My $2 Homemade Thomas the Train Costume

Teddy loves Thomas the Train. I love making costumes. Halloween was approaching. We had a bunch of recycling piling up. It all came together for a perfect storm.

My materials:

1 diaper box
1 box of milk cartons three-pack, cut in half
1 empty tub of Greek yogurt
1 empty tub of broccoli cheddar soup (same size as yogurt tub)
3 dessert-size paper plates
1 dinner-size paper plate
strips of cardboard
4 feet-ish of thick ribbon
1 can blue spray paint
1 can black spray paint
red acrylic paint
yellow acrylic paint
black sharpie
hot glue gun
scissors
picture of Thomas or Thomas toy to look at

The only things I had to buy were the blue spray paint and the ribbon because I wanted ribbon cuter than what I had, It totaled roughly $2, and that's rounding up.

The funnest part about the costume was that I made the funnel be the place where the candy goes. That way he didn't need to carry a bucket or bag for candy. Here's what I did. Maybe it will be helpful to someone out there who likes to throw cheap stuff together for costumes. :)

Started cutting a diaper box

Found this in the recycling

Cut a hole in a box flap and hot glued the container to it-- a spot
for candy!

Later I cut a trap door into this so the candy could be taken out easier.

So the top looked like this and I cut the hole at the bottom a little bigger
for his feet to walk.

Attached the other box-half with hot glue and spray painted it all blue

Spray painted the next container black for the funnel, and glued it around the hole

Cut slits and glued the ribbon down

Painted red lines and let Cal help attach spray-painted paper plates 

I had also spray painted these blue cardboard strips and then
glued them on top of the wheels

Painted my yellow "1" on the sides, drew a face on a trimmed dinner plate with
a sharpie, and BAM. Thomas.

Teddy approved

And so did his Wizard-Brothers

10th Annual Gingerbread Party!

This Christmas we had our biggest ever gingerbread party. It's the 10th year that we've put it on, and it's always a HUGE amount of work, but worth it in the end to see so many friends who are able to make it a part of their family Christmas traditions. We ended up with 74 guests-- nearly maxing out the capacity of our condo clubhouse. I believe it is 75.

I have to admit that this year during preparation there were grumbles and rumbles between Brian and me of it being the last year. Maybe we should go out with a bang-- ten years of this is an accomplishment! But as always, when it is over and we sit in our house with dried icing and crumbs of gingerbread on our clothes and many of our possessions, we throw back leftover egg nog and talk about how awesome our friends are and that we're happy to be able to do this for them.

This year we had the most help with preparations and clean-up that we've ever had. Brian was able to help some with the baking this year and his mom did almost all the icing, which was amazing. Nearly everyone contributed lunch food, and-- as always-- the candy. This was all super helpful and took away a lot of stress from me.

But as usual it took me the entire weekend before to bake all the gingerbread. The boys are old enough now to want to help, but not old enough to actually be helpful. It makes for a long weekend for us: baking for me, and a ton of shopping and hauling for Brian. The boys run around being nearly neglected the weekend of baking and during the party.

All things considered, though, I think it's safe to say the party will probably happen again next year.

Without further ado, here are some pictures from the preparation and from the party: (If you scroll down to the bottom there are links to all past years.)

Paper towel Santa beard

This is Christmas spirit, folks.

The boys take a break from being neglected/ interrupt me

 Aaaaand, the party:

And then, a few weeks later I custom-made some gingerbread creations for my nephews who were visiting from Atlanta: the White House, a regular house, and a race car.

I even spent some time to make one myself and to help Cal and Clark make one: 

And made gingerbread people for the boys' teachers' cookie bar at school:

In case you haven't had enough gingerbread pictures here are links to past parties:

Gingerbread Parties 1-6

7th Year

8th Year

9th Year