Bible Character Costume

If your kids' schedule is anything like my kids', AWANA is beginning. With AWANA night, comes all kinds of fun! This will be my kids' third year and our whole family looks forward to it! Memorizing God's Word, hanging out with friends, and not to mention being blessed with an occasional date night, while my kids are at AWANA!
One of the activities that my kids look forward to is Bible Character Night.
These are the characters they were from AWANA 2010. I will be posting AWANA 2012 next week!

 Jonah in the belly of the great fish!

With the help of my creative husband and my dramatic son (he was 5) we made Jonah come to life!
*I had made "biblical" costumes for each of my kids for a play they had been in. I  bought a cheap brown/tan fabric and cut 2 rectangles (the length was just a few inches shorter than my kids' heights) and then stitched the rectangles together leaving an opening for their head, arms, and legs. Then we just tied a rope around their waist. *

The Great Fish was a little more tricky.
I bought a large plastic bucket from Walmart and cut the bottom out. With a pair of suspenders and some fabric, we pulled it together.

I bought a bolt of (the cheapest) blue fabric and just draped it inside the bucket and used binder clips (many) to clip the fabric inside and then let the excess fabric hang out . I made a tale and stuffed it, and stitched it to the end of the fabric in the back.
I didn't want the tale to drag, so we used fishing line to tie the tale to the back of the bucket.
We made felt eyes and stitched them in place.
We also used a little bit of red fabric to give the inside of the mouth a realistic look.
To put Jonah in the fish, my son stepped into the bucket and we used the suspenders clipped to the bottom of bucket, 2 front clips and 2 back clips. It took some shifting, but we were able to find a balance.
With scrap white felt, my husband made some fish bones to toss on my son. My husband also was the brains behind the seaweed! He bought a plastic green table cloth and cut out a leaf looking chain. (Like you would cut out a paper doll chain with the hands still connected).

**  Our costume of Jonah made it into the Modern Kiddo 4th Annual Modern Kiddo Handmade Costume Parade this year! *
Check it out! http://modernkiddo.com/4th-annual-modern-kiddo-best-homemade-costumes-parade/
Under Awesome Expressions!

Hannah

My daughter's name is Hannah and she wanted to be Hannah. She was named after Hannah who prayed without ceasing for a child.

So, we made her Cabbage Patch Baby a onesie that said Hello My Name is Samuel in the same form of a name badge.





I also made her a baby sling to match her head covering.

Both their costumes were a hit. Hannah even wore her costume to a fair and won a prize!

A Family ART Wall

My kids are forever weighing down our fridge magnets with their latest artwork. I wanted them to be able to display their work in a nice and tidy manner and that is when I came up with our ART wall.

I found clipboards at the local dollar store and we made the A R T letters from items we had around the house.


The A was cut from a cereal box and wrapped with yarn

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  The R was made from craft popsicle sticks.









The T was also cut from a cereal box and then my 7 year old made a collage in the T shape with ripped out pieces of a magazine.  I just asked that he use pieces that were brown, yellow, turquoise.



















We put up the A R T and 5 clipboards one for each of us (Parents like to doodle too).  All hung up using command strips. My husband is super hesitant of putting holes in the walls,  so command strips have become a close friend.

It turned out better than I expected. The kids love showing off their work and everyone loves admiring each others masterpieces!