Suárez Family: Past and Present: Sesame Street Halloween

I feel like our family Halloween costumes are gaining momentum, and it's hard to pick a favorite. (Although, Mary Poppins...) I enjoy the opportunity to be creative, knowing it has a purpose will all be over by November. This year we decided to do Sesame Street, using an already-owned Elmo costume as our starting point.

We started planning back in September, so there was plenty of time to search for the perfect materials. Siena wanted to be Cookie Monster, so we bought this blue dress and made felt cookies to pin all over it. Bonus: she now has a new dress to wear. I knew I wanted a big, blue headband thing, so as we were wandering around Walmart I saw a shower sponge. We cut it apart and stitched it to the headband. A big pack of ping-pong balls came in handy for several costumes' eyeballs.

Pouf: $3

Felt:$0.50

Ping Pong balls: $5

Dress: $11

I agreed to be big bird, because I didn't feel like anyone else would want that job. And I'm feeling kind of big these days... so it was fitting. I bought these orange pants at the thrift store, glued on pink fabric stripes, and created a feathed 'fascinator' -- slightly less fancy than the queen, but pretty cool looking nonetheless. My favorite part was the eyeballs, which were hard to see in any pictures. (They had pink and blue fabric on the back, like Big Bird's real eyes.) I re-used the shirt I wore in our family pictures. And coincidentally I already owned a yellow headband.

Feathers: $5

Pants: $2

Hyrum has been told on multiple occasions that he looks like The Count on Sesame Street, so that was an obvious choice. We borrowed the cape from my Mom (instead of making a slightly-more-accurate green one, which didn't sound fun.) He painted his face purple, wore a black suit, and I made that sash out of felt.

Felt:$0.50

Face paint: $2

Somehow we got Tiago excited about being Ernie. We found this shirt that looked pretty similar, and he can add it to his wardrobe. We added the yellow tape around the edges so it looked more like Ernie's. The orange hat came from the thrift store, and the trickiest part of all the costumes was figuring out what to use for Ernie's hair. One Saturday I went to the craft store to wander around and gather materials, and I spotted a 3" ball made out of this fuzzy/hair material. (Honestly, I think it was a cat toy.) We cut it apart into a rectangular shape, but it still looked a little flat... nothing a little (lot) hair spray couldn't fix! Last minute I found a clown nose in the dollar bin at Target.
Shirt: $7
Hat: $2
Hair: $3
Nose: $1
Ducky: $3

Lastly we have the cutest one! I saw the idea of turning a baby carrier into a trash can, but just adapted it. I made a trash can and lid out of flexible foam board. I used felt to make Oscar's face, and then loosely stitched it onto an inside-out green onesie that used to be Tiago's. And then I got really fancy and put a fabric-covered elastic chin strap on his hat. That's proof that we got started pretty early!
Foam: $1

So our grand total on these costumes was $46 (plus a lot of hot glue), but more like $28 if we exclude the shirt and dress which my kids can keep using. I get a lot of satisfaction out of creating something so cool out of very little.

We won our ward's family costume award for the second year (although there was barely any competition) and have started (unsuccessfully) brainstorming for next year.