DIY Dorobek family costume 2013

It’s almost Halloween! Oh candy and costumes, and pumpkins galore… how I heart this time of year! And since we bought a real house (vs our  condo) in a real neighborhood this will be the first year we (fingers crossed) have tricker or treaters! I’m assuming tricker treaters end at 8p and then it’s on to costume party extravaganza, hosted by my party throwing bestie, Rachelle! After last years glow stick people mis hap, I was determined to make that happen this year. But, then I saw this little pin from this awesome blog post and decided I was over glow stick people. After all, I wrote a whole post last year, wishing Bob a happy 70th birthday (he was born on 10-29-42). Check out that post, and you have to watch the remix in #3, you won’t regret it. Since I’m pregnant (19 weeks!), I really wanted to find a way to incorporate the bambino into our costumes. Thus, the squirrel in my happy little tree! I give you, Bob Ross, a happy little tree, and a squirrel… our first little DIY family Halloween costume!

The best part is the costumes are pretty dang easy to make. Well, Andy’s is super easy… the only thing we had to buy was a brown afro!  Here’s what you need to make all 3 costumes:

• Brown long sleeve giant man’s t-shirt (This was harder to find than I thought! I finally got one at Walmart for less than $8.)
• 4 pieces of felt
• Sewing machine
• Sharpie marker
• One fall branch limb from Hobby Lobby (It was all 40% off this week.)
• Cardboard
• Paint/ nail polish/ paint pens
• Paint brush
• Jeans, blue button down, brown belt, brown afro

I bought those fun “tree finger gloves” from Target, but ended up taking them back and using my bare hands and painted orange nails! The gloves were awkward, and I wanted to be a fall tree not a bright green tree. I also wanted to be able to use my hands.

I googled “cartoon squirrel” and doodled a simple image on paper to have something to mimic in felt. I used fabric scissors and started cutting my felt pieces.

I was going to use glue to attach the squirrel to the black tree hole, but then decided to just add a few stitches. I stitched up his tail, attempted to use the fancy star stitch on my machine for eyes, and sewed around the belly circle. Then I had to make the tree dress! Oh and I attempted to use real acorns, but opted for a giant felt acorn, it was cuter!

I’ve sewn a few costume  “dresses” from giant men’s t-shirts. Like my indian and Wilma costume of Halloween pasts. I just buy the biggest, cheapest t-shirt I can find, and sew up the sides. Nothing fancy. I turned the shirt inside out, tried it on, and declared I needed to take in about 4 inches from both sides. I used a white pencil to give me a kind of guide line and then I sewed it up.

After I sewed up one side, I folded the shirt in half, and used that as a guide for the other side. This is not a perfect method, but it works! And the whole dress took me about 45 minutes to make. The arm pits were a little tricky, and they still look wonky if you look close, but who cares! I’m a happy little tree!

After the dress is sewn, I used a good ol’ Sharpie to make bark! I doodled bark all over the t-shirt. Front, back, and sleeves. Then, I hand stitched the squirrel to the shirt. I wanted that to be easily removable in case I jut need a tree costume with no squirrel in the future. You never know, ha!

Making my branches was really easy! I just cut up the one strip I bought from Hobby Lobby into 5 smaller pieces. I have a head piece, 2 bracelets, and 2 shoulder pieces I attached with safety pins. Andy had most of his costume in his closet, we just had to hunt for the brown Afro, which we finally found at a one of those big box costume stores for $15 and I made him a painters pallet out of cardboard. I used a Sharpie to outline a bean shape, and cut it with an XACTO. It’s a giant piece of cardboard I use to spray paint lots of things, so the left over paint marks worked out perfectly!

Since Bob was painting a happy little fall tree, I gave him a fall color palette. Here’s Bob in full costume. That beard came in handy!

And here’s Bob painting the squirrel! I can’t believe we find out the gender of this little guy next week!

A few more fun pictures from our Halloween photo shoot we did with a tripod and camera on a timer in our backyard! Bob’s a very good painter…

It’s a baby squirrel… ahhh!

I’m 19 weeks pregnant, and I have gained 9 lbs. The bump is definitely visible to me, but to others it just looks like I ate to much pizza, ha!

One more pic with Bob looking at the camera and me smiling nicely:

And there you have it, the first Dorobek family of 3 Halloween costume! Wanna see our DIY Halloween costumes from years pasts? We’ve been Dorothy (DIY) and tin man (bought), lady bug (DIY) and sumo wrestler (bought at Good Will), Fred and Wilma (DIY), and 70 year old man and 70’s hippie (DIY)! Happy almost Halloween, friends!

Psst… here are 22 more DIY pregnant Halloween costumes!