Belated Halloween costume report

This summer, my children became obsessed with "The Wizard of Oz" after my cousin, Cady Lane, sent them a CD of the soundtrack.  I then bought them a DVD of the movie and we proceeded to watch it 19 times.  It was only natural that Charlotte then wanted to be Dorothy for Halloween.

I remembered that Aunt Janet had sewn a Dorothy costume for her granddaughter a few years back, so I asked her if she still had that pattern.  Sweet AJ then bought me my own copy of the pattern (yes, she IS the coolest aunt ever) and I got to work a few weeks before Halloween.

This was the first time I had sewn a garment from a store-bought pattern since the crop tops Mom helped Erin and me sew when we were about 12 years old. This dress was a leeeeeeeeetle more complicated than that, and I was kind of surprised at how vague some of the directions were (probably because I'm not experienced at formal garment sewing).  I got it done though, without any major incidents.  Here is the finished result:

Thank you to my mother-in-law for hunting down the ruby red slippers from Meijer!  Since it's a tad colder in Michigan in October than it is in the Land of Oz, we put a long-sleeved shirt and leggings under the dress.  We also chose to skip the socks under the shoes.

The pattern was very to the movie version of the dress, right down to the ric rac around the neck and sleeves as well as the bias-cut strip around the skirt.  It's awesome, but it is very unfinished on the inside (perhaps because it is just a costume?).  I wasn't thrilled with the color of gingham that I had to use, but I had such a hard time finding any gingham at all (why on earth would Jo-Ann's not carry gingham?!?!?) that I counted my blessings that I was able to procure even this shade of blue.  Charlotte's sleeves were a bit shorter and her skirt was a little longer, but otherwise she was the spitting image of sweet Judy Garland (in terms of the dress, at least).

Peter kept saying he wanted to be Toto for Halloween, but then decided he would rather be Bumblebee (the Transformer -- not the animal).  Here are Dorothy and Bumblebee trying to eat doughnuts on a string at their grandparents' house a few nights before Halloween.

For the school Halloween party, We finally got Charlotte's hair in pigtails and scrounged up a stuffed dog to be Toto.  Here is sweet Dorothy outside her classroom that day.

We saw a couple of other Dorothys at school that day, but their costumes only vaguely resembled the one from the movie.  One of them looked like the sexy stripper fairy version of Dorothy, which was kind of creepy on a first grader.  Isn't this version horrifying?  Gack.

UNFORTUNATELY, it was snowing and sleeting the night of Halloween, so this is what the poor kids looked like all bundled up when they actually went trick or treating:

Too bad they don't make ruby red sparkly rain boots.