While I’ve missed a few years of blogging and a few things have changed in that time, one thing that hasn’t changed is my love for Disney. If you’ve been around here a while, you might remember that not only was our honeymoon partly at Walt Disney World, but our wedding cake was also Disney park inspired, I’ve run a Disney blog in the past, and I have successfully converted Ben into just as much as a Disney addict as I am over the years! You can see some of my Disney posts over the years here.
Back when I stopped blogging, we’d just had a big family Disney trip cancelled. It was the beginning of lockdown, just after Emmy turned 1, and of course, the US was shut to visitors from the UK so we had to postpone our trip. Once, twice…three times I believe it was postponed in the end! So when we finally made it to Disney on the big family holiday with both my parents, Ben’s parents and my sister in May 2022, we also had another little person in tow – a 4 month old Archie!
I should maybe write about that more specifically one day – people think that Disney with a baby is hard work or even pointless, but honestly, it wasn’t all that bad! In fact, it was easier than subsequent trips I’d say!
And that’s my point today! We’d missed Disney so much during lockdown, that Ben and I decided to book a trip for just the 4 of us in May 2023 so that we could squeeze one in before Emmy started school. That trip was a success! And by March of this year, we were missing Disney again – so we booked a mini trip to Disneyland Paris with my family. Then, whoops! My finger slipped and suddenly we had another Florida trip booked for October 2024! I’m aware of how ridiculous this all sounds written down like that – we’re very lucky that we’ve been able to do all these trips, but at this point in our lives, we decided we wanted to prioritise those experiences with our kids. Plus Archie goes free at Disney until he’s 3, which is happening at Christmas so it was our last chance to save on that!
There was one big reason why we decided to book Disney for October specifically – Mickey’s Not So Scary Halloween Party. We did this on our honeymoon in September 2018 and unfortunately didn’t have the best experience. It was still a wonderful night that we really enjoyed, but the park was totally overcrowded (it was busier than some of the daytimes when we were there!) so we suspect it was oversold. It meant we only managed to ride 2 rides (Small World and Little Mermaid), watch the parade and fireworks, and do a few trick or treat lines. Our time was wasted trying to fight our way around the park, and considering it was supposed to be an exclusive event, we felt that wasn’t right.
But Emmy is an absolute fiend for Halloween (it’s on par with Christmas for her) and had seen videos of the Boo To You parade so that was the final push we needed to book our trip. And luckily, this year’s Halloween was SO much better than 2018’s!
We managed to do just as many trick or treat stops as the time Ben and I went alone (Archie and I snuck in a couple of extra too while Ben and Emmy were on a ride!), plus the parade, fireworks and several rides. I can’t say how many for definite we did, but it was definitely at least 5 or 6. The bonus as well was that Ben and Emmy managed to do the new Tiana’s Bayou Adventure that has replaced Splash Mountain. It was virtual queue through the day time when we were there but opened up to standby during the parties. They only had about a 20 minute wait, but nearly missed the parade as the actual ride time is so long! We ended up watching it separately, and Archie loved it. The park itself was so well decorated with brilliant lighting and smoke effects in areas that gave the perfect Halloween ambience.
Anyway, I decided that we all needed to be dressed up this year and that, for some unknown reason considering my sewing machine has been packed away in the garage for the best part of 5 years, I needed to sew all of these for us. It took some decision-making, and a few changes of mind, but I settled on a family costume where we were all Haunted Mansion themed!
Emmy’s dress was the cornerstone of this family costume, mostly because little girl outfits are so much more fun and easier to sew than others! I’ve sewn a number of outfits for her from Peony Patterns recently, and this dress is the Willow pattern. The puff sleeves, open back with a bow and full tiered skirt are just gorgeous!
I actually sewed a mock up in another fabric first, but one that I knew she would still wear and love – a strawberry fabric I already had in my stash from a local fabric shop called Bugweed’s. I’d already made her a bucket hat from the fabric, as well as one for Archie as he loved Emmy’s so much (despite the fact that he has a tractor version of it!), and I managed to squeeze a Willow dress out of it. I did have to do a simple gathered skirt for it though as the tiered skirt uses a lot of fabric!
This dress turned out lovely, however it was a little on the large side around the bodice. I’d sewed a size 6 for her as she was between the 5 and 6, so for the “real” version, I sized down and also shortened the elastic at the back.
And here’s the final version of the Haunted Mansion cast member costumer for Emmy! I added a strip of lace at the top of the bodice to mimic the lace collar and decided to keep the full tiered skirt for this version. It turned out lovely, but the gathering nearly killed me! The fabric, from Spoonflower, was thicker and heavier than a usual dressmaking cotton which meant that my thread wasn’t quite up to the job of gathering metres of it, especially around the bottom tier – next time I’d add another row of stitches and break the line of stitching into a few sections as it was the most frustrating thing when it snapped half way round!
I bought 3m of the fabric which left me with around 0.3m of leftover fabric and a few scraps. I’d thought I would only just be scraping by, so I was pleased to have some left, so I thought up an idea for it – and this is where the family costume came in! Originally I’d planned for Archie to wear something inspired by his favourite ride – It’s A Small World – but when I looked at that finished piece (I’ll show that another day!), I realised it just looked like a regular outfit. So my attention turned to that 0.3m of leftover fabric and what I might be able to do with it. It took a lot of searching, but I came across a (free!) pattern for a pair of shorts from Little Fig Handmade.
These should have been super simple to sew up, but I ended up distracted while making them, ahem, three times. I may have had to unpick the side seams, the centre seam and the gusset a couple of times – once I was even right but doubted myself, facepalm! I’d definitely do them again in future though because as long as you’re concentrating, they make a lovely quick sew and are easy for little ones to wear. I actually sized Archie down in them due to my teeny amount of fabric available – fortunately he’s quite short for his age so they fit nicely! Unfortunately, however, I didn’t get a single good photo of him wearing the shorts – or at least one that shows them! You can just about spot them here though:
While this still wasn’t the most costumey of outfits, it worked well for a grumpy (teething!) 2 year old who was bound to fall asleep half way through the party! He’s not a big fan of dressing in another vaguely uncomfortable (who is to be fair?!) and I didn’t want to fight him on an uncomfy costume, so this worked well for him, and he was so pleased to match his big sis!
Ben also had a super simple outfit similar to Archie’s, as in, I made him a quick and easy pair of shorts so that he resembled Alexander Nitrokoff from the Haunted Mansion’s stretching room portraits. He didn’t want anything too costumey – initially I’d been planning to go for a Tiki Room inspired shirt, that fabric is waiting for another Disney trip to come out again! – so considering the rest of our costumes, mine especially, this worked well. I used a free men’s boxers pattern from Craft Passion which was easy to put together. They were unsized and fit him well. He loved the fact that he had pockets which fit his phone too! This fabric came from a little fabric shop near us called The Fabric Bird in Thirsk.
Party nights are hard! Archie was asleep before the fireworks started, and Emmy and Ben clearly needed a rest by the time it got to them! Bear in mind though that we had only flown in from the UK 3 days before, so it was the early hours of the morning to us!
Finally my costume! Emmy had helped me decide on mine after we decided she was going to be one of the Haunted Mansion cast members. I was Sally Slater, the tightrope girl, from the Haunting Mansion stretching room portraits too!
For the skirt, I used the circle skirt calculator at By Hand London, along with a really helpful video I found on YouTube about how to create a double circle skirt. I’m not entirely sure why I decided I needed a double circle skirt, but hey, that’s what happened! The original does have a very full skirt that I wanted to emulate, but that hem – oh my! I think it took an hour to sew all the way round! The fabric was another one from Spoonflower especially designed to suit this costume. It took nearly the entirety of my 4m length to sew this one up!
I left the corset top until last as I had a purple vest top that I planned to wear if I didn’t get it finished, but fortunately I managed just in time. It’s not my best sew ever, and in fact actually ended up in the bin at the end of the night sadly. However I loved the pattern, I just needed a stronger lining fabric that suited a corset. The pattern is the Emma Breeze Corset by Ojayroom (and look how gorgeous the one on the link is!). I used the sleeved version of the pattern with the corset ties at the back, but shortened the sleeves significantly to create that puff sleeve that the character has. The main fabric was a purple velvet, from our local Bugweed’s down at York, as was the pink fabric which was actually a very cheap lining fabric. I used cable ties for the boning which I have done in a corset pattern mock up before. They work nicely, but unfortunately didn’t stand the test of the whole night and ended up poking through the lining fabric later in the night.
Like I said, I had a back up purple vest top that I swapped in later too!
We had lots of compliments on our costumes from cast members at the trick or treat stations, plus a few guests too, which was lovely! It was so nice to be able to dress up for the event and to see everyone else’s costumes, there were some absolutely fantastic ones. Emmy has us planning the next one already, eek!
