A Super Mario Halloween!

A few weeks ago in school we had to answer some questions about our accomplishments and life in order to write a "Me in 30 seconds" paragraph.
Q: What is something you are good at?
A: Putting together Halloween costumes

Q: What is something you don't like?
A: Halloween. 

And not to brag, but I am really good at Halloween costume assembly.

 Remember last years Lego Movie costumes? Click here to remember.

 Or our Peter Pan ensemble? Click here to remember. 

Remember UP? Click here to remember. 

A few months ago we decided that we wanted to do a bigger group costume and so we joined forces with John and Rox and their family and had a super idea to do super Mario. 

If you aren't familiar with Mario because your kid doesn't play it regularly like we do over here, the characters from Left to Rt are Bowser (Patrick), Goomba (Jessica), Princess Daisy (Rox), Mushroom/Cloud (Levi), Wario (John).
Bottom row- Toad (Lucas), Yoshi (Jaxton), Mario (Preston), Princess Peach (Lyla), Tanooki/Racoon Mario (Noah). 

These are the costumes that i assembled.
Most of the items either came from Savers, Goodwill or Hobby Lobby. 

Lets begin with Bowser.
To make the Bowser head/mask I started with a Viking helmet I bought at Savers. I covered it in green felt, cut out pieces to make the eyes, eyebrows, hair, top of the mouth. I stuffed the top of the mouth and the bottom jaw with plastic grocery bags to keep it from being too heavy to fall. Everything was hot glued, I don't sew. I don't even like to think about sewing. The bottom of the mouth was made from the bill of a baseball hat (Goodwill), covered in felt and then attached to the top of the hat by Velcro so that it could come off as needed for things like eating! The shirt was just a long sleeve mustard colored shirt I got at Goodwill for $1, added black material and spikes and cut out the front of his shell and made the black lines with a marker. 

The back of the shell was built around an old backpack we had so that he could get it on and off easy. I cut out a large piece of cardboard and cut the straps through it. I used party cone hats (Goodwill) covered in fabric for the spikes and cut up an orange place mat (Savers) to go under them. green flannel and off white flannel completed the shell and then I stuffed it full with balloons and more plastic grocery sacks to give it some body. 

Mario.
Easiest costume of the group. Just bought it off Amazon and found a pair of white gloves at Goodwill for him to use. The red converse we already had. 

Toad.
I found a dark blue fleece vest at Savers one day and it was perfect so I just turned it inside out so that the huge zipper pockets were hidden and then glued yellow ribbon around the outside of it all. Toad usually only wears pants and a vest, no shirt, but modest is hottest so he wore a white shirt under it. The white leggings I couldn't find anywhere and had to buy at Old Navy in the girls section. Sorry Lucas. I also realized why no thrift store had white leggings, those things got so dirty so fast!
His had I made from a circle of cardboard with a hole in the middle for his head, stuffed it with grocery sacks (recycle, reduce, reuse) and then used a white sheet I had bought for the outside of the hat. Cut out a few red circles from some fabric I already had and he was done! 

It should be noted that Lucas HATED the hat and wouldn't wear it at all. I had to bribe him with candy to wear it for pictures and after they were over he took it off and threw it. 

Yoshi.
How exactly does one make a Yoshi costume? I still don't know. I found a turtle costume at Goodwill one day for like $3 and transformed that for our Yoshi. Or Doshi as Jaxton calls him. I bought some Styrofoam eggs for the eyes and painted them. Used the white sheet leftover from Lucas's hat for Yoshi's belly 

And then used more of the orange place mat for Yoshi's spine.
Oh and made him a tail out of some felt I had laying around. 

Goomba.
Simple. I just drew an outline on cardboard which wasn't straight at all, covered it in brown fabric, cut out eyes a mouth and teeth, also not straight and then glued some ties to the top and middle so I could take it on and off as needed.
One person thought I was dressed like poop and another like an m&m.
This is why I hate Halloween. 

For school Preston had to dress up like a character from a book for a storybook parade on the Friday before Halloween.
Turns out there are no Mario books out there! So we had to reuse his Frankenstein costume from when he was 2 and he became "Frankenfly" from the book "Fly Guy and the Frankenfly". All I had to do for his costume was attach antennae (pipe cleaner and fuzzy balls) and make fly wings. Fly wings were done with a metal hanger bent into a wing shape and then I used white nylons to put over the hangers and then drew on fly wing veins. And of course in true Jessica fashion I hot glued them on.

After this Halloween I thought that I would take a break from costumes. They tend to stress me out and I am upstiars working on them while my family is downstairs, but when i told people I wasn't going to do them next year I got a very negative response. Especially from my family. And turns out we already picked our theme for next year on Halloween night, so now I have to do it! And they are going to be goooooood. Or should I say evil.....