halloween '10

for months i couldn't shake the idea of dressing emaline up as pinocchio for halloween. i don't know why, but the thought of her dressed up like him got me chuckling to myself every time. i usually like to have our family dress up as a theme, and before we had kids, bryce and i teamed up and had themed costumes ourselves. so, the trick was convincing ava to dress up as someone from the movie as well. but ever since she saw the movie, the princess and the frog, she said she wanted to be princess tiana, so i was in for some work. i'm sure next year will be trickier to convince her, but this year i managed to talk her into being the beautiful blue fairy from pinocchio instead, and luckily she obliged and soon enough got pretty excited about it.

the rest of the plan was for me to go as monstro the whale and bryce stromboli. in my head i thought that my tummy could serve as the whale's head and mouth and it's body would continue upward and i could fashion a whale's tail on top of my head. problem was that i didn't have the mental or physical energy to work on our costumes this year, so i just focused on the girls and their costumes... i didn't want to over-do myself and let them down, so this year we had to bow out. i felt a little guilty about it, especially when ava came up to me with a drawing of our entire family in costumes, complete with baby girl #3 holding a candy bucket, too. it melted my heart and hasn't left our fridge since the day she drew it and gave it to me. it reads, "have a happy halloween", can you tell?

but bryce and i did end up dressing up for our own little halloween party this year. we thought this costume up and put it all together in one day. considering the short time and $5 we spent on it, i think it came together well.

the slip showing was not intentional, but certainly added the right touch to my whole ensemble, don't you think?

{pregnant 50's housewife and her milkman}

but enough about us, back to the girls and their costumes... ava's costume was fairly easy, i found a pretty plain blue dress at target, added some material on the skirt to fancy it up a bit, purchased wings and a wand and fixed up a blue headband for her hair. emaline's costume was another story. i started with a yellow shirt and red shorts and everything else i fashioned myself. i first added suspenders and buttons to her shorts, cut out a white collar out of felt, then added velcro for closure. i sewed a big blue bow and filled it with poly-fil to make it puffy then sewed it to the collar. the hardest part for us was the hat. i could not for the life of me, wrap my head around what needed to be done to form and sew the material into the shape of a hat. thankfully, my husband could and with his help and three prototype test trials, we, er.. should i say, he came up with a pretty good looking hat, complete with a blue trim and red feather. this by far took the most time out of her entire costume. he also had to help me fashion the black vest, my creative juices just don't flow when i'm pregnant, but adding the finishing touches and trim i could do. after that i altered some gloves to fit her little hands, while bryce covered an old pair of shoes with golden felt to look like pinocchio's. it took us up until the very last minute to put her costume officially together, but as soon as she put it on, and we saw her cute self beaming in it, all of our hard work paid off.

that night, after a visit to a couple of trunk or treats, the girls informed bryce and i of what they wanted to be next year. ava - cinderella and emaline - snow white. ironically, they already have the dresses and dress up in them at least once a week. and after working on their costumes all month, we had to admit that we kinda liked the idea.

now onto november and having this baby! less than two more weeks left, yikes!