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Trick or Treating and a DIY Chameleon
3 pm on Halloween
Pauline: "Let's try not to give Rowan too much candy tonight."
Ian: "Yeah let's let him play with his pieces of candy and let him eat one or two at the end of the night."
Pauline "What a splendid idea."
Halloween this year was a success! For Rowan. I think it was truly the best night of his life so far. Since it was his first time trick-or-treating, he didn't really get it until we got to the first house and he saw someone put a handful of candy in his Target bag with his own eyes. I saw a wave of gleeful understanding come over him. GAME-ON.
We had some friends over and TOTed at about 6 houses in total before going home for some white chili, apple cider and pie. Rowan is at the happy age where 6 houses feels like life's greatest adventure! And he forgot all about his bag of candy that I stuck on the fridge when we got home.
Lest you think all was calm and all was bright, the bowls of m&m's at little arms' reach, combined with my generous 9 and 11-year-old siblings, provided Rowan with more candy than he has ever had in his life. He was literally flushed and shiny-eyed, running in circles and jumping off stairs until about midnight. MIDNIGHT.
Help.
This is when we learned what it truly means to be a parent on Halloween. We also learned that a toddler-Halloween-hangover looks remarkably similar to the real thing.
He was also a tiny bit naughty
Below I'm sharing how I made Ro's DIY chameleon costume!
Full disclosure: I have not sewn anything since like 5th grade. If you are a talented seamstress you should probably just close out of this tab. Please don't show this to your grandma.
DIY CHAMELEON
These are the main suspects:
1.) 1/2 yard of fabric from Jo-Ann Fabric
2.) Googly eyes from Jo-Ann Fabric
3.) Tiny piece of felt from Jo-Ann Fabric
4.) Wire hanger from my parent's closet FTW
5.) Awful pillow from the thrift store for 50¢.
Besides the sweat suit, everything else added up to about $5
I started with the curly tail and I totally winged it and I think you could probably find a better tutorial online, but this is the lazy girl version, people.
Chameleon Tail
* You will also need a toddler to make everything take 10000x longer
1. Lay out fabric, fold it in half (length-wise) and cut it (length-wise) in a tail shape. What is a tail shape? I have no idea. I wanted it to be long and tapered at the end. Here's what I came up with.
2. Sew tail along the side and the tapered end so that there is an opening on the wider end to stuff full of thrift store pillow stuffing. I sewed it by hand because I am a glutton for punishment and I am afraid of sewing machines. Does someone want to teach me how to use a sewing machine?
*HELPFUL TODDLER
3. Turn the tail inside-out so you can't see my 3rd grade stitches.
4. Massacre thrift store pillow and stuff that tail with the stuffing.
5. Straighten out wire hanger and stick it through the tail. Sew up open end of tail and curl that tail like a chameleon!
Ian had the idea to sew a section of the tail along the whole backside of the sweatpants, instead of just attaching at the waist. This made it way more stable!
6. Sew that chameleon tail along the backside of sweatpants so that each stitch also sews in the wire. This helped the wire stay in place!
Googly Chameleon Eyes
The whole point of this costume was to make everything easy to remove so that Rowan can still wear the sweatsuit after Halloween, so nothing was glued!
1. Cut out two circles of felt and sew the center of them to the sides of the hood with minimal stitches.
2. Hot glue googly eyes to felt circle
3. Enjoy Halloween and cut everything off when Halloween is over!
