Halloween 2011: our Scooby Gang costumes

I didn't mean for it to take so long to get these photos posted, but life has just gotten in the way. Today school has been cancelled for snow, which is ironic since on Monday it was 71 degrees. It was like that last week too: nearly 80 on Monday, then 6" of snow on Wednesday. The only reason school wasn't cancelled last week too is that we were already on Fall Break! I am really thankful that last week's snow melted before Halloween and this week's snow held off for 24 hours so that we could enjoy a beautiful sunny Halloween and not even have to wear coats over our costumes.

Speaking of costumes, here's how we dressed up this year:

For a family with a little girl who LOVES Scooby-Doo, this was a natural choice! In fact, we chose this theme before Halloween last year, so I've been thinking of it ever since. Here's a run-down on our costumes:

The Mister as Freddy: wore his own jeans, blue dress shirt and white v-neck sweater. The orange scarf was thrifted (I had to work a little magic to make it the right shape) and the horrible blonde wig was new, but bought at the thrift store.

Maren as Velma: wore a perfect thrifted orange turtleneck sweater and thrifted red skirt. Bought the orange socks at Gymboree. We tried two different wigs but both had issues and she was not feeling great, so in the end we just curled the ends of her hair under and called it good. She also had more square glasses that looked much more Velma-like, but they were an adult size and wouldn't stay on so in the end we went with Harry Potter glasses I had in the costume box. Ah well. She also had a homemade magnifying glass made from a dowel, a thrifted embroidery hoop, black spray paint, and a piece of clear Saran Wrap.

Porter as Shaggy: wore his own brown pants. I thrifted a green turtleneck and when the weather turned out to be so nice that day, I went ahead and cut it into a v-neck to be more authentic. His hair is naturally shaggy, I drew stubble on his chin with an eyeliner pencil, and he gamely carried around a Scooby stuffed animal all night.

Heidi as Daphne: my purple vintage dress was thrifted 7 years ago, so to make it authentic, I simply sewed on two stripes of wide lavender ribbon and then made a headband to match. My green scarf was thrifted, my pink tights (which I didn't think would be quite so lacy) were on super-clearance at JC Penneys and my wig was new but from the thrift store. I couldn't find the right color of shoes at the thrift store, so I just bought a pair and painted them with acrylic paint (which totally cracked when I wore them, but they gave the right effect). The cutouts on the front were made with chipboard that was painted and hot-glued onto the shoes.

Bronco the yellow lab as Scooby: Even Bronco-doggie got in on the act! I made him a Scooby collar using teal ribbon and then made a tag out of teal and metallic gold cardstock that I hung off the ribbon with a binder ring. Bronco went with us to the Trunk-or-Treat, but stayed home for the actual trick-or-treating around the neighborhood.

We got so many nice compliments on our costumes, and I have to not-so-humbly admit that I think we rocked them! I may not be able to sew everything, but I can MacGyver the heck out of some thrift store finds!

I do wish I had just sprung for the $20 Velma costume for Maren, just so that we could have had the child-sized wig and glasses but I was determined to find something cheaper and make it work. Those efforts included one disastrous (new) black wig from the thrift store, and a thrifted blonde wig that I attempted to color brown with a brown Staz-On permanent ink pad, which is an hour of my life I'll never get back, especially since in the end she wore neither.

Even our jack-o'-lanterns were Scooby-themed! Truly, it was a fantastic Halloween and I'm so thankful to have a family (especially a husband!) who will go along with my crazy ideas. I'm already starting to plan our costumes for next year...