Costumes and more

Whew!  It has been busy around here.  My first challenge was my old calling- we had our big "craft day", and I was in charge of a little FHE kit (short, spiritual lessons for young families) where each of the 30 lessons had an object you could pull out.  But of course, right when I had so much to do finding all of those little pieces, I got a new "job" at church- 2nd Counselor in the Primary.  I have to say this was a bit of a shock for me, and has been a lot to tackle.  I have never done anything with the little kids at church before!  I am perfectly at home working with the ladies my age, or even with the youth, but I am a fish out of water with little kids.  Hopefully this will help me in my life as a mother.

Once I got through all of that chaos, it was time to focus on another big assignment I had.

Doctor Who.

Yup.  I signed up for this.  I am really good friends with his mom - well, this whole family, actually.  And she told me that he really, REALLY wanted to be Doctor Who for Halloween, but they couldn't find a jacket.  Well, I think they did find a couple, but they were over $50.  So we worked out an awesome deal.  She bought the supplies (we found $1.50 Walmart fabric as a miracle) and I counted the hours I spent making the jacket, bowtie and suspenders.  And in return, he has been giving Kaitlyn piano lessons to pay me back, hour for hour, for his own costume.  In theory, I can play piano just fine, so I tried to teach her myself over the summer, but it just wasn't working.  If Jasmine is awake, she freaks out if she can't join us on the piano.  And if she is asleep, then we are trying to keep quiet so she can stay asleep.  Plus, everything always works better when you have a scheduled goal to meet and a third person to be accountable to.  So Kaitlyn has been doing leaps and bounds on piano since she started!

This jacket was a good stretch for me.  I consider myself fairly good at sewing, at this point.  But a fitted jacket is certainly one of the tougher items to make out there.  And following a pattern is something I am out of practice with- I usually just make it up as I go, but that was out of the question this time.  My most difficult section was the front pockets.  I read that section a dozen times and spent an entire hour just making the first pocket because I could not figure out what they wanted me to do.  In fact, when I saw how hard it was, I dashed upstairs to google "doctor who jacket" and see if I really had to make those pockets. Yup, Doctor Who has pockets.  Back downstairs.

And when Spencer tried on the jacket to test the fit, he was floored.  "There are real pockets!  All of my jackets for church just have a fake flap there!!"  Well, that would have taken 5 minutes.  But hey, at least he was thrilled about it!

My favorite part was actually the inside pocket.  There isn't an inside pocket in the pattern, but Doctor Who needs one to pull out his sonic screwdriver.  And since this jacket otherwise just looks like a tweed jacket with elbow patches, I decided to have a little fun with that pocket.

I made a TARDIS out of felt.

That was the best part because it was a surprise- and when he opened the finished jacket and saw the pocket, he was literally jumping around the room and shrieking about how awesome it is.  Reactions like that make it all worth it!

And I finished it in time for Kaitlyn's first piano recital.  Since his mother teaches piano lessons (and has for years), all the kids can perform together.  And since it was Halloween, they all performed in costume.

"But first, I have a joke."  And the best part was that Kaitlyn came up with her own jokes!  She got a "Phineas and Ferb Halloween Joke Book" from the Scholastic book fair at school, and it turns out she has been reading it more than I knew, because when they practiced telling jokes before they performed she came out with joke after joke.  With actual punch lines.

I love the dangling crossed ankles.  The song she played was actually really, really easy for her, but it was entitled "Halloween" and their theme for the night was minor key, scary stuff, so it worked.

Her costume, by the way, came from a garage sale.  She spotted it and decided that was her Halloween costume on the spot.  I had to take it in a bit for her and add the hat and a broom, but it certainly made my job easy this year.

And Spencer, of course, had a Doctor Who joke to tell right before he played the Doctor Who theme song.

As for the rest of the kids, I made a deal with myself.  I could not figure out for the life of me what Jasmine should be.  And when I saw the cute Costco costumes again, I went ahead and grabbed the ladybug just because it was cute.  But it bugged me that I would do that two years in a row for her.  I don't want her to look back at pictures someday and see all the elaborate paper mache and sewing I did for the other kids and think, "gee, thanks mom".  And of course, I realized as soon as I bought the ladybug that Jasmine is Cookie Monster.  We call her monster all of the time because she is either our happy sweet girl - or an absolute menace if she is hungry.  She wakes up starving every day now that I don't nurse her overnight, and if you so much as cut the banana in half before handing it over or give her the wrong kind of cereal there will be a five minute tantrum.  MONSTER.

As a side note, Cookie Monster has a very deep, male voice, but when you search for "cookie monster costume" on the internet it is mostly girls in blue tutus.  I have no idea why that is.

But I told myself that I couldn't make her a cookie monster costume unless I got the jacket done first, since that was such a huge task.  Thankfully, the dress came together in just an hour or two.

And when she needs to be warm, I can even use the black long sleeve shirt and tights from the ladybug costume!

I used cookie crisp cereal for the hairbow, and then ironed on felt for the face and cookies on the dress.

Her favorite part was the shoes, as always.  I tried the first one on to test the fit, and she cried when I took it off.  And then once that one was done and I went back downstairs to finish the second one, she followed me around and pointed to her bare foot with an "eh?" to say "where's the other one?"

And so all costumes were ready for the annual neighborhood party.

Jasmine actually loved trying all of the games.  She spent a lot of time putting the ring on the castle . . .

. . . and was really proud of herself for that.

The photo backdrop, however, was not very interesting.

And this photo might be terrible, but I like it anyway.  She sometimes gets into a "sequence" - yesterday in church she would climb on my lap for a hug, the jump off, run down the pew, and tap another lady's purse with her foot, and then come right back to hug me.  Repeat 10 times.  And that night, she found a hill on a front yard to run down and hug me from behind, then she would go the other direction, come back, and do it again.  She isn't a snuggler, so I take what I can get.  And my friend didn't know how to work my camera, but again, I love the smiles anyway, so I'll take it :).

There were some fun costumes that night!  This girl guarded the pumpkin patch (I honestly thought she was a decoration the first time I walked by).

And this kid did a really great job with his.

But the favorite for the night in our family was the "cake walk".  (Kaitlyn was very confused when I called it that, since there was no cake involved.)  Tyler and Jasmine both LOVE walking and running in circles, so once Jasmine figured out what everyone was doing she trotted along with the rest of the kids.

When she happened to win, people tried to get her to go get candy, but she just got confused.  "I have a job to do- I need to walk in circles!"  But once I opened her Twizzlers and gave her a piece, she happily went back to the circle.  And then when she finished that piece of Twizzlers, she immediately went over to get more from the prize bucket.

Kaitlyn loved it so much she went back the instant the costume parade was done . . . and played by herself for a while.

Such funny kids!