Moshi Moshi Dude

For nine months, I was advised not to eat any sushi for fear of poisoning my firstborn who was still incubating. Following that, it was suggested that I try to limit the amount of sushi I feasted on while breastfeeding for fear of it making its way into the milk I produced. Having only indulged in sushi once in the last year, it only made sense to do this for Halloween.

Have you ever heard of that song by the Vapors.. I think I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I think I'm turning Japanese, I really THINK so!

our little sushi....

Before you compliment me on a great job or how creative that was, let me caveat it with... *chuckle.... shrug of embarrassed shoulders and a bit of a turtle popping chin and head movement towards you .... I am NOT that creative. My sister-in-law, Tammy, pinned a cute Etsy costume as follows:

Sold here for $40 bucks (excluding shipping!)

I fell instantaneously in love and just HAD to have my son be a sushi. Creative? Not so much. Steal your idea and improve it for cheaper? Heck yeah! That is exactly what I did (minus the ginger because I couldn't find the right color felt in the 34 cent 8x10 size at my local craft store).

All in, the material for Jordan's costume cost $4.88 with much leftover fabric as I grossly overestimated the amount needed and also previously imagined we would be accompanying him as larger life sized sushis (the cost-benefit analysis made me decide otherwise). I have a bunch of black and orange felt leftover that will be used for other projects (methinks some crinkly toys). Meanwhile, the material for Andy's apron (which is not pictured, but he is a tempan yaki chef, imagine Bennihana or Tokyo Wakko, vaguely inspired by a recent episode of How I Met Your Mother) and bandana cost $5.42 (I know it's too big... he was home teaching when I made it and I didn't think to put it on my own forehead to measure) and my costume was free courtesy of our friend Allison who had been a geisha a few years back (she even had the bright red lipstick, I used black liner for my brows and eyes and white eye-shadow for my eyes.. didn't feel like putting white powder all over my face).

The labor consumed making both costumes was roughly an hour for Jordan's costume and 30 minutes for Andy's. I am a novice sewer who still watches the instructional video on how to thread and bobbin everytime I change thread color, so trust me when I say this was a very easy DIY project, even for a dummy like me!

I folded the orange felt in half, sketched half of a fish, and cut it out (as you can see, my initial fish was HUGE ... even larger than Jordan.. but I just kept cutting away until it was the perfect size).

For the white, I folded a 8x10 34 cent white felt sheet in half and cut out triangle Chevron stripes. I sewed the white stripes onto the orange fabric and then sewed the orange pieces together (I learned from my sister-in-law that felt does not fray, so I just sewed it from the outside instead of flipping it inside out) and stuffed it.

The green seaweed was another 8x10 34 cent green felt sheet folded in half, zig-zag cut on the non-fold side and then cut slits close to, but not quite at the fold for the frayed grass effect. I sewed the seaweed onto his black band which was just a long black rectangle with velcro sewed on the ends to hold it all together. Last, but not least.. the wasabi was a 8x10 34 cent lime green felt sheet crumpled together with a glue gun and safety pinned onto the fish (this way the fish is still a stuffed animal he can play with separate from the wasabi after costume wear).

Ta-da! Sushi costume - homemade and under $5! I decided against a onesie because it's kind of cold lately and instead went with this cute Calvin Klein top and bottom courtesy of our friend Becky.

Can you tell I'm absolutely ecstatic over my sudden wave of resourceful creativity? Aryigato!