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!

Halloween--it takes all kinds

Observations from Halloween 2007:

1) Lucas is definitely still too young to get it. We visited a few houses of our neighbors. More to say hello than get candy. He enjoyed seeing some of the "big kids" come to our house dressed up. He HATED putting his woof-woof costume over his head. Maybe next year.

2) There is a new (or new to me at least) phenomenon. I'm wondering if it is common. There seemed to be quite a few parents in their cars (anecdotally these mostly seemed to be SUVs) slowly driving up the road as their kids walked door to door. Hmmm... Why were they doing this? Were the parents just being lazy? Would they hit a few houses then jump back in the car and look for another row of houses with their lights on? I don't really understand it. From what I can tell, most people in our neighborhood give out candy. Thus, by walking several blocks you can score a pretty good haul of candy. There shouldn't really be a need to drive. Strange.

3) I have a newfound sense of pride (and a little embarrassment for!) my dad. One year when we were pretty young my sister got sick on Halloween. She was devastated. So Dad (he's the one who always took us trick-or-treating) agreed to collect candy for her. I don't know why Mom and Dad didn't just make my brother and me share 1/3 of our candy. We clearly didn't offer but they could have forced it. Anyway, my dad sucked it up and collected candy for his sick daughter. I'm sure he got plenty of looks. But he did it to make Sarah happy. Contrast this with the 50+ year old man who came trick-or-treating at our house last night. At first I thought it was just a little ahead of his young son. But then the son asked for candy, too. I said, "doesn't he have your bag? I already put candy in!" The man answered, "Oh no, this is for me." Guess he wasn't embarrassed a bit. I'm glad I gave him the cheez-its instead of the chocolate.