Halloween Costumes 2015 : Boo and Wonder Woman

2012 Halloween Costume : Oompa Loompa

2013 Halloween Costume : Baby Bird

2014 Halloween Costumes : Cabbage Patch Kid and Elsa

I've concluded that I can put time and effort into one Halloween costume a year. That means that the other child (the poor, neglected, unloved child) gets a ready-made costume. At least unless I start working on this in....like....August. Which isn't going to happen. I'm the type of person who is frantically shopping Amazon the three days before Christmas while thanking my lucky stars for Amazon Prime and two-day shipping.

Also note: I actually *like* working on things like this. If I hated it, I'd be store-bought all the way. Store-bought costumes are awesome. I just wish I had the time and energy or make them both; but I don't.

Last year, Emmeline was the pre-made costume. I bought a wig off Etsy and we owned a cute vintage dress that was exactly like something a 1980's Cabbage Patch doll would own. DONE. No effort on my part (except that which involved attempting to keep the wig on Emmeline's head, which was not a small effort). Then, on the flip side...I slaved over Carys's Elsa dress and wig. Like SLAVED over. I worked so long and so hard on that damn (said lovingly) dress and wig. But she loved it and I loved it and I was proud of it.

This year, Carys has wanted to be one thing: Wonder Woman. She's been into superheros lately, so she saw the costume, fell in love, and requested it. Sure, kid. Done. Easy enough. (Note: if I did it again, I'd order a size up. We got a "small/4-6" and she wears a 4T or 5T currently, but it fit perfectly and so it won't last long as a dress-up dress after Halloween. Bummer. Also, she DEFINITELY needed leggings under it due to the fairly short length.)

I did a few modifications to make it more wearable and a little "nicer," though. I sewed the front of the belt onto the dress, because when she was wearing it around the house, the belt and skirt would bunch up (it ties in the back, so I left the back loose). We also bought a couple yards of "rope" (drapery ties) to use as the Golden Lasso of Truth. When I sewed the belt onto the skirt, I also left a space to loop the lasso through. We ended up making an entirely new tiara, as the one that came with the costume was super flimsy and small, whereas actual Wonder Woman's tiara (as Carys informed me) is big and takes up her whole forehead. So I used some gold fabric, stiff interfacing, red felt, and some sparkly gold elastic to make a new tiara for her. I cut a piece of interfacing in the correct shape, sewed the piece of gold fabric over it, then sewed the elastic to each side. Then I covered the back side - the side that would touch her forehead - in a soft red felt.



We threw a white long-sleeve leotard (actually from her Elsa costume last year) and a pair of fleece-lined leggings for warmth/modesty. And then we were done. So Carys's costume modifications and DIY parts were easy and took less than two hours. Easy peasy. My kind of DIY!



She also insisted over. and over. and over. that Wonder Woman has black hair (and she's not wrong) and that she needed black hair. So I bought a can of black temporary hair color to spray her hair. I wasn't entirely enthused about that hair spray. 1. It never completely dried, so the entire night it was rubbing off on her leotard and costume and on anyone/anything that it touched. When she was riding in her carseat, I had to cover the back with a towel to prevent transfer, and she couldn't sit back on a couch at anyone's house. 2. It kind of faded/came off quickly. Within just a couple hours her natural color was already showing through. 3. Although it did come out fairly easily, it was a giant mess to get out.

 

In retrospect, I should have tacked or pinned her leggings up so they stayed in place. Oh, well.

Emmeline's "Boo" costume was the second "sweatshirt-based" costume that I've made (the first being Carys's bird costume from two years ago).  I initially wanted her to be a superhero so we could be a superhero family, but Chris and Carys teamed up to convince me that she should be "Boo" from Monsters Inc. How could I say no to that?

 

Most of the costume tutorials I found online were complicated and cumbersome (using bowls for the top of the Boo costume, etc) and I was 100% sure that Emmeline wouldn't wear anything like that, so I tried to come up with a more comfortable solution. (Though those tutorials DID result in totally adorable and realistic costumes - so if you have an older kid that will wear a bowl on their head, there are some fantastic tutorials out there!).

I bought a purple hooded sweatshirt off Amazon to use as the base. I wasn't thinking and got her current size - 2T - and I totally should have gotten at least a size bigger.

I sewed elastic around the inside of the body of the sweatshirt to make three equal-ish segments. The plan was to stuff these to give it the fluffy look of the source costume, but after doing some testing, I determined that Emmeline wouldn't wear it if it was stuffed, ha! So unstuffed it was left.

I also ripped the arms out of the sweatshirt and replaced them with a soft white minky fabric that had a dot pattern. I closed the end of the new sleeve, but left a flap so she could put her hands out of it if she wanted (and had her hands out pretty much the entire time).

For the head of the costume, I cut "teeth" from stiff white felt and sewed them around the edge of the hood opening. I bought an actual mop head off Amazon (ha!) and cut pieces of it to use as the hair. Figuring out how to get it to flop in the same manner as the original character was REALLY HARD. I ended up gathering the pieces into two bunches, then hot glueing and sewing the bunches to the hood on end. I then took random pieces and hot glued them in spots that looked sparse.  The eyes were two styrofoam balls with the back half covered in purple fabric (from the sweatshirt sleeves I cut off) and black felt pupils (both hot glued onto the ball). I then stuck pipe cleaners (three twisted together, then folded and twisted again to make a short stalk of six) into the back of the balls (secured with hot glue again). I bent the last inch of the ends of the pipe cleaner stalk out at 90 degrees to make kind of a stand to attach to the costume. I never really figured out the perfect way to attach them to the hood - plus if they were attached permanently it made it a much harder costume to wear in her carseat - so I just used safety pins and pinned the ends of the pipe cleaners to the hood.

You'll note in these pictures that she pretty much refused to keep the hood on...at all. This is probably the best picture of the hood on that I got all night (and even here you can see we didn't have time to make sure the hair was lying correctly or anything - it was a "put it on and take a picture before she realizes it's on!):

To finish the costume off, she wore purple leggings and we put her hair in pig tails. She DID have shoes and shoe covers made of the same minky fabric as the new sleeves, but....well, Emmeline doesn't love shoes. And it was warm enough out that she didn't have to wear them, so I let her be. 

Carys has already informed me that next year she's going to be a fairy - and it's a little disconcerting to realize that Emmeline might have an opinion next year and want to give input! Although to be completely honest, I'm hoping I can get her to wear Carys's bird costume from 2013 because CUTE and FREE equals a done deal in my book. 

One More Sitting Room Post?

This room has had more posts than the entire house put together, I think. Probably because it's taken so damn long to get anywhere with it. Also it's such a huge change that I can't stop looking at it. Or writing about it, apparently.

When we left off, the sitting room looked like this:

I threw a couple of fall pieces into the shelves and hung up the burlap bunting to celebrate the season (very begrudgingly, I tell you, I'm already over winter and it hasn't even arrived yet), but my plan for that middle spot has been to have a giant 2.5' x 5' canvas sitting on the buffet. See photoshopped rendering below from this post:

I found a canvas that exact size listed on Craigslist (kismet!) for $45 - haggled down to $35 - with the plan of painting over it. A blank canvas of that size is WAY more than $35 (I've been looking) so I was super excited to find one the right size.

I picked it up Thursday and even though I'd measured it out, I was a little worried it wouldn't fit. This thing is huge. Here I am standing next to it, with it resting on the floor:

I threw it up into the space just to make sure it was the right size, and it. fit. PERFECTLY. (When it's done, it won't be competing with the banner or the topiaries or the boat thingy, so imagine it alone.)

What a freaking score. I don't know, maybe canvases of those size and at that price are on Craigslist regularly, but I haven't seen them, so I'm all, "IT WAS MEANT TO BE!" over here.

Now my big project is painting it. I really have no idea how to do this, and I haven't painted with acrylics or oil paint since high school, so it will be....interesting. We'll go with interesting just so I don't get too intimidated and give up before I start.

Again, I have no idea what I'm doing, but just to get SOMEWHERE with it, I decided to use some of the leftover primer from painting the trim to take the canvas back to white and give me a blank slate.

Carys is painting a birdhouse she made with the same primer I'm using on the canvas.

I literally just finished the first coat and then came and wrote this (trying to squeeze it in before Em wakes up from nap). I'll let it dry and then.....I guess the next step is go to a paint store? To buy paint? And brushes? Hipefully I can find a sales associate who knows something so they can lead me in the right direction. Or do you know? Tell me what I need if you're secretly (or not so secretly) a great artist!

House Updates, Round....Who Knows Anymore

The sitting room even MORE done than last time I said it was done! REJOICE! 

I'll give you a glimpse of the before and after before making you delve into my totally succinct post with absolutely no superfluous words or pictures. HA. Right. 

HOLY SHIT, RIGHT?????? I live here and I'm having a hard time believing it. 

Anyway, back to the beginning. 

So after we were done painting, I swept the room and realized that I got paint all. over. the. fcking. floor. UGH. USE A DROPCLOTH, LARA. It was a deliberate choice not to use a dropcloth because I was thinking that we'd be replacing these floors soon, but since we ended up not selling our house (we're renting it out) we didn't have the large chunk of change to invest in this house, so we'll probably be living with these floors (and the two hundred other types of flooring in the house) for a while.  LESSON: USE A DROPCLOTH ALWAYS.

The result of my BAD LIFE CHOICES

So I spent a day using Goof Off* and a scraper to try to get all the primer, paint, and caulk off. The paint came off pretty easily, but the primer was another story. I was on my hands and knees scrubbing and spraying and scraping for hours. Ooooof. Not fun. My back did not like me after that night. 

*If you are painting, do yourself a favor and get this spray. It makes getting those marks off SO much easier! Recommended by St. Danny and enthusiastically endorsed by me!

No pictures of this OH-SO-INTERESTING process, but after that, I worked on putting the shelves back in, which involved lots of math and measuring and re-checking measurements and cursing builders who can't make even or level built-in shelving units. Although each side actually should have five shelves, when I started working out the distances and the spacing, I realized I only wanted to use four, which would allow for each section to hold larger frames - if I was using five shelves, I would have only been able to fit 5x7s or smaller. 

(NOTE: all of these pictures show a broken drawer handle. I lost the screw for that drawer so I need to go pick another one up. Someday. When I'm both at the store AND I remember. The struggle is real, ya'll.)

I collected all the frames in the house, laid them out on the floor, and picked a variety of sizes in a variety of finishes to fill the shelves. I tried to keep it somewhat cohesive, while still being eclectic and fun. I don't know - in my mind that keeps it from looking too formal while not being jarring. Question mark? I DON'T KNOW WHAT I'M DOING, OKAY? But, like...if I used a silver frame, I made sure to have at least one other silver frame in the collection as well. Is this a design rule? I don't know. But I think it worked? 

Choosing the pictures was the HARDEST part. I could have filled 20 more shelves, easily. I love my family or something, I guess. I think my kids are cute, I guess. I sorted through hundreds that I had lying around (waiting to be put in an album...ho hum) and printed off a few more to add to the pile (I'm not the only one who is woefully behind in printing, right?) and then just tried to match my favorite pictures to frames. I let Carys pick out a couple of her favorites and Emmeline...well, Emmeline liked to pick up piles of pictures and throw them all over the room. So she wasn't quite as much help. But she did uncover a couple that I used with her method, so....thanks! I guess! I also included a couple of small prints that were all in the same little scrapbook paper set that the hipster in me couldn't resist.  #lifeisbeautiful #arrows #embarkonadventure #celebratetoday #somuchhipster

I tried really hard to get an equal number of pics of both Carys and Emmeline, but Carys has been around for 2.5 more years than Em has, so while it's close...it's not exact. I'm sorry, Emmeline. Thus is the life of the little sister.

As a reminder, here's the before (like WAY before...before we moved in) -

And here it is now.....

I almost can't believe it's the same room, and I look at it daily. And that transformation was with just. paint. Well, just paint and a couple of billion man hours, but still. PAINT. MIND BLOWN.

That middle section is acting as a placeholder for a couple of decor pieces and those are not final (in fact, I've already removed the tall topiaries - if you scroll up to the very top before/after pic you can see it as it looks right this second, complete with some fall decor I threw up). Those will be replaced with a giant painting. I'm picking up a 35x60 canvas from Craigslist later this week (the exact perfect size!!!! for $35!!!), which I'm going to repaint in a way that pretty much just rips off the inspiration picture from this post. Well, rips it off as well as my meager talent will allow.

This window wall is DYING for curtains. Unfortunately, we'll have to make them or custom order them. None of my old reliable home decor stores (um, Target, basically) had curtains that were long enough to cover these windows, nor did they have rods long enough to span the width of the windows. To do it the way I think I want, I need 144" long curtains and a 136" long curtain rod.  I debated where I wanted to hang the rods - I've seen these types of windows with the rods running just under the half-circle window and with them running across the top of the half circle, and I think I've decided I want them at the top of the half-circle.  I just don't want to cut the wall height visually by hanging curtains 1/3 of the way down it.

Like this only like 1/10th this grand:

(source)

So picture curtains here. I'm thinking just simple cream or white, maybe with the ends dipped in gold or some other fun color.  And maybe some white or bamboo roman blinds? 

The other side of the room literally just has a tree. That needs to be repotted pretty desperately. The tree will probably stay there, because it's too tall for any other room in the house. The blue towel, however, will be replaced with a nice drip tray. Maybe even one on wheels? #BIGDREAMSYALL

Soooo let's just go back to the pretty side....

We also need to figure out the lighting situation in there. As you can see below, right now there are only lights within the built-ins, so it gets really dark once the sun has gone down. We're going to need some lamps, which frankly I'm not looking forward to. I don't know anything about lamps. Where to put them, what kind to choose, ANYTHING. I like my built-in lighting.  

I scoped out some chairs at a place called At Home and found some contenders. At only around $200 a pop, I'm sure they're not lifetime investment chairs that I'll be passing onto my grandkids, but they were comfortable enough and at that price I wouldn't be devastated if when they are ruined by tiny humans.

What do you think? Any grab your eye as the perfect fit?

In other news, we also painted the brass fireplace surround black. This is a project that I've wanted to do since we moved in but on a whim I finally ordered the paint and then one morning when Em was napping I decided to just go for it. I started by cleaning the brass well and then roughing it up with a light sanding, per the instructions on the spray paint.

Here's the before - it actually doesn't look bad in this picture, but in real life and up close, the brass was really tarnished and full of spots/rust and in bad shape. 

I taped off everything (hint: a plastic drop cloth instead of a dozen garbage bags would make your life ONE MILLION times easier and also expedite the taping-off process by a factor of about a thousand) and stuck a cut-to-fit piece of cardboard INSIDE the fireplace, behind the doors, so I could get the inner brass pieces but not any of the actual fireplace interior. I had no idea what the overspray would be like - would it reach the built-ins on the side? Would I be fine? I got sick of taping so I just went for it and figured I could stop quickly if needed and add more plastic and dropcloths. Well, I was mostly okay. The overspray didn't reach the cabinets, but it did get on the floor, so I stopped to grab another dropcloth and covered the floor entirely. Luckily, the spray wiped off the floor easily (I'll begrudgingly give tile that benefit).

This spray was different than other spray paint I've used in that the second coat had to be done either within the hour, or after 48 hours. Assuming I read it right, anyway. Since I didn't want to live with garbage bags on my walls for two days, I did the second coat within the hour. I gave it about 45 minutes to dry, then sprayed again. It took pretty much the entire can of spray paint to do this small job, but I always apply spraypaint liberally. I know you're supposed to do lots of light layers, but I'm too impatient for that.

As you can see above, I used Rustoleum High-Heat Ultra. We haven't lit the fireplace yet, so I don't know how it will hold up then, but so far it's been good....except if you slam the doors open wide and allow them to hit the VERY sharp brick corners of the fireplace. Then it scratches. I realized that the brass was scratched in that place, too, so not just a problem with the paint. I don't know if there's a solution for that, but...we'll just open the doors carefully, I guess.

 I don't LOVE how that area is now a gaping black hole, though. I might have to see if I can replace the handles on the doors to bring some interest back into that area? Or maybe put some white candles inside it to brighten it up? But on the plus side, I think that takes care of all the brass in the main floor??? RIP brass.

Now please let me RIP the tile floors in the family room. SOON.