26 + DIY Halloween Costumes

Are you still unsure of what to do for Halloween costumes this year or your current one not making the cut? We have you covered! Here is all you need to know for 26+ do-it-yourself costume ideas.

1. Baby Mummy - All you need for this cute mini mummy is gauze, a onesie, and googly eyes.
2. Bat - You need felt, elastic, and basic sewing skills for this one.
3. Bumblebee - Felt, ribbon, thread, and a sewing machine get you this adorable bumblebee costume.
4. Cat - You are going to need some fur trim for this one.
5. Caveman - You can actually do this for the whole family and make a cavefamily. You will need faux fur fabric.
6. Chef - You will need white fabric and to do some quick sewing.  An empty pizza box would add a nice touch.
7. Darth Vader, R2D2 & Yoda- You will need black and brown clothing, a helmet, light sabers, and robe for these. 
8. Dinosaur - Fabric, 5 inch velcro, and a small bag of batting will get you this cute dino.
9. Flower Pot - This one is super cute & easy. You will need a large bucket, headband, jump rope, and 3 or 4 bunches of flowers.
10. Frida Kahlo, Andy Warhol & Vincent VanGogh - Aside from the wigs and fake flowers, you might have all these items on hand now.
11. Grandma - Use all 3 on this page for a sibling set. 
12. Ladybug - You will need fabric, elastic, tulle, flowers, and thread.
13. Lego - Got a box, box cutter, and paint?  You can make a Lego!
14. Needle and Thread - This one might require a little shopping - a lampshade, wire cutters, duct tape, freezer paper, cardboard, 4-5 white tshirts, a large knitting needle, flexible cord, and silver paint.
15. Paintbrush - This requires 2 brooms, a styrofoam ball, and poster board.
16. Princess Leia - You will need a white dress, silver material, silver thread, sew-on velcro, and stitch witchery.  Check out the picture on the directions for more on what exactly that is. 
17. Raggedy Ann or Andy - Yarn, felt strips, embroidery thread, and 2 hair combs per wig.  You might have the other clothes needed already.
18. Skeleton - Duct tape and black clothes can get you this costume in a jiffy.
19. Snow White - I actually did this one recently.  You need a red hair ribbon, blue shirt, yellow skirt, red shoes, and an apple for a prop.  (See picture.)
20. Spider - I have heard you can gather all these materials from the dollar store - a black hoodie, monofilament, large needle, 2 pairs of black knee socks, grocery store bags, googly eyes, adhesive dots, and black gloves.
21. Unicorn - This takes under an hour to make.  You need felt, a purple hoodie, ribbons, safety pins, duct tape, and a headband.
22. Upside Down Person - This requires no sewing.  You can actually put this together right now from clothes you have on hand.
23. Viking - You need two toilet seat covers for this cute, little Viking.
24. Where's Waldo? - You do need crochet skills for this one (or a friend willing to help you out).
25. Witch - Got a man's shirt? You can make this witch costume.
26. Wonder Woman - Wonder Woman is being predicted as the #1 costume of the year.

Happy Halloweening! Try out a costume?  I would love to see your finished product.  Post a picture in the comment section below.

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A Year Out from the Fallout: Living Life Like I am Jumping Off a Rope Swing

You know you can't keep the ground from shaking, no matter how hard you try, You can't keep the sunsets from fading, you gotta treat your life like You're jumping off a rope swing maybe 'cause the whole thing is really just a shot in the dark - Old Dominion






A year ago yesterday Mrs. Curtis died, and it was like the rug was pulled out from under me in life. I felt alone. I missed her. Things felt scary and weird.


There were a few months that I was not exactly thriving. I lost some weight. If you saw me and my hair looked dirty, it probably was. I would just start crying in random places - on the shuttle to campus, in my car, over dinner, on the walk home from school. It was like a Dr. Seuss book - will you cry with a mouse? Will you cry in your house? With a fox? In a box? Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.


I would tell myself to get it together. I was not only on the struggle bus. I was driving the struggle bus.


Life was going to change. I knew it. I was comfortable with my life the way it was. But it was like when someone pushes you in a pool to try to teach you how to swim - I could start swimming or start sinking.


Somewhere around November I started trying to gain more control of my life. Life was already going to change, so why not try to be the agent of this change?


I started jumping. I jumped so much I felt like my life was a game of jumprope. When faced with a decision, I would tell myself, “Jump.”


I started making bold moves. Life can take you to some interesting places that you do not expect. And I started acting like my life was a jump rope like the Old Dominion lyrics. The rope would swing, and if I stayed on it long enough, it would swing back, but I had to pick the best time to jump. Sooner or later I had to jump.


Before I left for Christmas break, I packed up everything. I did not know if my major first move would work out and would not know until I was already 600+ miles away for Christmas, but I knew I had to take a leap of faith. Either it was going to work out or not. But regardless if that worked out or not, things had to change. I could not let things stay the same. I had to do better. I had to crawl out of the wreckage of my former life and find that next stop on the journey. I have never packed not knowing where I was going, but all I knew was that either it was what I applied for or I would find something else. Things had to get better. They just had to. I just had to jump.


It was not easy. The beginning of 2017 found me in a closet crying about all the changes required to take this big jump into the scary unknown. My mother found me and said, “Tabitha, what is what the matter with you? I am not used to seeing you like this.” She was right. I can usually hold it together better than I was in that closet thinking about all that I had to let go to get me to the next step. I felt unsteady, and I do not like that feeling. I like to know the next step, the next 5-10 steps, even, and I was jumping into a great abyss January 2nd.


Jumping did not come without sacrifices. I had to let go of some major things that I cared about. I had to empty my hands to be open for what was next. I could not have grabbed on to my future with clenched fists.


Everything changed. Jump. Jump. Jump. 2017 has been the biggest year of change than I can remember. Change is not necessary a bad thing. When it felt bad, I would remind myself that I was going through some major life readjustment events, and that it was okay to feel that way for a bit.


It was uncomfortable every time I jumped, but I also felt like I was stepping into the Promised Land. I would ask myself, “How can this be my life?” I felt like I was in a dream land because things were so good.


I write this all to say that at the end of a full year of jumping, I can say that it was worth it. It was not easy, but there is a certain peace to knowing that you are right where you are supposed to be. I could not have done it without letting go of a lot of things. Some of those things required deep sacrifice because they were things I loved. Some of those things were people and things that were dragging me down. One thing I did was to stop treating every relationship in my life like a fixer upper project. I needed to give myself distance from those people that only drained me because I needed to focus on me. And it was freeing.


I started examining everything in my life and purging - tangible and intangible things. I made may so many trips to drop off boxes of things I had purged this year. As I would unpack from my move in January, I really thought about every item I unpacked to think about if I really needed it. It was liberating to let go. Jump.


I used the excuse this year that everything else was changing so why not one more change? Jump.


And on the other side of all the jumping, I can confidently say that I am living my best life. And I never would have gotten here without letting go of everything.


So maybe you do not have to jump and change just about everything in your life for a year. But maybe there is one big jump you need to make.


JUMP.

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Getting to the Ground Zero Museum (and to the Ground Zero of My Heart)

When I heard that there was a Katrina museum near my house while I was home for enough time to check it out, I could not stop thinking about it.  Since it was only opened for limited hours and days, I had to finagle to make it work.  The last day before I left, my Mom and I went to the Ground Zero Museum in Waveland, Mississippi.  It was a novel concept to me – I am going to a museum about something that I lived through.  I have been to a lot of museums in my day, but this was different.  It was personal.

I was not sure what I was walking into because I have to be in the right headspace to even talk about Hurricane Katrina.  It was this day or waiting months until the next time I was down, so ready or not, here I was.  I was not sure what I was going to see, but I was a little hesitant that in 3D form something that inhabits my worst reoccurring nightmares would be represented.  This would not be a dream that jolts me awake in cold sweats.  This would be something I would see, touch, hear, and feel.  

It was impossible to not be transported through space and time when I looked up at the timeline on the wall of the events that unfolded for this ravaging hurricane.  I went through my own personal timeline.  I was doing this here on this day and so on and so forth. 

There was a room that represented what the houses looked like after the storm.  I had to remind myself to keep breathing and in this moment on this day I was okay.  This was not my current reality, thankfully.  We had been there and done that. 

A museum about Hurricane Katrina?  I felt like I could have created my own museum on this storm.  In a way, all the survivors are living museums of what we saw and experienced.  The artifacts looked so much like what we had to sort through and throw away.  And I was reminded of that horrible day that we pretty much had to throw all our possessions to the road for the garbage man to pick up.  And I remembered that thought I had then that it would have been better to come back to just a foundation rather than have to physically be reminded of what we once had that was no longer safe to keep. 

A tour started pretty soon after we got there, and we just started walking with the group to hear what the tour guide said.  At the end, she finally asked us where we were from.  Once she learned that we had lived through this experience she said that we could have given the tour.  Yes, we could have, but I wanted to be alone with my thoughts to process my reflections.  I wanted to linger at certain parts, like the gratitude tree.  Yes, we were and continue to be so thankful for all the outpouring of help from volunteers at this time.  Some pieces I did not want to linger by – like a case full of things that looked like what we had to throw out of our house.

But at the heart of it – at the ground zero of my heart – I have to appreciate the resilience that it taught me.  September 11^th was jarring, but Hurricane Katrina was so much more personal to me.  Katrina took away an innocence I had about the world.  Bad things can and do happen.  And sometimes I fear things that I did not know to fear before Katrina.  I always think of the worst-case scenario, no matter how bizarre it may be to do so.  To see the strongest people you know in your life break down and lose it was eye-opening.  To feel like this is the moment that you are an adult because you have to stand up and fight through this was pivotal in my life.

For better or worse, I am not the same person I used to be.  Things that used to bother to me do not.  I go through this mental checklist – do I have water, electricity, a shelter, hot food?  Well, then, I guess it is not that bad.  I am calm in stressful situations.  People have commented on how I just keep at the same level even when things get crazy like in the delivery room, and I am the first one to react with a game plan in a crisis.  Katrina brought that out in me. 

There is a video clip in one of the rooms about Katrina and how you may not have gone through this, but the hope is that you see people’s stories and realize that if they got through this, you can get through whatever you are going on in your life.  Sometimes I have to be reminded of that.  I have to remember just how bad things were and just because things felt that bad then they would not feel that way forever.  And they did not.  We all grew so much through the journey of Hurricane Katrina.  It took over a year to get the house rebuilt, and just because the house was rebuilt did not mean that we were.  It took much longer for that to happen.  But little by little, bit by bit, day by day, we grew stronger and more resilient. 

Much like the Maranda Lambert song, “The House That Built Me,” I had to go to the Ground Zero Museum.  The pictures and artifacts held stories for me.  I had to touch this place and feel it.  And standing in that museum I was reminded of who I once was.  In a strange way, this experience built me into who I am today. Through the brokenness, there was healing and growth.  Sometimes you just have to reflect on how far you have come.  Because as Old Dominion sings, “You can’t keep the ground from shaking no matter how hard you try.  You can’t keep the sunsets from fading.  You’ve got to treat your life like you’re jumping off a rope swing because maybe because the whole thing is really just a shot in the dark.”  At times that is what the experience of Katrina felt like – on a rope swing, not much stability, you may scream a little and want to close your eyes, but eventually you jump and plunge into the next chapter. 

And, luckily, we are still standing.  #resiliency

For more information on the museum, check out http://www.wavelandgroundzero.com/.