Just because they don’t celebrate Halloween here, and because we live on a boat, doesn’t mean that our girls didn’t have their fun. In our family we like Halloween, not for the candy, not for the holiday, but for the opportunity to come up with a creative costume, make it yourself, and to get dressed up. We do not have a tickle chest full of costumes on board, and most of the time we use our imaginations to make our dress up creations, but for Halloween we go one step above the regular toiletpaper roll costumes.
   Last year we dressed the girls up as Oompa Loompa’s (From Charlie and the Chocolate Factory). The costumes didn’t cost us more than $10 with the help of a second hand store, some duct tape, some colored hair spray, face paint, and a red sharpie. That was when we were in Miami and everything was pretty accessible. This year we went from scratch, since the only thing really available to us was a fabric store. Thankfully my husband can sew. With some ideas in mind, some pictures on the ipad, and a $20 budget we hit up the fabric store for some tulle and some felt. This, combined with roughly one full day of work, made this years Halloween creations, our Gnome family. We were inspired by the kids movie Gnomeo and Juliet. But I wanted to go one step beyond and give the girls tutus and have their little princess dreams come true. 
   I found a tutorial for No Sew Tutus online, since I can’t sew, and went to work. It was a couple of hours of tying knots around a ribbon to create our puffy masterpieces. The next day we cut out the felt shapes for three girls vests in black, three red gnome hats, one blue gnome hat, one blue vest, and four sets of booties. The final touch, and Eben’s pride and joy, was his belt buckle that he made out of left over epoxy that had hardened too quick. Oh, and we can’t forget that he shaved his beard to the shape of a gnomes. (The next day, he still hasn’t shaved it off and I can’t stop giggling every time I see my leprechaun of a husband.)
   We had a lot of fun making these costumes, and a little stress as we were cutting it close with last minute sewing, to make it on time for the Halloween party. Once we were all dolled up we announced to the harbour that the girls were ready for some Trick or Treating. We hopped in the dinghy and toured around to the boats that radioed back that they wanted to see the girls in their costumes. After we had gone to a few boats we headed into town for the Halloween party being held at Wendy’s bar. It was fun seeing what everyone had come up with as a disguise, and to see what some people carry on their boats for this type of occasion. To top it all off, our hard work earned us first place in the Halloween costume contest. As a prize we received a bottle of Bailey’s so I am a very happy Mama Gnome.

Last year’s costume