Halloween 2009

Last year for Halloween Lucas was an Indian. I made the costume myself, and I just loved it. I have so much fun with planning the costume, finding what I need for it and making it. I thought his indian costume turned out soo cute, and I wanted him to look as cute again this year. But I didn't know if I would succeed in doing so.
A couple of months ago, I asked Lucas what he wanted to be for Halloween, but he didn't know. He loves playing his DS and especially loves playing Super Mario. So I mentioned that he could be Mario or Luigi. He kept going back and forth between Mario and Luigi, until he decided that he
wanted to be Luigi for sure.
As I did last year I wanted to make the costume myself. I guess it's a tradition I started last year when I was shopping for Lucas's costume. I think that the boy's costumes all look so cheap made and there's nothing special about them. And then they ask so much for them, and I just knew that I could make it cheaper myself or maybe for about the same price.
The Luigi costume was being sold at the stores this halloween season for a whopping $40. I knew I could make that cheaper, because this costume don't consist of much - pants, shirt, hat, gloves.
I was planning on making the pants and buy the rest. I started searching for a Luigi hat online, and the best one I found was on Ebay. The seller was located in Hong Kong. I could not find a single hat that was located in the US. The hat was very cheap - $1 and the shipping was $7, so $8 total for the hat. I'm glad I was planning his costume early, because the hat took 3 weeks to get here.
I bought the fabric for the pants at Joanns for $8. And I only used about 3/4 of the fabric for the pants. I had a pattern for pajama pants, and I used that and I then freehanded the bib part of it. In order to get two yellow buttons for the pants, I had to buy two packages of different colored buttons. (They only had one yellow button in each package). So it would end up being about $5 for two buttons - too much. Instead I bought two plain wooden buttons and painted them yellow.
The hardest part was finding a shirt that would match the hat. The shade of green was hard to find in a shirt. I looked at Walmart, Target and gave up. I decided to make the shirt myself. I went to Joanns (again) and was searching for fabric that would match. They didn't have any. But then I thought of looking in the clearance section. I couldn't believe it ! They had fabric that would match for $1.50 a yard and a yard was all I needed. Now that's cheap for a shirt.
Last was the gloves which I bought at a halloween store. After that though I saw white gloves at Walgreens and Joanns.
So I think the costume cost about $25. A lot better than $40 and I plan on selling it on Ebay next halloween just like I did this year with Lucas's indian costume.