DIY Mary Poppins Costume

This post is long overdue. Last Halloween, my daughter was Mary Poppins, from her all time favorite movie. Since Mary Poppins is not the popular right now and I enjoy the challenge of making my kids Halloween costumes, I decided to DIY Mary Poppins.

This turned out to be one of the easiest and cheapest of the costumes that I have made so far. I do not have many step by steps for this costume because I forgot to stop and take pictures.

For the coat we used a corduroy blazer that my Mom was going to donate. I shortened the sleeves, took out the shoulder pads and brought the sides in using safety pins. Next, I made a simple skirt out of fabric that my grandmother had left over from a project. 

I found both the red shoes and the white button up shirt at our local thrift store, I think they cost me a total of $5. 

My grandmother knitted a red scarf, but I'm sure that you could find this at a thrift store as well for probably a dollar or two.

We had her use a regular umbrella because we new that she would hand it off to my husband the minute that she started trick-or-treating and we were right.

To make the carpet bag, we used upholstery fabric that I had left over and wooden handles that my Mom had for some reason. This doubled as her candy bag and worked great!

Finally, for the hat, we used a hat that my girls had in their dress up bin. Transforming it by taping a black streamer over the plaid ribbon and hot glued on flowers. My daughter was so happy to pretend to be Mary Poppins for Halloween. Her sister was Minnie Mouse, seen her without the ears. You can check out that costume here, Minnie Mouse Costume post.

Here are some more of my DIY costumes that you might want to check out:

DIY Elsa

DIY Olaf

Princess of Rock

Cinderella with Coach

There are affiliate links included in this post. I do receive a small commission, this does not affect my opinion. 

Pinterest Fail: Chocolate Covered Strawberry Hearts

This past Valentine's Day I was searching Pinterest for a fun activity to do with my daughter. In the past we have cut out paper hearts, made Valentine's garlands, etc... So, this year I was looking for a relatively easy cooking project for us to do together. I kept seeing images of strawberries covered in chocolate in the shape of hearts, super cute.

I read one of the recipes, it seemed pretty easy and went to the grocery store to pick up the supplies, chocolate and strawberries pretty inexpensive as well.

1. I washed and cut the tops of the strawberries, so far so good.

2. I cut the strawberries in half and held them together with a toothpick making them look heartish. This part takes a little more finesse then I realized.

3. Now it was time to melt the chocolate, having not bought nearly enough to cover both sides of the strawberries, I made a clutch decision to only cover the tops.

4. Okay, all the heartish shapes are together ready for chocolate.

5. This part my daughter had fun helping me with. The chocolate was pretty hard to spread evenly over the strawberries, it hardened really fast. I was glad to have the parchment paper underneath the rack, that was a big help during clean up.

 6. They are all covered. Cannot really say they look like heart though they do look yummy.

 7. I let my daughter decorate them with some gel frosting and sprinkles. She had a blast.

 8. In the end they really did not resemble hearts, but they tasted good. Another mistake I made was pushing the toothpicks in to far, I could not get all of them out after the chocolate hardened.