Word Up!

Finally, the Halloween costume reveal! I started out trying to convince the kids to be Thing 1 and Thing 2 because I thought the costumes would be super easy. My oldest went along with that idea at first, but then she started having ideas of her own. After changing her mind a few times, she decided she wanted to be Word Girl. I decided that wouldn’t be too difficult as long as I didn’t have to try to actually sew the clothing. As I’ve mentioned before, this is my first year attempting to do homemade costumes. I found some solid colored clothes at Children’s Place (after removing a few embellishments), and I made the rest. All our festivities were on Saturday, so I got the costumes done in the nick of time on Friday.

Straight from the planet Lexicon, I present to you . . . Word Girl!

She just LOVED shouting out Word Girl’s catch phrase: Word up!

And we couldn’t have Word Girl without Captain Huggy Face!

If you’re not familiar with these beloved PBS Kids characters, this is what they’re supposed to look like:

image source

I think my main frustration with these costumes was their headbands. I didn’t think I had the skills to try to create my own pattern for hats that would look like the characters’ hats, so I decided to try to make wide headbands. The only problem with that is that since they go under the chin and they’re made of satin, they kept wanting to slip forward. You can see Word Girl’s is clipped to her in the picture above. Captain Huggy Face’s stayed on pretty well, except for when I tried to take her picture and she kept yanking it off, saying, “No dank you,” and handing it to me. When we went to the church carnival and trunk-or-treating the next day, I found some red bobby pins to pin on both of their headbands. Much better.I don’t think I’ve ever seen a cuter dynamic duo!By the time I was finished with the costumes, I felt like saying, “never again.” I was having a hard time convincing myself one day of fun was worth all that work when I could have dragged them to the store and convinced them to conform to what I could purchase. But then we got to the carnival, and each time we finished at one station, Word Girl ran a loop around the gym floor. She was more excited about flying in her costume than playing games and winning prizes. She happily exclaimed “Word up!” for anyone who stopped and said, “Hey, it’s Word Girl!”

Both my girls were so excited and happy to be all dressed up and showing off their finished costumes. I soaked up their enthusiasm, and it made me feel giddy like I had been waiting for this holiday with the same eagerness they had. And at the end of the day, I told myself that maybe, just maybe, I could be persuaded to do this again.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!

Jenny at The Southern Institute for Domestic Arts and Crafts is hosting a blog hop so we can all share our Halloween costumes, and I thought I’d join in. Here it is, my first blog hop ever! Please add a link below to your blog post (not your main blog page) that shows off your kids’ costumes. Then, if you’d like to, you can add this blog hop to your own blog. This will be fun!

I’m sharing this post with (a whole bunch of link parties) . . .