The Up Family Costume

Our family loves Halloween and we love the movie UP, so that's the theme we decided on! We each picked our own characters and ran with it!

My son wanted to be "Russell" the Wilderness Explorer. He already had the yellow baseball cap, yellow shirt, khaki shorts and hiking boots; so we were half way there. I'm pretty handy with the sewing machine and sewed the rest. Cap: hand stitched WE logo to front of cap. Backpack: Purchase orange Jansport backpack (on sale! yay!) hand stitched logo to front; sewed tabs to back to fasten hooks to attach rope, lantern and other gadgets we had around the house; sewed 2 strips of fabric to bottom of backpack to attach (fake) sleeping back (used folded yellow felt fabric); sewed flag out of felt fabric and attached to wooden dowel. Badge Sash: Found badges on-line, printed in colour, laminated, tacked to yellow felt and hand stitched to brown sash that I sewed our of brown cotton fabric. Shirt Logo: Used felt, hand stitched to safety pin to pin onto shirt. Shorts Logo: Used felt, yellow/green wooden beads strung onto leather string and hand stitched onto safety pin to pin onto shorts. Scarf: Sewed triangle shaped orange cotton fabric and used styrofoam (ball painted gold) to fasten at front.

My daughter wanted to "Kevin" the bird. This costume was more challenging. I started with the Head: Paper mache mold (which took day to shape and dry), attached peacock feathers to top of head, hand painted, added shellac clear coat (to protect from rain), sewed felt fabric to inside for comfort and warmth and added feather detail to base of hat/headpiece. Body: Took an old zip sweater and sewed (what seemed like hundreds) of strips of tulle in different colours to cover entire body and sleeves of the sweater. I cut strips ranging from 2 inches to 6 inches (2 inches at top to 6 inches at bottom) to create desired shape/effect (sew down centre of each strip, gather, then sew to sweater). Bottom: plain black leggings and black socks which she already had.

My husband chose old man "Carl". He already had the white shirt, suspenders and grey slacks. So all we needed to do was accessorize! I sewed at huge brown felt bow tie, we borrowed a friends cane and added 4 tennis balls to the bottom, bought some glasses from the dollar store and popped out the lenses and re-used the white wig from last years Halloween costume (which just need a hair cut & style!).

I chose little girl "Ellie". I already had a floral shirt & overalls. So again, I just need to accessorize! I sewed a huge purple hair bow and cut-out felt patched that I hand sewed with yarn to my overalls. I made pop-bottle cap pins (purchased caps from arts & crafts store, safety pins from dollar store, printed free coloured logos from on-line and decoupaged to caps). I attached finished pop-bottle cap pins to my overalls, Carl's suspenders and Russell's badge sash. And the finishing touch was that black wax stuff I bought from the dollar store for my one front tooth!

Our best costumes yet!