Gnomes at Home

At last, Calder's costume. Mine too, actually, but the pictures of him are (obviously) way cuter, so he'll get the bulk of the layout. The whole inspiration behind this was Beckett insisting that his baby brother wear some sort of facial hair for Halloween. Beards on babies are hilarious. Especially to 4 year olds.I made a basic cone hat from red felt, and then the beard from gray felt. I attached the beard directly to the hat, which was definitely a gamble. On the one hand, there was a slightly better chance that the beard would stay on at all. On the other, if he hated the beard, he'd pull off the hat too and be costumeless. Turns out, he liked it just fine. In fact he still wears it regularly (he loves hats) and runs laps around the kitchen island. Go figure. I've been hugely inspired by the brilliant beards by Erin of I Made You a Beard. I ordered some awesome stickers from her for B's mustache party favors. I LOVE her yarn beards and maybe someday I'll try my hand at one. But her felt beards are also fantastic and definitely informed my own. I hadn't planned on making myself a beard, I figured a gnome hat or maybe a toadstool hat would suffice, but Calder's was so quick and so awesome I couldn't help myself. I started to think of them as my "gingerbread beards." The scalloped edges and white contrasting stitching makes them look like they belong on gingerbread men. I'm in love. And as an added bonus, never before has a Halloween project left me so excited for Christmas. The rest of our costumes was farmed from our own woodsy closets. Turns out it's pretty easy to find gnome clothes around here. Frighteningly easy. Here I've been thinking I'm at least a little stylish, but all along I've just been dressing like a Scandinavian folktale. You know? I'm really ok with that. Maybe I'll even pass it along to the next generation.

Cotumes, Finally - The Robot Edition

I've been sitting on this post, hoping that the Grandparent Paparazzi would come through with some better full costume pics of the boys. No luck, though, so you'll have to use your imagination to fill in the blanks.Beckett wanted to be a robot, actually a space police robot, so I had the chance to make a classic hardware store costume. Dryer duct arms, metallic duct tape striping down his sweat pants, baking sheet panels in front and back and reflectors everywhere. Unfortunately all of that metallic, reflective robot-y goodness made for difficult photography, especially at night. Exhibit A:And exhibit B:Actually, despite the blur, I love the one above. Look at all that reflection!
Zion got a robot head too, made from a utility lamp, and a duct taped sweatshirt with knobs and planets and other spacebot effects. They looked great together. My awesome big boys. Stay tuned for part 2: The Gnome Edition coming soon.