Halloween Costume

I'm a planner. So when October rolled around, I thought I'd start priming Lucas with ideas for cute and easy-to-put-together-at-home Halloween costumes. Despite the fact that Lucas has no clue what Halloween actually is, one afternoon I casually started asking him what he'd like to dress up as for Halloween. He's totally obsessed with firetrucks and already has a great fire hat. Fireman? He's also obsessed with tools and has a complete set of play tools. Bob the Builder? Or, a carpenter?

Suddenly Abel jumped into the conversation and said, "how about SPEED RACER?"

YAY! SPEED RACER!

What the heck? Speed Racer? How do you put together a Speed Racer costume?

Despite subsequent attempts (when Abel was not within earshot) to tell Lucas how cool it would be to dress up as a fireman or cowboy or Handy Manny, he was totally stuck on Speed Racer.

Speed Racer?



I found these movie photos on-line for inspiration and we headed off to the thrift store for a white shirt and pants. We got a white turtleneck (something he needs for fall anyway) for $2.96. The pants were slightly more difficult but we found a boys' white tuxedo (tails!) for $6.96. It is too big but I think hemming the pants and pulling in the waist will be fairly easy. I even picked up a silver bike helmet for $2.45--it looks a little beat up, but he won't be wearing it on a bike ride so I'm not concerned about safety: this is his racing helmet!

Here's our my plan:

Spray paint the helmet white and add the "M" on the front with red electrical tape.

Use blue electrical tape to make racing stripes down the arms of the shirt and legs (conveniently right over the satin tuxedo stripes) on the pants.

And, suddenly you've got: Speed Racer!

No one will have any idea who he is, but he'll be more than happy to tell them: I'm Speed Racer!