Halloween Costumes

My children, like all children, are fickle when it comes to Halloween costumes.  We have an adorable Madeline costume that Tootsie Roll wore when she was little (well, littler than she is now, lol) that fits Curly Jones perfectly.  She loves to dress up in it (and dress her rocking horse in it) but she doesn't want to use it for Halloween.

So when she decided that she wanted to be "Mickey Mouse Clubhouse", I foolishly bought her a Minnie Mouse costume... that she enjoys dressing up in, but does not want to use for Halloween.

Now, I'm a nice mom and all, but I do draw the line at buying one costume per child per Halloween.  So she can choose one of these, or one of her ballet outfits from dance class, or one of the umpteen million costumes in the two giant dressup bins in our playroom.  Suffer. :)

Tootsie Roll is another story.  She has always wanted to be something unusual for Halloween.  When every one of her preschool friends was being a Disney princess, she would pick Madeline or "a pumpkin witch".  Last year, she had about a million places to dress up for Halloween.  She had her parade at school, a party next door, a masquerade ball at my school, and also got to dress up during Halloween week at both of her dance classes.  All that and we didn't even have to buy a costume... she wore the Snow White one we had bought for our trip to Disney last summer and made costumes out of stuff we had for all of the other events:

 For school and here with her dance teacher (who we didn't know would also be Snow White lol)

 For dance class #2 and our neighbor's party - her Easter dress and my wedding veil

By Halloween night she was bored of her other costumes and came up with the chef outfit on the fly.  We had a kiddie cooking hat and apron, so she decided to splash it with spaghetti sauce and draw on a moustache.  Curly Jones was a ladybug. :)

This year, my voracious little reader is currently on Book 11 of The Series of Unfortunate Events and wants to be Violet Baudelaire for Halloween.  Now, I can't say I blame the kid.  She's a pretty cool character and I wish I could dress like her every single day:

The costume designer on the movie was Colleen Atwood, who also designed the costumes for Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland movie.  I can't say I was a huge fan of the movie itself (I am an Alicephile, I was disappointed) but her wardrobe alone was worth watching:

So here we are, trying to figure out how to create Violet when I can't sew.  Any ideas?