Hunters and their Prey

I like Halloween. Like a lot. A LOT a lot. I thought I would get a head start on sharing some Halloween costume ideas in a series of posts over the next few weeks.

Our first Fall in Colorado, we I decided to dress each of our four children (this was pre-baby Jean) as one of our friendly neighborhood creatures, aka: the local wildlife.

Well, my boys (in typical boy-fashion) refused to pose as a fox and raccoon. I have no idea why they wouldn’t want pose as adorable, fuzzy little fur-balls for Halloween, but after much complaining I caved and we opted for ~~blood thirsty killers~~ hunters instead…They were beyond thrilled to kinda-sorta have permission to terrorize their sisters, our sweet little bambi and baby bunny…

THE HUNTERS:Despite having a couple of over-zealous hunters on the loose, I was so happy with how their costumes turned out, mostly because they were simple and cost me next to nothing. Other than the faux beards, we didn’t purchase a single thing, which is always a good feeling. They simply wore their own hunting gear, the faux beards, a bit of camo face paint, and they were good to go.The girl’s costumes were a bit more labor intense, but still fairly simple and inexpensive.

THE DEER:Macie’s costume was what we based our entire theme around and I was beyond excited to dress her as one of our four-legged, big-eared, spot-covered friends. The most time consuming part of her costume was definitely the antlers. I started with a plastic headband for the base and then bent some wire hangers into two antler like shapes. I then attached the antlers to the headband with more wire. I wrapped each wire antler and the entire headband with brown suede-like fabric. Next, I cut some ear-like shapes out of tan and white felt, layered them and pinched them together a bit in the center with a drop of glue. I then hot glued them to the back side of each antler. Next, I filled the space between the antlers with a variety of white and cream burlap flowers, red berries, green leaves, etc.For the body, we simply used a long-sleeve dance unitard, embellished with a bit of white faux fur and a few dots of white fabric paint. It was really quite simple. We also added a felt tail, covered in fur to her behind…which caused a bit of a dispute in our household as to the positioning of said tail and that’s all I’ll say about that.The deer makeup was definitely the most enjoyable part of her costume for the both of us! (Thank goodness for little girls!) I first used a white eye pencil to draw an inverted triangle on her face. Next I applied a dark contour cream everywhere else and slightly down her neck/collar bone.

I then blended it all in with a makeup sponge to soften any harsh lines. Next, using the same white pencil, I drew dots on her forehead, cheeks, and collar bone. With the white pencil I drew down the top of her nose, rounding the tip. I then outlined the white nose with more contour color. Directly on top of the nose contour, I outlined with a black eye pencil down the sides of her nose and up through the brows. I then filled in the entire tip of her nose with black and softly outlined her eyes.THE BUNNY:Tessa was actually terrified of her costume and cried most of the day, but that’s a story for another day! Her costume was also fairly simple, but a bit time consuming. Again, the headpiece was the most work. I used a white plastic headband, with a bit of leftover deer fur glued right in the center. I bent some more wire hangers into long ear shapes and then wired them onto the headband. I covered the wire ear frames with lace and glued a strand of small pearls along the wire edges (to help hide them). A large pink bow was the perfect finishing touch!For her cute little bunny body, I made a very simple tutu by tying long 6″ wide strips of tulle (I used pink, gold, white, and cream) to a piece of ribbon long enough to wrap around her waist. It was basically completely sheer, but with tights underneath it worked just fine. She also wore a lace top we already had. Oh, I almost forgot, I sewed a round fluffy poof-ball thingy onto the back of her skirt as well! She also got a dab of pink on her lips and cheeks. I super duper wanted to to add some whiskers and a cute bunny nose, but if you can’t tell from the photos, just wearing the costume was more than she could bare.