little boy frog costume

 This year, I had high hopes of dressing Graham as a pirate (easy!) or a firefighter (reuse last year's) costume for Halloween.  When he announced that he wanted to be a frog, hop from house to house while trick-or-treating, and eat flies, I knew there was no way I could talk him out of such an imaginative plan. (The result of reading this little book too much!) So, I'll be honest, I stressed out. I procrastinated.  I looked on etsy, and found things that were 100x cuter than I could DIY and 10x more than I wanted to spend.  So I stressed and procrastinated some more. Finally, last night I knew I needed to get down to business.

I locked myself in my craft room, armed with a hot glue gun, surrounded by felt scraps and a moss-green queen sized sheet I had picked up at the thrift store a couple years ago.  I sort of went to town and prayed that he would say "ribbit" enough while in public to make up for all his costume lacked...

I grabbed a stained old green t-shirt and cut it into 2 half-circles and sewed them together to make the hat.  Next I glued on googly felt eyes, mouth, and tongue.  (The tongue is integral in making this frog legit.)  G also just so happened to have a green sweater and green mittens lying around from last winter.  Score!  The thing about designing Halloween costumes in Minnesota, is that they need to be WARM, because it is freezing here already! 

I did a really botched sewing job (sans pattern!) on the smock & pants.  I wanted to be quick and I knew if I messed up too catastrophically, I could always cut more of the green sheet up! G really, really wanted to help, so I let him strategically place his spots before I glued them down.  (Ok, I helped a little.)

Perhaps my favorite feature of the costume, are his webbed felt feet!!  I added a bit of elastic to the bottoms to strap under his shoes, so they would stay in place.

All in all, this costume cost us ZERO dollars.  Crazy, I know.  I loved the challenge of using things from around our house and it always feels good to finally find purposes for the supplies that I hoard.  Graham LOVED waking up to see the finished pieces this morning and getting to wear it to our neighborhood Halloween festival.  We got so many compliments and it made my heart happy to hear people say "cute froggy!" Plus all the money we saved on his costume means more to spend on the important stuff...Candy!! Can't wait for Wednesday. xo.