creature report

For Halloween this year, Mae decided to dress as Captain Barnacles, a character from one of her favorite TV shows, Octonauts. Captain Barnacles is a polar bear who leads a team of animals to explore the oceans and help out various sea creatures. Since our Halloween weather tends to be quite chilly, I am always on board with costumes that involve sweatpants and hats!

Here's a pic of the Octonauts for reference.

Halloween was (literally) freezing and soooo windy, so I'm glad Mae got a chance to wear her costume the weekend before when we visited the zoo. We visited our favorite animals, including (of course) the polar bear!

I loved that the train was converted into the Hogwarts Express for the month of October. We traveled through the Forbidden Forest and saw many magical creatures!

Our little Captain Barnacles was right at home with the undersea exhibits!

We carved our pumpkin the night before Halloween. Mae was not a fan of the slimy "pumpkin boogers" inside but she did like helping me to design the face. I took a piece of white paper and drew three options each for the eyes, nose, and mouth. She chose the triangle eyes (classic), the pig nose (funny), and the scary mouth (a surprising twist).

Mae didn't want to wear her coat on Halloween (for obvious reasons), so we put on an extra layer of clothes underneath her costume. Dan took her out to Trick-or-Treat for about 20 minutes. Then we swapped roles and I took her out until she froze into a little icicle. At home, I wrapped her in a blanket and let her watch Octonauts while Dan and and I sipped hot cider and handed out candy. We handed out a little less than 150 pieces of candy, with slightly lower turnout than expected (likely due to the weather.) Just ignore our unlit pumpkin here... it was impossible to keep it lit with the wind.

We've enjoyed the Halloween haul, and Mae even shared her full-size Hershey bar with me. She was so excited about it that we had to take it with us on our mini-vacation last weekend. Mae also got in a little "trick" on us this week. We were discussing how many legs different types of animals have, and I asked about Professor Inkling (the Octopus from Octonauts).

Me: "How many legs does Professor Inkling have?"
Mae: "None."
Me: "None??"
Mae: "None. He has tentacles!"

Well... she's not wrong!

For the costume, I ordered the blue sweatpants and t-shirt from Primary. Their clothes are a bit pricey (I used a coupon code), but it's surprisingly hard to find a matching shirt and sweats in a color other than black or gray anywhere else! I also ordered the rubber boots from Amazon. (One of Mae's favorite Octonauts episodes features a Long Arm Squid, so it feels very appropriate that she refers to this blue t-shirt as a "long arm sleeve shirt.")

I made the hat, collar, and belt from white fleece and light blue felt purchased at Jo-Ann. The belt is just a doubled rectangle of felt, held in the back with two strips of sew-on velcro. Mae was very excited about the Octo-compass on her belt, which consisted of scraps of craft felt held together by a combination of sewing and fabric glue.

I made the collar by tracing the neckline of the t-shirt and sketching a collar shape. I cut two identical pieces from the light blue felt and stitched them together. They're held together in the back with a velcro strip. The chevrons are glued-on bits of craft felt.

The hat was the biggest challenge. I tried to freehand the fleece pattern, but couldn't get a good fit, so I used a free pattern from Fleece Fun and added little fleece ears into the side seam. Then, I free-handed the fleece captain hat, but my math/measuring skills were NOT WORKING. I made at least 4 hat brims before I found one that fit correctly on the fleece hat. To make the captain hat, I made two identical felt brims, sewed them together into tubes, sewed them together along the top edge, then turned them inside out, pressed, and topstitched the top edge. Then I made a slightly domed hat portion, cut it into a circle to fit inside the brim, and machined-sewed it to the inner brim piece only, about halfway down the brim. Then I topstitched the bottom edge of the brim closed. The stripes and Octonauts symbol are cut from felt and attached with craft glue. I put a bit of stuffing into the captain hat so it would hold its shape before I hand-stitched it to the fleece hat.

I've heard variations of this joke before, and I'm no exception: I refuse to spend $20 on a Halloween costume, but I'll spent $40 on materials and spend a month making it myself! Worth it.