tricksy little hobbitses

The good news is: I actually finished all of our Halloween costumes in time to wear them for Halloween! The bad news: It's hard to get good pictures of a two-year-old and three-month-old wearing their costumes. But they did look incredibly adorable, and I think we'll probably have to use these costumes again at some point because they really were pretty awesome.

So here we have Galadriel, Samwise, Frodo, and Gandalf.

Unfortunately, I couldn't find any witch hats that weren't covered in feathers and other nonsense and require too much work to make a proper Gandalf hat. And I certainly didn't have time to make an actual hat. So that meant that everyone thought my husband was Moses. Costume FAIL. But really, if you look at all of us together, it's pretty obvious who he is. Right? Right? Apparently these costumes were about a decade too late. Or we just live somewhere with people who clearly aren't awesome enough to appreciate LOTR.

Little Frodo ready to go trick-or-treating.  He looks so happy about it! (He was actually incredibly excited about trick-or-treating, just much less excited about taking pictures.)

I managed to make all four of our costumes for about $35, which considering how complex some of them were, I think was really quite cheap.  (I probably should have spent a few more dollars and gotten Gandalf a hat...Oh well.) Here's how I made them on such a small budget:

For Frodo's costume, I made him a cloak (check out my pattern and tutorial), and a shirt and vest (from a Simplicity pattern), and he wore a pair of 9 month pants that were very much too short, but could still stretch over his skinny waist. I was able to get the felt for the cloak on sale, the fabric for the vest on sale, and use some muslin scraps from a previous project for the shirt. That's one of the nice things about making clothes for little ones - a lot of times you'll have enough fabric in scraps from other projects to make something!

I also made the "leaves of Lorien" with some leaf buttons and silver jewelry wire, and a safety pin on the back. They're pretty small, but it was ok since they were for some pretty small hobbits! I used the same wire to make my headpiece - not nearly as fancy and pretty as Galadriel's, but it worked and it was cheap!

My little hobbits! Frodo and Samwise. Looking tired post trick-or-treating

For my little Samwise, I made the same cloak just a smaller version, and made the leaf pin, and the rest was clothes we already had. He just wore an off-white onesie, brown pants, and an old vest of Jack's that I took in a bit because it was way too big.

For Galadriel, I stole my sister's old angel costume. It was HUGE! So I did what I could to take it in a bit, altered the neck line, added a lace applique, and and found a lace ribbon to tie around my waist so it wouldn't be completely enormous. Oh, and I already mentioned the headpiece, but I also used the silver wire to turn a pretty flower button into Galadriel's ring.

Extra bonus: When I bought the buttons, they were buy one get one free, so the leaf buttons were free!

I actually spent more on the gray fabric for Gandalf's robe than on any other one item. The fabric was actually on sale, I just needed a lot of it! My husband is rather tall... But then we borrowed the wig and beard from his dad, who has a Santa costume, so that was free!  

So here are the keys to doing awesome Halloween costumes cheaply:

1. Use clothes/costumes you already have and just alter them if needed

2. Use scrap fabric

3. Shop sales

4. Borrow things

Some day I hope to have enough money to make more authentic and elaborate costumes... but until then, I think we did pretty well with these!

Hope you all had a wonderful Halloween!!