Candy Corn Nails

These candy corn nails are a fun activity to do with the girls during October. I use Sally Hansen Insta-Dri nail polish, which comes in lost of colors, affordable, and is perfect for little girls who have a hard time with patience.

Start by base-coating the entire nail yellow and allow to dry. Then starting 1/3 of the way up, apply the orange and allow to dry. Finally top off the nail with white polish as you would a french tip. Once the colors have set, apply a clear top coat.

Painting Pumpkins

Painting sugar pumpkins is a great alternative to carving pumpkins when kids are little.

I always save the bottom half of an egg cartons to use as a painting tray. Since we were at a friend's house in these photos and I didn't have any play clothes, we improvised with a grocery bag.

I think they turned out pretty festive.

Jessie and the Slinky Dog (Toy Story)

The same year thay we hosted a Toy Story birthday party, the girls requested Toy Story Halloween costumes. Julia wanted to be Jessie and Claire wanted to be the slinky-dog. Julia (age 4) helped design her own costume.

The Jessie Costume:

I don't know how to sew very well, so I'm always looking for opportunities to tweak existing items into crafty costumes for the kids. We went to Children's Orchard (a used children's clothing store) to find jeans and a shirt we could turn into a costume. Next we went to JoAnn's Fabric store to find cow print fabric. Julia was very helpful hunting up and down each isle looking for the perfect print. Next she picked out some red yarn for the wig. We had a really hard time finding a red cowgirl hat. It was Julia who suggested that we just spray paint a brown foam one, I figured why not. With a little white yarn threaded into the trim, it worked perfectly.  We went to Target and purchased a pair of cowgirl boots--lucky for us boots were in style that year, so she had quite the selection from which to choose. Julia insisted it would be more authentic if I wrote "ANDY" on the bottom of her new boots, and never one to dismiss an opportunity for creativity I happily pulled out my trusty Sharpie. She was right. Instead of making chaps, I used iron-on transfer backing to attach the cow material to the jeans. I did the same with yellow felt to make the cuff and shirt accents. The edges were all lined with red rickrack. The wig was made using red yarn and the instructions from the October 2010 issue of Family Fun Magazine (A great magazine for crafty parents).

The Slinky Dog Costume:
 The slinky dog costume was very easy to make but extremely difficult to figure out what to make it out of. My mother and I headed to Home Depot to search for materials from which to make the spring. My mom found this 1/2" gray foam backer rod, which was perfect. I found a brown jumpsuit and wrapped the tubing around her middle. I glued black felt ears to the hood of the jump suit and made a green felt collar. They were quite the pair at all the costume parties we attended that year.

Bert and Ernie

When Julia was 18 months old, she carried her Ernie doll everywhere. She had never seen an episode of Sesame street, however she was drawn to this stuffed character one day at the supermarket. He kept her quietly entertained in the shopping cart and allowed me to enjoy many peaceful shopping excursions. I thought about making her Ernie for Halloween, however since she always carried the doll with her I thought that might look odd. Instead I decided to work her beloved doll into a Halloween theme.

I found a pair of jeans, a white turtle neck, and some saddle shoes in her size. If you recall from other Halloween costume postings, I love the ease of using fleece. I found some striped fleece to make the shirt, and some yellow fleece to make the hat. The eyes are made of felt and I used some faux fur  to make the hair and eyebrows.

JulieBean (JellyBean)

A child's first Halloween is a fun one, mainly for the parents. You can dress them up as cute as you please; for they have yet to develop strong opinions about such things.  Since my daughter's nickname was Julie-Bean we decided it would be cute to dress her up as a jellybean.

I'm not a seamstress and have a hard time following patterns, attaching buttons, zippers, etc.  Instead I find it easier to add on to an existing structure. I bought an over-sized onesie and sewed fleece to it. I prefer using fleece when making costumes because it doesn't fray, and keeps the edges clean. I stuffed cotton filler between the onesie and the fleece to give the costume some bulk. The logo was taken from the famous Jelly Belly (TM) brand, but customized by my husband in a computer graphics program to read "Julie Belly." I made the logo with felt and used fabric glue to piece it all together. I outlined the logo with black fabric paint. The hat was made with a strip of fleece that tied with velcro at the neck. We still have this costume today, although it adorns her teddy bear.