A Royal Halloween

This is a bit late, but I need to be better at blogging about things like Halloween.  I'm a slacker mom and never kept a baby book of Audrey's firsts and life events, so I count this blog.  Hopefully when she asks me to see her baby book, blogger will still be around so I can pull it up to show her that somewhere I documented some parts of her childhood.

Anyway, Halloween.  The past two years Halloween has been more for me to parade Audrey around in a cute costume than it was for her to get candy.  She's been a spider and a duck and this year she actually had an opinion on what she wanted to be for Halloween.  We knew that she wanted to be a princess, but choosing which one was quite the process.  Audrey was not a big fan of the dresses they sell at the store.  She could tell the colors weren't exactly right.  I decided to make her costume.  I have fond memories of homemade costumes my mom made for us and I wanted something challenging to do.  So, off we went to Hobby Lobby.

I presented Audrey with the pattern envelopes for Cinderella, Snow White, and Rapunzel.  She initially picked Cinderella but as we were walking over to choose our fabric she frantically informed me that she had changed her mind -- we needed to get the Rapunzel pattern.  I got the Simplicity Rapunzel dress pattern because I knew that it would be easy enough for me to follow.

I gave myself PLENTY of time to work on this thing.  I started in the beginning of September.  It was a good thing I did because 1) I don't have tons of free time to just throw together entire dresses and 2) because I'm not a seamstress by any means, so I had to re-create the bodice of the dress several times.  By the way, satin sucks to work with.  If you ever make anything with satin, do yourself a favor and splurge on the good stuff.  "Costume satin" ironically is horrible for costume making.

The beginnings of the dress.  I was so proud of those eyelet things.  

After a few weeks I finished the dress.  It turned out quite well for my skill level, and Audrey loved trying it on during the process.  I kept it hidden from her for a long time because I knew she'd want to wear it non-stop.

I found a wig at Target for only ten bucks (it was an actual Disney Rapunzel wig) and Audrey LOVED IT.  I didn't think she'd like it and was worried she wouldn't wear it for Halloween but I was so wrong.  She wanted to wear it every day.

It looked so nice, and then Audrey wore it a couple times and it knotted up into a gross fake-hair ball.  I had to soak it in fabric softener and comb it out for an hour to get it looking even close to what it looked like fresh out of the package.  Lucky for us, Rapunzel sports a lovely braid in the movie Tangled, and so I got away with braiding it up and keeping it nice and tidy.

Audrey was thrilled with the entire ensemble and proudly wore her costume.  We even had Pascal and she carried around a frying pan (for a few seconds) to complete the look.  She was so pretty and the wig looked like her real hair!  Several people asked us as we were trick-or-treating if it was her real hair, haha!

 

She looks pretty believable, right?

Audrey had a blast trick-or-treating.  Every time she would get some candy she'd come running from the house, shake her pumpkin, and say, "listen to how many treats I got!"  Then start running toward the next house.  She was not shy to go up and say "trick-or-treat!" and thought everyone was inviting her into their homes so she'd just walk right in.  No matter how many times we told her, she just didn't get it.  She would get so upset when we'd make her come back outside.

Tony dressed up as one of his co-workers for Halloween (more as a joke for his work party) and I didn't have a costume.  Feeling a bit left out I decided to see what I had.  Hours before we had to leave for trick-or-treating, I looked through my fabric box and my closet and I came up with something I feel was pretty clever, especially for not spending a dime and having seriously like an hour to whip something up.

No picture of Tony, unfortunately.

Audrey thought it was so funny that I was Cinderelly (what she calls pre-ball Cinderella) and kept commenting on it all night.  I was surprised more people didn't know who I was.  One person asked me if I dressed up like a slave (?!?!) I guess I sorta did?  

I'd say Halloween was a success for Audrey.  She keeps talking about it and doesn't seem to understand that it's over.  Every time she sees Christmas decorations in the store she says, "it's Halloween time!"  I'm so glad she enjoyed it.  Celebrating with her around makes things so much more fun!

I hope everyone had a fun Halloween!