Harvest Fun

So this year for Halloween, I was inspired to do my girls' costumes the old school way; hand make them.  The hand-me-down overall dress Leala got recently sparked the first idea.  It reminded me of the little outfit the character, Agnes, wears in the movie Despicable Me, so I decided it would be easiest to dress Leala up as her.  Plus, Despicable Me, has been our family's movie of the year.  Ever since we saw it with friends for New Year's, Leala has wanted to watch our copy of it over and over and over again.  Before she turned 2, Leala's first full sentence was, "Woah, woah, woah - what is that?!," from one of Gru's lines.  Then our friends who introduced us to the movie in the first place, got Leala a "Fluffy" unicorn from Universal Studios for her 2nd birthday.  So it seemed like fun to go with the reoccurring Despicable Me theme of the year.  From there, somehow I got the idea to dress Adella up as a unicorn to match Leala.  

For Leala's dress, I got a couple pieces of scrap fabric and stamped a part of the song Agnes sings when her and her sisters wander into Gru's "secret lab".  I cut the heart out of a piece of red felt and hand sewed it on the patch.  The patches I machine sewed on to the dress with a zig zag stitch to keep the fabric from fraying.  The little unicorn came from a McDonald's Happy Meal.  The two front hooves have a velcrow closure, but I hand sewed them together with a little stitch for reinforcement.  If Leala ever got annoyed with the unicorn, I could just slide it off the overall strap, but she never did.

I Googled "baby beanie" and came across this tutorial for a DIY reversible baby bonnet.  I shrunk the pattern to fit an 8"x11" size page with a 0.5" margin all the way around and it just so happened to print out as the right size for my 3-week-old baby.  I took the ruffle concept that was used on Quinn's bonnet on the front to make my pink unicorn hair.  I Googled how to sew a unicorn horn and found out it was a half circle, so I used the pattern part for the back of the bonnet for my horn.  To get the horn to stick straight up, I had to pack it as full as I could with stuffing and then hand sew it to the bonnet because the base of the horn was too big for the foot of my sewing machine to sew over.  I used an animal child's hat pattern online to figure out how to draw a pattern for my own ears and a horse stuffed animal we have.  It wasn't until I sewed the pink lining to one of my ears that I discovered they were too small, so I drew a bigger ear pattern that ended up working.  I totally chanced it when I cut a couple slits in the top of the bonnet to attach my ears, but it worked!  And I ended up saving time on the chin strap by finding a piece of ribbon that was already finished on the edges.  It was so great finding the right scraps of fabric and the buttons I needed in my sewing stash.

What was wonderful about these costumes was that they were warm.  I noticed last year, when we were out at our church's Harvest Celebration, that it was cold outside.  Leala wore a cute Snow White dress, but it ended up having to be covered up with a jacket.  So I kept that in mind this year.

Leala was such an excited ball of energy, it was hard to get a good picture of her in her costume.  The one I was able to take in the house before we left was the best one I could get.  If you've never seen Despicable Me, then you have to at least watch this video of the "Best of Agnes."

Leala was still a little too young to understand how to play the games our church had at our annual Harvest Celebration, but I think she was good with just the balloon she got.  She did also enjoy a couple pieces of chocolate, a little lollipop, a glow-in-the-dark bracelet she won, some popcorn, a few bites of a BBQ hot dog, and a visit with a black lab. 

I was so proud of Gregg for working hard all weekend to get his school work done so we could spend this time together as a family.  Not only that, but he was running on about 4 hours of sleep.  And I thought it was so cute how proud Gregg was of me for making Adella's unicorn hat.  He kept telling everyone that I handmade it.  We all had a good time and I think special memories were created.