trying to find orange pants in a store, I bought a pair on eBay.
Unfortunately the brownish ears/tail and the bright sherbert orange pants totally clashed!
I had an old pack of brown fabric dye and used a tiny bit to turn the pants into more of a rusty orange. The color change isn't very accurate here, but you get the idea! Then I cut some rounded stripes out of dark brown felt & glued them on with white school glue so we can remove them and use them as normal pants after Halloween.
Next up was the shoes! I always keep my kinds in velcro shoes, so I didn't really want to spend a lot on lace-up costume shoes she'd only wear for a few hours. Then I remembered this pair of red shoes a parent from Orson's school handed down to us... she kept forgetting to bring them, and by the time she did, the dog had chewed up one! I wasn't really sure why she bothered after that, but we'd been using them for dirty outdoor play. In the end they ended up being the perfect base for Daniel Tiger sneakers!
First I cut some tongues to size out of red felt & hot glued them on (and chopped off the 'Toms' tag) ~
Then I covered the fronts in white felt. I glued the line across the top first, then folded it down and trimmed & glued it along the bottom edge ~
Daniel's laces are lines rather than X's, so that made things easy. I bought a cheap pair of shoe laces and tied them in bows at the end. Then I chopped them off wider than the tongue, folded the ends under, and glued them down ~
Next I needed to do a little painting. See how grungy the bottom edge looks against the white toes?
I used some craft paint to paint over the bottom edge, then watered down some red paint & went over any of the exposed shoe to brighten the red a little too. The white toes ended up getting a little pilly after the first wear, so I ended up painting over the white felt too, for a little protection. I swear I took a photo of the finished shoes, but never found one, so you'll have to admire them from afar ~
Now Orson's costume gave us some problems! First he said he wanted to be a monster or a pickle, then he decided on a "monster pickle"! Once again I could find no green pants in a store, so I finally found a matching sweat shirt and sweat pants online. Then we took him to the costume shop to find a monster mask, and he really wanted a Hulk mask, which was the perfect green monster in his mind. We said we couldn't buy that one or else everyone would think he was the Hulk though, and after that he was pretty sulky about the whole thing and said he just wanted to be a pickle.
Meanwhile I had already ordered a sweat suit which, even with a few green dots, was going to look nothing like a pickle! I was feeling like a pretty rotten mom until I found this giant inflatable pickle, which I thought would help things a little ~
And then, right before heading to the craft store for some green felt, I had a great idea for a pickle hat. My sewing machine has been out of commission for a few years, but I knew I could hot glue this one! For the hat I just measured how big I wanted the opening for the face, and how far above and below I wanted it to fall, as well as the width. I drew it out on some fleece with a Sharpie, cut it out and the fit was just right! Orson insisted there needed to be a stem, which was a good call. I stuffed the top of the hat with two plastic grocery bags, then I cut out two sizes of circles from some bright green felt and used school glue again to attach them all over.
Here he is with the inflatable pickle, which we ended up ditching after a few houses, of course. With the hat we really didn't need him though! ~
Both kids loved their costumes, and I was pretty pleased they picked something other than the normal Elsa and superhero. (Pandora loves Elsa, but I saw a *lot* of them this year!) And of course they had a great time Trick or Treat-ing!
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