halloween 2015 {mermaid & pirate}

Halloween is a holiday that no one in my family really likes. My mom was actually really awesome so we always decorated like crazy for the holiday and I always had a costume, but she and the rest of my family just aren't super fans.

However, for some reason or another, I like the holiday. I don't like spooky or scary things, but I love dressing up in a fun costume. Russ is more like my family--he doesn't care too much about dressing up. BUT he is a good sport and lets me plan our costumes and once he okays his costume, he's fine to wear it. But for the first 3 Halloweens of our marriage, I was in school, which didn't allow for much time to plan a Halloween costume.

This was the first year I actually had some time on my hands. But even still, I didn't have costumes for us two weeks before Halloween. I had talked to Russ about us being a pirate and a mermaid a few months before Halloween, but I just never got going on it. (Luckily though, I did ask him to stop shaving and not cut his hair about a month before Halloween, just in case I actually followed through with the mermaid/pirate idea.) Then my friend invited me to her Halloween party (which was a week before Halloween) so I decided I had to get going with a costume, and when JoAnn's had the perfect fabric, I finally got started. (For more details on how I made the costume, see below the signature line.)

I loved how our costumes worked out! :) We actually didn't end up going to that friend's party because Russ was sick, but we were prepared the following week for my niece and nephew's halloween birthday party and for the ward trunk-or-treat.

At the trunk-or-treat, we even made our trunk match our costumes with a theme of "Under the Sea"! :)

On Halloween night, we didn't have any plans because we had considered going to Portland that day for a Volvo parts close-out sale (Russ is restoring a '66 Volvo). Last minute we tried inviting a bunch of different friends over, but of course everyone already had plans. So instead, we just spent the evening alone together, watching Hocus Pocus, eating candy, and getting only three trick or treaters because we didn't get home until 8:15pm. (Which basically means I we ate that candy the following week . . . such a problem!) Also, I finally got my "trick or treat" banner hung up on the morning of the 31st. Ha at least we got to enjoy it for a day! :)

So this was the year I finally made us super awesome costumes, maybe next year will finally be the year that we have an epic Halloween party! Last year's party was pretty good, but I want to do something even bigger. We'll see :)

Also, sometime around Halloween I made these cute pumpkin-flavored pumpkins using my mini bundt pan. I thought they were so cute and really stinking delicious. I used this recipe {which was delicious} and then just used food coloring to turn the icing orange. The stems are cinnamon sticks :)

Making the costume turned into a little bit longer process than I anticipated, but I really liked how it turned out. After browsing several pictures on Pinterest of mermaid tail ideas, I got started on my own. I basically used a straight skirt pattern just to get a basic outline, and then I extended the top so it would fit at my waist instead of my hips. After putting in a side zipper, I realized I would definitely need some darts to make the skirt fit right, so I just kind of pinned out the fabric I needed out of there and did darts from scratch. Next, I sewed a hem at the top and a triangulated hem at the bottom. For the fins, I used three different colors of tulle and cut smaller squares and bigger squares out of each color. I hand sewed two layers of tulle around the whole bottom of the skirt--larger squares underneath and smaller squares on top--and rotated through colors going dark-medium-light-medium-dark etc. I used about 2.5 yards of the light and dark tulles, and 3.5 yards of the medium tulle. That's a rough estimate, because I actually bought too much tulle overall.

Next I had to consider what I was going to do for a top. I was initially thinking I'd use swimsuit fabric and use the same pattern I had used for the top of my mermaid swimsuit, but I knew I'd have to do all sorts of modifications to make it modest enough to wear with garments. After spending a whole week making the tail, I was pretty much done with sewing, so I opted to just wear a colored shade shirt and I actually really liked the look; I saw a lot of shell-covered push-up bras as tops in my search for the perfect tail, and I honestly liked the more covered look better.

After that, I had to find the perfect accessories. First of all, Laynah gave me the idea of wearing pearl necklaces. Next, I remembered that I bought this awesome shell ring in Mexico like 5 years ago, so I wore that as my wedding ring. Finally, I knew I wanted a starfish in my hair, so I bought one from Michael's for about $3 and then cut a piece of fishing net into a strip, and used some of the extra fishing net to secure the star to the headpiece. The accessories really completed the whole look :)

Finally, I had to consider makeup. I really liked this look


because it was otherworldly but still pretty. However, I couldn't find someone to do it for me, and I tried myself with my own makeup (and found out I actually had a lot more than I thought!), but my makeup just wasn't dark enough so it just looked kind of weird:

So I just opted to do more intense makeup than I usually do. All in all, I loved how my costume turned out, and the pictures really don't do it justice in my mind :)

Russ's costume was pretty simple. He wore his own pants and we bought a large long-sleeved white t-shirt from DI for $3. I added some eyelets and string and then it was amazing how good it looked once he tucked it in and pushed his sleeves up a bit. The large size was key in making it look right, because that's what made it look all puffy. Next I got an idea from my parents' costume box where I found kid-sized faux leather boot covers. I got some black vinyl material from JoAnn's (3/4 yard, I think) and (after making practice boots out of scrap fabric and making sure they fit) made some adult-sized faux leather boot covers :) Last was the accessories. Originally we planned on Russ wearing a bandana like a pirate, but then that night he liked how his hair looked so he didn't want to wear it. With no other accessories, Russ kinda just looked like Prince Eric (since I was a mermaid and all), which was NOT what I wanted. I didn't want to be Ariel, and I didn't want Russ to be Prince Eric--I just wanted us to be a generic mermaid and a generic pirate! Haha :) So lucky for us, my mom found some pirate accessories on sale for cheap, so Russ added a sword and an earring to his look and he was no longer mistaken for Prince Eric :)

Price wise, we spent about $26 for my whole costume and $10 for Russ's. An average of $18/person won't work when we have a bunch of kiddos in the future, but for this year, and these amazing costumes, I think $36 total sounds pretty good :) (especially when you consider that the cheapest mermaid tails I could find cost about $90, and we will most certainly wear these costumes again in the future.)