Step right up! Step right up! Ladies and gentlemen, children of all ages, I bring unto you this party invitation!

"Welcome to.... Jurassic Park."

I'm such a sucker for family themed Halloween costumes and I thought I might not be able to talk my 5 year old into joining us this year, but we did dinosaurs and she was all about it! What was also fun was dragging our dog into our family's silliness. She's family now, so she gets to participate!

Can you guess who everyone is??
Even though I don't have blonde hair, I decided to be Ellie Sattler. It gets really cold here on Halloween, so there was no way I was going trick-or-treating in shorts!

My husband is Dr. Graham. Both of our costumes were easy and required things we already had.

Our dog Harley is an Ankylosaurus.

And our girls are a Pterodactyl and a Corythosaurus hatchling.

Earlier that day she got her face painted. Looks pretty good with her costume!

Corythosaurus Hatchling instructions:
1. I bought her jacket from Goodwill, a half yard of fleece for the egg shell from a fabric store, white leggings from Target, and the dark pink fabric I had on hand.
2. To make the stripes, measure out the arm stripes by using the jacket for the length. Add an inch for the seam allowance. Width is about 2-2.5 inches.
3. Fold right sides together and sew leaving a hole on the bottom.
4. Fill the stripe tubes with batting.
5. Sew the bottoms closed.
6. Hand sew the stripes onto the arms.
7. For the back stripe, measure out the length of the back and repeat steps 3-6. It is slightly longer than the arms if you're making this for a toddler.
8. To make the headpiece, fold fabric together. Draw out the crescent shape you want. Cut out. Follow steps 3-5. Hand sew on top of the hood.

Egg shell:
1. Follow these instructions on how to sew a sphere.
2. Cut in a jagged fashion along the middle of the sphere. Back stitch or hand sew seams that were cut off so they won't unravel.
3. Cut out circles and ovals and sew them onto the sides of the egg.
4. Cut out leg holes on the bottom by using a onesie as a reference. The fleece won't fray.
5. Get 2 wire hangers or some wire. measure out the sides of the egg shell and cut.
6. Hot glue some felt on the ends of the sharp wire.
7. Cut out strips of fleece to cover the wire. Hand sew along the sides of the wire to keep it in place. The wires help give the egg its shape.
8. Get some ribbon or sew some fabric together to make straps.
9. Tack onto the egg on the front and back to make suspenders.
10. Cut out two circles of white fleece. Cut the edges in a jagged fashion.
11. Sew circles together so create more stability.
12. Hand sew circles on top of the hood.
Ankylosaurus dog costume:
1. Buy a dog sweater. I was able to snag this one for $3!
2. Cut out lots of triangles to make the spikes. I did 5 columns of spikes. I had 4 large spikes on the ends of each side (8 total), 6 small spikes next to those (12 total), and in the middle I had 5 medium spikes.
3. Sew one side of the triangles together leaving the bottom open.
4. Fill the triangles with batting.
5. Hand sew the spikes onto the dog sweater.

Tail:
1. Fold a piece of matching fleece together.
2. Cut out the kind of shape you want. I tapered her tail to go from the back of the sweater down into a tail.
3. Sew together.
4. Sew a wavy pattern in the middle to make it look textured.
5. Sew a ball of white fleece together.
6. Fill with batting.
7. Hand sew on the end of the tail.
8. Hand sew the wider end to the sweater.

Mask:
1. Fold a piece of matching fleece together.
2. Cut out a mask shape that will fit your dog.
3. Cut out holes for ears.
4. Make 4 more spikes.
5. Hand sew spikes onto the cheeks of the mask.
6. Sew velcro to fasten the mask on.
*Every time she would shake, her mask would fall off... So we turned the mask around and that seemed to work better. In the photo above her mask is turned around.
The kids and the dog's costumes were pretty time involved, but if you're looking to avoid buying costumes and making them yourself, this is the way to go! #clevergirl

My cute niece had a Rockstar Birthday Party and it was one for the books! The kids came dressed up as rockstars and were given a "Backstage Pass." Then they spray colored their hair, decorated guitars and had karaoke - super star style!

I have a feeling a lot of people will do Star Wars costumes for the years to come (I'm sure we'll come back to it at some point!), so I thought I'd share what we did if you're looking for some ideas.

My husband was a Jedi and asked me to make him a full-on Jedi Knight costume. I purchased a Jedi pattern at Jo-Anns where I sewed the tunic and robe from and we bought pants at Goodwill. #notthatambitious
Baby BB-8, oh my heart! I put a tutorial together that can be found here.

And lastly, my daughter was/is really into Darth Vader. She wanted a helmet, but I'm against masks, so I made her this large headband-piece and we compromised by buying black nail polish and lipstick. :) I put a tutorial together that can be found here.

3. Notice how all of my bottles were originally clear. That wasn't gonna fly for mucky Halloween! I went on and found this tutorial on how to tint glass bottles/jars. This next information is what I feel is important if you're needing to do this as well:
- I did this treatment 6 times (each bottle one time, except one I re-colored again) and each bottle had major streaking. The author of the tutorial claims her way will prevent streaking, but I couldn't get it to work. But lucky for me, it only added to my grimy Halloween look! So it ended up being awesome, but I wouldn't try this if I wanted it perfect.
- Her measurements are great and same with the oven temperature and time. Mine streaked so much I wonder if I should've changed her first 3 minutes to 2 minutes before flipping them over. If there is a next time, I will try that.
4. Print your labels on sticker paper. You can find it at most stores like Walmart or Amazon. Cut them out and see which labels look best on the bottles you have. After you figure it out, tape them on the bottle so you know which one is which. Or write it down so you don't mix them up because you will need to remove the label to paint and bake it.

5. Prep your work area and make sure you have newspaper to protect your surface. I had some leftover packaging paper that ended up being awesome because I wrote notes on it as I worked.

That's not blood - it's red food coloring. And I never used the toothpicks... I don't know why they are there.

 6. Follow the directions on coloring the jars/bottles.
7. Here are how mine turned out. You really do need to go heavy on the food coloring to get dark colors. This is how many drops I did for mine to give you a better idea:
- Blue: 26 blue, 1 red, 2 yellow
- Dark green (I originally was going for green and instead it turned into a bright, faded green. So I re-colored this one and tried going for brown.): 3 green, 24 blue, 6 yellow, 23 red
- Orange (I was going for yellow, but it turned orange): 5 yellow, 1 red (I didn't write this down, but I think that's what I did.)
- Green (Again, I tried going for brown and it ended up green): same as previous brown, but not as many blues and reds
- Dark purple: 28 red, 15 blue
8. While your bottles cool off, paint any finishing touches you need to do. I painted my lids to make them look more rustic and old. I also painted the "Horn Dust of a Unicorn" jar grey on the inside to make it look older. I made cuts into my new corks to also roughen them up.

9. When your bottles are cooled off, grab your Modge Podge. Peel off the stickers and place them onto your bottles and jars. Smooth them out. Some of them may get a little crinkly as they try to mold onto crevasses or on rounded edges. It only adds charm! Brush on some Modge Podge on the stickers so they're sure to stay in place.
11. The bottles/jars are supposed to dry for 24 hours, so when that time is up, here comes the fun part: filling up the bottles/jars! Here is what I used for my pretend fillers:
 - "Bone Powder:" Baking soda.
 - "Horn Dust of the Unicorn:" salt and gold glitter. Could also use sugar and/or silver glitter.
 - "Toadstool Clippings:" dry white beans, large and normal sized (Great Northern Beans, would be my best guess.)
- "Snake Venom:" empty. I didn't want to put actual liquid in here because I didn't want to risk a leak, so I tried seeing what a piece of paper would look like, if it could fake the look of liquid, and it doesn't work. It looks like a message in a bottle.
 - "Arsenic Poison:" also empty
 - "Feathers of the Crow:" bag of feathers from the craft store
 - "Tarantula Legs:" cut up pieces of brown pipe cleaners
12. After the bottles are full, hot glue the lids/corks on. I didn't want to risk having baking soda spilled all over when I pack them up, so these suckers are in there fo' life!
 And that is how it's done!

These pictures of my niece are so stunning this photo doesn't do it justice! If you're in the Utah area, my sister Missy at Xpressions Photography took these photos. She'll hook you up with great photos!