A costume party

Our next door neighbour had a birthday party last night and both Zoë and Alexander were invited. It was a costume party, which is always fun, but always a little bit frantic because it moves my costume deadline from Halloween to...whenever the party is. On a more positive note, two halloween costumes are completely finished so that's a little bit off my plate the next ten days or so!

Zoë wanted to be Fleur Delacour this year. I ordered a dress for her that she felt matched the Beauxbatons vibe. She has been living in it for a week—sleeping in it, playing in it. We basically have to wrestle her out of it in order to wash it.

I crocheted a little hat for her and Miriam whipped up the cape and cuffs from some velvety fabric we scored in some Buy Nothing haul a while ago.

Zoë looked simply marvelous, very elegant, très chic, as they say.

Alexander wanted to be Dumbledore. I was not sure how I was going to pull off a Dumbledore costume until inspiration suddenly struck me. And by "inspiration" what I mean is...that Alexander slid down the driveway on his bum, putting some holes into the seat of his shorts. They were size 4T and he just turned 7, so I wans't too eaten up about their loss, but I did put them on his head while I was folding laundry.

"These can go straight into the trash," I said after examining their condition. I stretched out the waistband, and put the shorts on Alexander's head...just to be silly. 

But then I was like, "Actually, those could be your hat!"

So we turned the shorts into his hat, added a wig and beard using various yarn textures and crochet techniques, trimmed the hat with a bit of Christmas ribbon...and then hunted around for a robe or cloak of sorts. 

We found a large Amazon gift bag floating around in the basement, that was kind of a shimmery silver/grey, so we turned that into his cloak. I had just enough of the Christmas ribbon to line the cloak so it looks like it matches his hat. 

The glasses are an old pair of mine (the ones Rachel broke when she bashed my head with a pool noodle) that I fixed up with some hot glue and ribbon.

Underneath everything he's wearing as much grey as he could find. 

His costume turned out awesome.

Here they are posing together before heading up to the party:

One of the games at the party was a "poke-a-cup" game, where you fill various cups with prizes, put tissue paper over the top so that the contents is a surprise, and then have the party goers "poke" through the tissue in one of the cups to choose their prize.

Zoë was the grand winner—she came home with a $5 bill!

Alexander got a halloween stamp. He was over the moon about it.

"Zoë just got five dollars," he said excitedly, "But I got a stamp! That means we can send unlimited letters! We don't have to use those stickers anymore. We can just stamp, stamp—good to go until the ink runs out! That's got to be worth more than five dollars!"

Now, if it were the case that that's how postage stamps work, his stamp would indeed be worth more than five dollars. But, unfortunately, his stamp is a "just for fun" stamp, a "just for decoration" stamp, not a postage stamp. So we'll still have to use "those little stickers" (which are actual stamps) to send our letters. 

It was quite a letdown for him.

But the kids had a fabulous time overall!