How to Make Easy Care Bear Costumes

 Happy Halloween!  As my treat to you, I will share instructions for how to make the Care Bear costumes my friends and I made for Halloween last year.  Kudos to all the guys for being the manliest Care Bears ever!  I still can't believe they agreed to be Care Bears!  And Erica for being a super cute girly Care Bear!
Making this costume is super easy!  All you need is a very small amount of felt or plush material for the ears and tail, headbands (I think a pack of 6 was around $2 at Wal-Mart), a needle and thread, something to stuff the ears and tails, and paper and markers to make the belly badges.  We were green with this project and reused grocery bags to stuff the ears and tails.

For a general pattern for the ears and tail, click here.  To make one ear, cut out 2 U-shaped pieces of fabric a little larger than the size you want the ears to be and sew them together around the edges, leaving the base of the ear open.  Flip this inside out so the seam is moved to the inside of the ear.  Then shove a few grocery bags into the ear, and sew the base of the onto the headband.  Repeat for the second ear.

There are two ways to make the tail, first you could follow the same directions as the ear to make a U-shaped tail and stuff it with grocery bags.   Another way is to cut out a circle about 10 inches in diameter, pack grocery bags into a baseball like shape, and sew the circle closed around the grocery bags, creating a pouch-like tail.  The tails can be attached to your pants using safety pins.

Finally, you can use whatever artistic talents you have to color your belly badge.  You can use the original care bears or be creative and make up your own.  We also attached the badges with safety pins.  The badges were not meant to last forever, and if you use this costume multiple times, you will probably need to remake the badges.  Care Bear Power!!!

Elmo and Cookie Monster Knit Hats

 I am excited to lead off my blog with my favorite original design.  I was inspired to knit my niece Taryn an Elmo hat for her second birthday because she loved Elmo at the time.  I made a hat to fit her head (or so I thought, it ended up stretching and being big enough for me at the end) and then knit some balls for eyes and an elongated ball for the nose.  Even though it was too big, the kiddos still enjoyed playing around with the hats, hopefully as much as I enjoyed making them!

The pattern for the Elmo hat can be found here.  This is the first pattern I have ever written, so please let me know if there are any corrections or if you have any questions.

The Cookie Monster hat can be made just like the Elmo Hat, but with blue yarn and without a nose.  As you can see, my hats were too big and when I made the hat again, I was sure to make my hat smaller and the appropriate size for a toddler.  My niece's cousin, Kennedy had fun showing just how big the hats were by pulling them down over her head.

For a tutorial on embroidering the eyes, click here.

Thanks to Taryn, Kennedy, and Carleigh for modeling the hats.  :)