Halloween Recap

claire was a chicken!

Yesterday was a bit of a whirlwind. I had been so excited about dressing Claire up for Halloween seriously for months now. I had been throwing costume ideas around for a quite a while, then finally settled on an owl. I came across a great costume on A Beautiful Mess and used that as inspiration. I was going to make her a cute dress with plenty of fabric "feathers" and a hooded cape with wings to top it all off. I worked on it for a solid month. Now let me get one thing clear. I do not sew. I kind of know how to work the sewing machine. It takes me a good hour to get the bobbin wound and the needle threaded, but I am getting faster.

Fast forward to the night before Halloween, and I was a frustrated, sad mess thinking far too much about my decision to create this owl costume. I thought maybe I was trying to fulfill this selfish need of my own to hand make Claire's costume no matter what my sewing skills were, instead of thinking about Claire and putting her in something adorable. She is 16 months old. She deserves to be the cutest thing out there trick or treating! 

So I trashed the owl costume (I was having WAY too much trouble with the arm holes) and started a new endeavor on the day of Halloween! I made this chicken costume in one nap time. I was really proud of myself to say the least. Thanks to Claire for taking a good two and a half hour nap! 

such a trooper in this monstrous costume

The costume turned out great. One drawback was actually getting Claire into the costume. We needed a two person team to do it. As a matter of fact, it probably would have been better with five people. Claire was screaming her head off, and I don't blame her. There was no give to the costume and she had to fold like a tiny airplane pretzel to get her arms through. (I also had to make a couple snips in the back of the onesie to get it on a little better. Even though I'm sure the neighbors were about ready to call the cops for disturbance of the peace, Claire was all smiles once the costume was on. She was such a trooper, even with all those feathers in her face (and sometimes her mouth!) 

She did great trick or treating. We probably stopped at eight houses and Claire played the shy card at each house. Then after hanging for a minute or two she would just ham it up and wave and make sure to say "bye!" 

heading out to the first house!

with grandma

grabbing candy from her new bag a neighbor made for her from extra straps from the hospital emergency room! 

digging through the neighbor's candy bowl

It was a good Halloween. One of the last things I told Danny was , "next year make sure to remind me that Claire is only in her costume for a couple hours." Throwing together a costume was even more fun than working on it for a month. =)

I love my little chicken.

I am going to sneak some photos in from the pumpkin patch a couple weeks ago. We went twice because they had such a great tractor ride! Claire loved riding through the sunflower fields and "smelling" the flowers as we drove by. Although, I think all I could smell was a bunch of gasoline. ha! 

What a good October.