Trick or Treat

Now that Halloween is over, I'm going to clue you in on something I've discovered.  Yes, I know it's too late for this year, but next year you'll be in the know - fun, homemade costumes earn you tons more candy.  And by "you" I mean "your child" because you're obviously not sending them to bed and then going through their stash like candy pirates, right?

My son was Saturn this year and he killed it!

You totally can't tell because we have a crappy camera that desperately needs replacing, but he even GLOWED IN THE DARK.

Total cost after tax = $4.90 (and a whole lot of blood, sweat and tears)

Okay, so no one is going to be shocked that the costume cost less that $5, but to me Halloween is the only American holiday that really embraces being creative rather than going out and spending tons of cash, and that's one of the things I like the celebrate.

I don't have any making-of pictures because I procrastinated until last week, during which my house was hit with a virus from hell.  So for three days my life was a messy rotation of papier mache, vomit and diarrhea.  So trust me, pictures were not a good idea.  But here's the details:

First, I totally stole this idea from this super cute kid.  Atticus was going to be King Kong originally, but I cannot make a gorilla outfit and couldn't find a cool one for less that $50, so that'll be another year.  I used one of those balls with handles that kids bounce on (whatever that's called) and papier mached around it.  I used the flour, water and salt formula, in case you were wondering.

I left fairly large openings at the top and the bottom because I was paranoid about not making a big enough hole.  Obviously if that had happened I would have just cut a larger opening (like I cut the arm holes) afterwards.  I'm not sure why I didn't think about that at the time, but I'll blame the virus from hell.  Instead I had to fashion little suspenders out of gorilla tape, but in hindisght the large neck hole actually worked well because it kept him from getting too hot or itchy.

The rings were made of a cardboard, covered with aluminum foil.  They had a nice sparkly effect.  I just wedged them on and they stayed put the entire night, even with him slamming into bushes and sides of buildings because he forgot how bulky a planet is.  I spray painted the entire thing with some leftover white paint and then the boyfriend painted it with acrlyic paints and then went over it with some glow-in-the-dark acrylic paint.  The paint was the only thing we had to buy - everything else was free or already owned.

All in all we had a great night and he's already coming up with ideas for next year (frontrunner - a robot).