Monday, October 18, 2010

Easy Mickey Mouse Costume

My kindergartener was so good on Saturday (we didn't go anywhere, he spent the day with his Legos, and we think he needed the time to decompress because he was especially angelic) that I prepared a special present for him: a Mickey Mouse costume! It was surprisingly simple, once I thought about it.

  • hat with Mickey ears (we already had this, $15 souvenir from the Magic Kingdom)
  • white child gloves ($2.50 from Oriental Trading Company); you may add those three lines with a permanent marker
  • black long-sleeved shirt ($3.50 Garanimals)
  • red pants ($3.50 Garanimals)
  • yellow felt (under $1 per sheet at craft stores that sell by the sheet, and some are adhesive-backed already; I used Quilt Basting Spray to make my scrap piece of yellow felt be sticky)

Only the Mickey Mouse hat and the white gloves were "special" purchases; we had the other items. And the hat was a souvenir, not a special purchase for this costume.

You can also find puffy yellow Mickey slippers for "shoes" at the theme parks (and some costume stores) to be thorough, but my kids didn’t complain. The theme parks also have white puffy gloves with the classic three metacarpal stripes, but that also seemed overkill for my kids who prefer dexterity to authenticity.

I used this template:

Directions: Cut out two ovals (about 1.5” by 1.1”) of yellow felt. Attach to the front of the red pants, centered to either side below the waistband. VoilĂ , Mickey pants! Now dress your small child in Mickey hat, black shirt, white gloves, and these red pants.

Sunday, October 17, 2010

Craftitunity

On The Simpsons, Homer uses the neologism crisitunity. I spent so much prep time gathering kid-friendly crafts for our trip to Atlantic Beach that I see craftitunity at every turn. The kids got "leaf buddies" last week, just colorful maple leaves with happy faces drawn on. Cale carried his around (for a couple days), and needed me to repair the stem with a little tape. The rest of that day was all Mommy fix my leaf buddy. With tape! I think the tape was very exciting.