Homemade Halloween Costume Attempt – Part I

This year, my kids thought it would be fun to make their costumes (meaning they thought it would be fun for me to make their costumes). At first they wanted to coordinate by being a washing machine, dryer and basket of laundry (obviously the baby gets no real say in his costume so he is doomed to suffer along with the ideas of big brother and sister…at least for one more year).  But, when they saw the following picture of a brother and sister Wheel of Fortune team, it was a no-brainer as to what the final costume choice would be:

That’s right; they’re going as Pat Sajak and Vanna White.  Well, the parents of these kids are obviously WAY more talented than I am at homemade projects and I couldn’t quite figure out how they made everything so wearable so I sat the kids down and we came up with some alternative ways to create similar looks.  (Fancy dress and suit are no issue but we definitely need the wheel and the board to really be able to identify my crazy kids’ costumes).

I found a plastic cake decorating wheel at Walmart – this was key because it is light weight and it already spins so I don’t have to worry about that part.  Sigh of relief.  We found some sticky foam at Michaels, useful for decorating the wheel wedges.  Sticky foam is twice the price of regular foam sheets, but it is SOOOO much easier to arrange than trying to make foam stick to double-sided tape and then the wheel too.  My laziness (and the fact that I had a coupon) steered me directly toward the sticky foam and I am convinced that it was the greatest purchase of my life.

Lots of color choices for our wedges

I sat down and hand sketched a few sizes of wedges until we found one that allowed us to have an even number of wedges fit on the wheel shape.  As I have said before, I cannot draw nor can I actually cut a straight line to save my life so some of the wedges are slightly askew, but I’m going to ask you to look past that.

the finished wheel base

As this wheel was on the smaller side (as is my son), the wedges are also a little smaller so we had some issues figuring out what to use to complete the decorating.  I wasn’t going to go out and buy packs and packs of letters and numbers because the main point of homemade costumes is saving money, right?  So, we mixed and matched from my stash of scrapbooking things and I think it turned out to be fairly acceptable.

It’s not too bad, right?

Naturally, I did my best to make sure you could tell that this is homemade and not professional by making a few things crooked and by using a white crayon to write “bankrupt” because I didn’t have a white out pen.  I didn’t want anyone to get intimidated by my mad skills! In any event, this actually looks amazing considering that I did most of this while my little one was desperately trying to ruin my work help with everything.   Now we just have to add the spinning arrow and figure out how to attach the whole thing to the suit a la Flavor Flav’s clock so that his hands are still free to receive candy. (I wish I could figure out the hidden straps from our inspiration costumes, but I’m really quite tired and unimaginative, not to mention unskilled – feel free to give me any ideas if you have them!)

We recently moved on to constructing a puzzle board out of a large sheet of green foam which, at the last-minute, my daughter decided needed to be cut like the big board instead of just going with the rectangle shape.  Again, I need to remind you that I cannot cut straight lines, especially with an almost 2-year-old attempting to grab the scissors from me and slice my throat every 3 minutes.  Please don’t judge because my daughter hasn’t recognized that this isn’t perfect and she is VERY tiny so using plastic of any sort would probably have been too heavy.

yeah, I missed the top of the green board thanks to her new shape cutting scheme, but I think it might still work for trick or treating

We plan on just punching some holes in this bad boy and sticking some string through it so she can wear it around her neck while only slightly covering her “beautiful” dress.  (I am letting her wear a dress that was given to her by her older cousin because she has been begging me to wear it for a year, even though it is 2 sizes too big and completely inappropriate for every day use thus far – but for Halloween fanciness purposes, it is perfect). She is more excited about the dress than the letter board.  Go figure.

Everything is still a work in progress, but the fact that I have the main parts done before October 30th is an accomplishment in itself.  And, for the record, my toddler will be going as a Wheel of Fortune contestant.  Partly because the kids wanted him to fit in with their theme, and partly because he is not the type to enjoy any costume that involves headgear (as nearly all costumes do) or anything that he could possibly strip out of.  He will have a coordinating name tag and a shirt that says, “I’d like to buy a vowel”.  Yeah, that shows you the extent of my creativity.  Poor 3rd kid………..Stay tuned to see how it all comes together (or falls apart) as we approach Halloween!