Liams 1st Halloween

    I'm not the biggest fan of Halloween but I do love Fall and who can't appreciate a clever costume?! Since it's Liams first Halloween...which technically means he will not remember a thing and has little to no appreciation for the holiday and its festivities, we decided to dress him up to the point of embarrassment before he develops the ability to be embarrassed.

      So I pulled up Pinterest of course and found a cute picture of a mouse trap with a baby sticking out of it! It looked easy enough to make so $20, a night of painting and sewing, and a few blistered fingers from hot gluing later, we had this...

We were so proud of the end result! If you want to make this costume for your little girl or boy next year, here's what you need.
-one bottle black acrylic paint
-one bottle red acrylic paint
-small paint brush and painters tape
-Sandpaper
-Small grey hoody
-grey fleece material (mine was from Walmart onsale for 1.00 a yard, it doesn't take more than 1 yard)
-4 sheets of pink felt
-dollar store headband
-card stock (one sheet)
-A wagon (obviously)
- Ply wood and 2x4's (the measurments will depend on the size of your wagon)
-Copper piping to size for both the spring and trap part (i just got really thin copper piping for the spring and wraped it around a rolling pin for form.

Chad did all the woodworking, which was pretty much just cutting the 2x4's to edge the plywood that we had cut to fit comfortably over the face of the wagon. Once he did that, we cut a hole in the top and sanded everything down. Once it was all sanded down, I looked up some pictures of Victor mouse traps and started drawing, it took forever but i finally measure out the logo free hand and painted it red (i used a ruler and highlighters to trace perfect circles for the mouse eyes.)
   Then I used the painters tape to add a black border and i printed and cut out letters to trace the word "Victor" and the "R". I love painting so this was my favorite part!
    As for the mouse part of the costume, i just kind of winged it! I traced what looked like a little body and sewed the pieces together them I hot glues pink claws hanging out the end after tracing Liams hands and adding an inch for claws and sewing them together. I stuffed it with an old pillow and staple gunned it to the inside of the mouse trap so it would look like it was hanging out. I totally forgot about the tail so i just cut a whole in the middle of the mouse body and sewed in some of the extra fabric i had fashioned into a tail. As long as you don't look to closely, it looks pretty good!
   I found an old grey hoodie at DI for a buck so I washed it and cut out a circle of felt to saftey pin to the front of it for the mouses pink belly.
   I bought and plain headband from the dollar store and covered it with leftover grey fleece then i sewed grey frece to fit around circles of cardstock i had cut out. once i glued circles of pink felt to the cirlse of grey fleece, i hot glues the ears o the top of the headband...
and...
Shazam!!

Liam loved the ears and even though the sweatshirt was big, he was happy to wear it as long as it was giving him all that positive attention he received.

   We finished the costume just in time for our ward Halloween party! It was a hit and the party was so fun! We played fear factor and visited with lots of different characters. Our ward really got into the spirit and everyone had amazing costumes! On of my favorites was dumb and Dumber with Loyd sporting his cracked tooth. I also loved the guess who characters, so creative!
   Don't mind my disgusting hair, remember, I had been sewing and hot gluing all day!

Chad had to eat ghost powder for the fear factor game...or more formally known as powdered sugar!

Liam just ate his cheese

 

 

The next day we got to go the the town "Hocus Pocus" event in Hemming Villiage! Liam was a grouchy boy, despite the happy looking pictures, Chelsea Thompson is a true pro for being able to capture any smiles at all! But once we got going, he lightened up a little.

Once we got there we met up with cousins and took some pictures with them all in their costumes...a bunch a party animals!

     Later we entered the costume contest and walked in the costume parade. Liam loved all the pictures and getting all the smiles from the pretty girls. I was surprised to find that he had no fear at all when some kid in a scary mask got up in his face. Liam really needs to get a little bit of those "stranger Danger" instincts the doctor told us about. I'm afraid he'd happily go with any Freddy Kruger off the street!
   But dad loved walking with him in the parade and finally getting a break from studying! It was a toasty 75 degrees, which is totally out of the norm for Rexburg in October but thee boys were loving the sunshine! So was mama. Liam won the contest and we got some money to put towards his college fun spending money from it! Way to go Liam, Thanks for the date night money!

 

By the end of the day we had one tired boy, he started sitting in the wagon and even crawling back away from the hole, disappearing into the trap. I LOVED not having to carry him the whole 3 hours we were there and it was nice to walk home with my hubby while Liam sat quietly in the wagon just looking around at all the crazy costumes.

The excitement of the day proved to be too much for his little mousey frame and after propping up the fake mouse bum as a pillow, he fell asleep for the walk home!

Halloween evening was wonderful! Of course, we didn't get any trick-or-treaters but we went out and found a few. We walk around town just creepin I guess you could say, looking at all the cute kids in their costumes. Unfortunely there where more not-so-cute college kids that actual kids but we saw a few little ones and Liam loved being out at night! I realized we never walk around that late at night so he enjoyed it! We went down to the cocoa lodge with the Thompsons and the Cooks and enjoyed some hot cocoa and head back to watch a scary movie and of course...eat. Because a holiday isn't a holiday without food! The boys went right to bed and we watch men in black, or i should say, we talked through men and black. It was a fun night and I think Liam really enjoyed himself! No, he has no idea why we did what we did but he had a good time :)