Make your own Halloween Trick-or-Treating Tote for under $1!

If you’ve been to Costco lately, you’ll feel like Halloween has come and gone – hello Christmas!  So I’m happy to report that we still have a month to deck out our houses for fall and decide what our little ones are going to dress up as – and to also buy Halloween candy.  And re-buy Halloween candy.  In my case, the re-buy happens a few times.

I like to think I’m pretty organized when it comes to holidays but more often than naught I find myself scrambling at the last minute. So when I walked into HomeSense the other day and found an adorable costume for my little girl that was plush and warm, I scooped it up! (In Ottawa, every Halloween has been frigid – sometimes we see snow!)  Three guesses as to what it is:

I haven’t shown it to her yet, otherwise it would go into her regular rotation of stuffies but I’m pretty sure she’s going to like it (‘monkey’ is also one of my pet names for her so I’m excited to see her in it!)  Thoughts did turn to her Halloween trick-or-treating bag because last year I pooched that part. This year I wanted to be prepared and add a personal touch to it.

I wanted to make a trick-or-treating tote that was a suitable size for a toddler and also one that was light.  Plus I thought if my daughter was going as a monkey, having a tote that referenced bananas would be cute!

Here are the materials I used:

• 3 pieces of brown felt
• 1 piece of yellow felt
• a black permanent marker
• scissors
• sewing kit/sewing machine

I originally was going to use fabric adhesive but felt doesn’t seem to like any glue-type product I tried (any tips would be welcome!) But don’t let the sewing part dissuade you – you could easily hand sew this in less time than it takes me to write this sentence!  Plus no hemming is required because felt doesn’t fray – another bonus!  I chose to use my sewing machine because it was handy.  Here’s what I did:

• First things first, since I’m adding a banana embellishment to the front of the tote, I drew a bunch of bananas out of yellow felt with the black permanent marker and cut them out.  I also cut two identical rectangular strips for handles from one of the brown pieces of felt:

• Next, I pinned and stitched the bananas to another piece of brown felt as well as one of the handles to what will be the inside of the tote:

• Now take the last piece of brown felt and pin and sew the other handle to it (making sure it lines up with the handle you’ve already sewn on to the front of the tote):

• Align the front and back pieces of the tote (right sides facing outward) and pin both sides:

• Last step:  stitch the tote up starting with the left hand side, migrating to the bottom of the tote and then up the right hand side.

The result?  Pretty freaking cute!

Even the monkey agrees.

Cost?  Felt is crazy inexpensive and thanks to some Michaels coupons, the total cost for this project was 80 cents!!  Cheaper than the dollar store kids!  Now to go find the tote in time for Halloween – a certain kiddo found it while I was taking pictures and it’s now being used as storage for her farm animals…

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