Happy Halloween from the Future!

Love, The Jetsons

Monsters Inc Costumes How To

Monsters Inc. Costumes Tutorial!

So a lot of people have been pinning these costumes and asking how I made them.  I figure even though its a little after the fact I might as well link up a quick how to for anyone who is interested.  Unfortunately I don't have any pictures of the process but I will do my best to explain what I did.

Now let me just make sure you are well aware- I am by no means a seamstress.  I just get an image in my mind and do my best to whip it up.  Sometimes- ok most times that involves a glue gun and I try to limit the amount of sewing I do- since that never looks as good as I would hope. Plus I like quick so since I never use pins I can't do too much fine sewing anyway.

Sulley

Sulley was by far the most difficult costume mostly because I had nothing already available for it.  I bought a couple yards of fleece fabric in the bright blue (to get the most accurate sully fur without lots of shedding).  Then I got a yard or so of the purple for the dots and light blue for the belly.

My husband works at a hospital and wears scrubs everyday so I grabbed some of his scrubs to use as a pattern.  I chose scrubs because they are baggy and would allow a larger appearance to the sulley costume. 
I folded the fleece so that I could cut both the front and back at the same time and I put the scrubs on top.  I traced around the scrubs adding an inch all along the edge.
Next I removed the scrubs and cut. 
Then I sewed along the edges leaving as much room as I could.  I of course left holes for the hands and feet and when I got to the neck I sewed it up from the shoulders then afterwards I cut slit down the middle back.  When I was finished I sized it up on my husband.  I made some adjustments due to my lack of sewing skills and then added Velcro to the back to allow him to hop in and allow me to be able to lock him in there! 
Then I cut an oval out of the light blue fabric that fit on the belly- I had my husband keep the costume on until I got the size of the belly just right.  Then once the oval was the right size I guess you could  say I "frayed" the edges a bit so it looked like fur- I think this really helped with the whole look of the costume!  Then I glued it on!  That's right I glued it so I didn't have to sew it! Plus I liked the finished look a bit better.
Next I cut random sized circles and ovals out of the purple fleece and layed them out on the front of the costume.  Once I liked how ti looked I glued these on as well.  I did the same for the back.  Remember you want these to be random and not symmetrical because it is a monster after all. 

The head of sulley was a little tricky. In fact I am having trouble remembering exactly how I did it. (See below) I believe what I did was play around a little with a piece of fabric.  I made a loose tube- kindof by folding the fabric in half (sewing it) and had it sewn at the top close it off.  Then I cut the hole out for the face.  This might be the simplest way- I added the little place right above the forehead just to make it seem more read and have less hair showing but having it like a hood would probably be just fine. 

I had some gray cotton fabric lying around so I traced some large horns out of that.  Then I sewed the edges of that and left the widest side open.  I turned it right side out and filled it with cotton.  Then I sewed these onto the hood/hat- just so they would stay in the upright position.  Next I added more purple dots to the head. 

Finally Sulley was done!

Mike

So the mike costume was easy!!  I went down to savers and found the brightest green sweatshirt I could find (it can have something on it and you can turn it inside out- mine was blank!).  The one I got was also v- neck fleece which was perfect for a monster so that was a bonus!  When I got home I cut the arms off and I used the back as the front so the v was in the back and I could add Velcro to cinch it up later.  I then folded the bottom and sewed a new seam with room for an elastic.  Then I cut two holes in the inside of the fabric to get the elastic in and then out and put the elastic in and tied it up to fit my little guys waist- this gives the ball look!  Then I cut out the eye and a mouth from some black and white felt I had lying around.  I used denim for the blue of the eye.
We bought the green pants from the girls section at kohls (shhhh don't tell).  Then we bought the green shirt at a thrift store.  The Mike hat was bought at iparty (they have them in all colors)  I printed the monsters inc. logo from the internet. I had some gray fabric lying around and made little triangle pillows out of some small piece.  I cut 4 triangles and sewed two of them together on two sides, stuffed them with fill and sewed up the other side then I glue gunned them to the top of the hat.  Sorry I am not more technical- I do not have much training in any of these areas!!

Celia

So Celia was pretty easy. I got my purple shirt and pants from Walmart and then bought fabric to match for my head piece.  I bought the scaly fabric at JoAnns it was probably with the mermaid stuff but it worked perfect.  When I made the dress I just took one of my dresses and traced it then sewed the sides and tops and added a hem.  It was a cinch! I made it a little big- tried it on sewed a bit to adjust to how I wanted it to fit- no pins no tracing- not smart but it worked!  Then I found an old lei lying around that looked like the cute trip around the collar and glued that on with a glue gun.
The head dress was the trickiest part.  First I took some jersey fabric that I had from an old purple shirt and made a little cap- you can find a newborn baby cap tutorial all over the internet.  But to sum it up you just cut out two large half circles a little bigger than your crown and sew the round part of the half circles, turn it right side out and you've got it. I used this as my base.  It doesn't have to be perfect it just needs to fit. I  cut long about 15 in x 4 in strips of fabric and folded them in half the long way- then I sewed up the side and one end with a somewhat rounded shape.  Then I turned it right side out and stuffed it with cotton.  The closed rounded out end with the nicer finished look was the end I glued the googly eyes on because it had a nicer edge.  I repeated this process to create a total of 5 snakes. Then I cut little pieces of felt for the tongues and glued them on along with the eyes. I made some long sewn pieces without stuffing or eyes to add on top of the other pieces to kindof make the head look like a pile of hair. I glued like a crazy woman until it looked just right. I threw on a pair of flats and I was ready to go!

Boo

The hardest part of this costume was having a baby girl who was so adorable and looks kindof like boo but I pulled that part off like a superstar so the rest was a cinch!!

The Boo costume obviously was so easy.  Purple pants and a pink shirt.  I made our pink shirt out of one of my old pink shirts so I could get the longer nightgown tunic length so it would be more accurate.  Throw some pig tails and pink ribbons or bows on her and you are good to go!!

So there it is folks.  Nothing too fancy- not too tricky and believe me when I say my sewing skills are very very basic.  The nice thing about halloween costumes is that they are usually only worn once and don't need to be perfect.  They are just plain fun!Sorry this is just a quick overview but people were asking and I did my best to remember what I did.  I will try in the future to do tutorials as I go.

Happy Halloween- Monster Style!

UPDATE: A lot of people have asked about the tutorial.  I recently put one up here! Enjoy!

On Saturday we went to Trunk or Treat at our Church.  It was so much fun!  

Our little family dressed up as your friendly Monsters from the original 

Monsters Inc.  I made all the costumes.  To be honest they weren't too bad.  I did

spread them out over a few days so that made it easier.  

You still have time to pull this one off for Halloween!!

Visiting Salem, MA

So Nicki and I (along with our babies and hubbies) met up in Salem, Ma the weekend before Halloween.

It was a lot of fun.  There is such beautiful architecture there.

 We enjoyed the variety of costumes and vendors on Essex St.

 We ate at a local tavern- here are our boys reading a book while we waited to be seated.  My boys are on the Right and Nicki's boys are on the left.  They are all such cuties! The weather was great.

 There were lots of snacks and fun things to see.

At the end of the fun filled day we took our long drives home.

For those looking to visit Salem, October is obviously a very busy time to go but if you like spooky costumes, haunted houses and tons of people it is the place to be. 

That aside I think it would be a great place to visit any time of year because there are lots of things going on and like I said there is some beautiful scenery!

Thanks Nicki and Fam for the fun day!



Scaredy Cat Brownies

 Yesterday at school we celebrated my daughter's birthday! Since her birthday is so close to Halloween she chose to taken in a scarey treat to share! I showed her these Scaredy Cat Brownies and she loved them! For the receipe I will once again send you over to the Martha Stewart Everyday Food blog. In that recipe she has you make brownies from scratch and include mint patties in the middle of the brownies as well as on top for the cat faces. I decided to take the easy path and just use a brownie mix and do the cats on top.
I used a 9x13 pan and managed to squeeze 20 cat faces per pan. This was ok since I was making them for 5 and 6 year olds. If I were making them for adults, I probably would have only done 15 per pan so they could be a little bigger brownie bites.

 For as high maintenance as it looks, they actually went quite fast. When you put the mint patties on top of the warm brownies they will start to get a little melty, which is then the perfect time to place the candy eyes and chocolate chip ears on the bats. Once the patties are completely cooled then you can use the gel frosting for the mouth.

Happy Haunting with some spooky treats!

No carve pumpkin decorating!

 So again Alicia comes through with a litltle craft of her own.  She got these little pumpkins 5 for $3 at Walmart and decorated them with different types of paper and markers.

 This is a nice way to decorate without using those big scary knives used for carving.
The look like Little Witches!  So cute! 

Plus its very fun to have tiny pumpkins all over the house, decorated or not!

Thanks again Alicia

Candy Corn Craft

 I have seen these cute candy corn yarn decorations before so this year I decided it was time to try making them! I had a weird experience while making them, it was easier than expected, yet harder than expected. Let me explain...

These little darlings, don't actually use any glue. The styrafoam acts as velcroe and holds the yarn well enough while you start wrapping the the multiple layers of yarn. When I was done with one color I would leave the end sticking up into the area of the next color so as I was wrapping the next color it would secure it. When I got to the top and was finished wrapping the white, I took the end and poked it into the top of the foam with a pencil.









I used the cheapest yarn I could find at Walmart, although I will say the orange wasn't that cheep. They didn't have a shade of orange that I liked in the cheapest brand, so I had to go a step up.


The foam cones I found at Jo-Ann's and I had a coupon. Good thing since they cost more than I thought they would.

This project took me about two hours to complete, mostly because I was watching television while I was doing it. As you can see in this picture if you are looking at the cone from above you can see the top is still green, I think I will paint the top of the cones white with some acrylic paint so it blends better.





You can really make as many as you want, or just one, I just tend to like odd numbers of different sizes. They are super cute! I can't decide if they will be a center piece of my table, or on my fireplace mantle. Suggestions anyone?

Halloween Goodies

Drool right? YES! I love peanut butter, so putting it in mini cupcakes with a Reeses in it is heavenly! So the official name of these little darlings is Mini Triple Treat Cupcakes. For the recipe you can visit the Martha Stewart Everyday Food site. I took these treat into Kindergarten on Monday and they were a big hit. The teacher had also made rice pudding for the kids since they are learning the letter R, but these went off way better to the class than the rice pudding! hehe  I have never made this kind of treat before and it ended up being super easy. I went and bought mini cupcake pans for this, and with the recipe you bake both pans at the same time, which made the whole process very quick! These treats would be great to make for the masses since you are baking 48 at one time!! Try the recipe and share some, everyone will be glad you did!!

More Cheesecloth Ghosts!

I cannot take credit for the creation of these cute little ghosts but only for taking the pictures. These were created by my very artistic and creative aunt Alicia. She is alwyas creating cute decorations for her house. I love them!

I thought these were both spooky and classy at the same time!

She said all she did was place the glue covered cheese cloth over small plastic cups with a ball of plastic wrap at the top (to create the rounded head).  Then she placed black construction paper eyes on the wet cheescloth and waited for them to dry.  She decided to hang them from the ceiling light.  They are so cute!!

Look at them- what a cute little ghost this is!

Thanks Alicia!

Halloween Matching Game!

I have become more of a digital scrapbooker, therefore my large scrapbooking supply has mostly been relaxing in a box, a few pieces being used as cards when I find the time to create them.  Well I decided to throw together some of my cute halloween paper and some die cut packs I had and create this Halloween Matching Game

I decided to go against the norm and use two different papers in order to make it a little easier for kids to play.  Therefore they choose one candy corn card and one spooky night card, thus narrowing down the choices a little more.

Not only is it adorable but it is so fun to play and a cinch to make.

A little added bonus is that you can piece the parts together to make a puzzle so its more like 2 games in one.  Seems like the perfect activity to keep the kids occupied when they ask you at 2pm if its time to go Trick or Treating yet!!

How I made it.

1. Cut the 12x12 paper into 6 equal pieces (I did this with 4 pages, 2 of each- a total of 24 cards)- You could put them all on the same paper of course!

2. Glue die-cuts to the backs one match on candy corn and one match on spooky- you could draw pictures or print out clip art if you didn't have die cuts or cut your own with your cutting machine!

3. I laminated it to make it nice and sturdy to keep year after year

4.  Then We played!