You can see other Lego costumes here.

Another previous unknown is the SR-71, colloquially referred to as the Blackbird (charmingly mispronounced as the Blat-bird). This reconnaissance military jet blasted into my consciousness after my son watched a preview for a video on Military Machines. A two minute clip and all of a sudden we were making Blackbirds out of cereal boxes and duct tape, dancing around  singing  a modified version of the Beetles’ song:

Blackbird flying in the dead of night
take those speedy wings up to the sky
all your life
you’ve been only waiting for this moment to arrive.

These phases burst onto the scene and I am forced to learn quickly to answer my son’s many questions.  Because he is a fan of long and complex explanations where no detail is too small to mention, I am taking full advantage of the juvenile non-fiction section in our community’s library.  If a picture is worth a thousand words and the average book has, say, forty pictures, I have just saved myself 40,000 words.  That’s a significant savings.  It goes right back into my patience bank.  Boom.

Now, with son #2 on the scene and becoming more verbal and individual by the millisecond, Lego men are the new rage.  Who knew they were so interesting?  They elicit shrieks of delight and the ever-enthusiastic “GUYS!” when he finds them.  These mini-figs parade all over my house.  I imagine them like the army of soldiers in Toy Story.  I close the door and they shout commands to each other, scaling walls, rappelling down staircases, hiding under furniture.  Some are as audacious as to hide in my pillowcase.

Purely as an aside, I can handle many Lego-related injuries.  I understand that kneeling on little pieces is inevitable; stepping on swords, unfortunate.  But Lego in my BED??  That’s just going a bit too far.

Now, we spray-paint garbage cans to make Lego men costumes.  We hoard and spray paint protein powder containers to make storage for the bazillion Lego pieces that evade organization.  This morning, I plucked Lego men out of the milk jugs destined for the recycling bin and later out of the dish washer where they were nestled in the detergent compartment, awaiting their “bath”.

Now I get excited about Lego men when a few months ago I didn’t care.

This is the mystery of motherhood.  You love what your children love.  Because you love your kids.  You become aware of things that you were blind to before.  And you don’t just stop at awareness—you become a full-blown fan.  What is important to them becomes important to you.

Long after bulldozers and building and Blackbirds are outgrown, I’ll look on them fondly, maybe even exclaim, “Oh look!” before I remember to stop myself.

Little did I know that our quest to find the perfect costume would lead me through the aisles of Dollar Tree and Menards.   As my Irish luck would have it (thank you, Murphy’s Law), there were no store-bought ninjago costumes to be had.   Never fear, Pinterest Woman is here (and you KNOW she can make her own cape out of toilet paper if necessary!).

A quick search on Pinterest led me to this site.

What an amazing costume!

Seriously, this mom (Mindy L) is a genius!  Although there are no as-you-go tutorial pictures to use as a guide, she does a fantastic job describing the step by step process.  Nevertheless, I’m lazy so we only focused on a helmet, body and hands.  My kid is crazy clutzy like his mommy so we decided that less is best when it comes to his legs!

Just as the amazing genius woman describes, we used a laundry basket from Dollar Tree and a cheap plastic bowl.  I’m not gonna lie–cutting the bottom out of the laundry basket was a real job.  I *might* have cursed under my breath multiple times.  But then I just grabbed that sticky wonderfulness of duct tape and merged the two together.

Next, I cut out the lego shape body from a cardboard box.  Thank goodness my hubby hoards boxes as this one was a moving box (we moved over a year and a half ago but who is counting?).  I’d like to say that I measured the width of my son’s shoulders before cutting but alas, I do everything the hard way.  My “just lay down on the cardboard and I’ll mark it” tactic was met with dismal results.  After a fitting, I had to cut down the box on both sides so that it would stay up on his shoulders.  The shoulder straps were made out of my favorite stuff–duct tape!

I was out of luck (dang you, Murphy, you unlucky bastard) with finding the right shade of green duct tape so I settled on silver.  No worries–I love me some spray paint!  I headed out to the garage (otherwise known as my “craft area”) and gave the cardboard and helmet a good blast of emerald green paint.  Who knew that cardboard would take so much more paint?  In the end, I had to buy a second can to ensure adequate coverage.

Oh, those clever, clever hands.  I found beer/pop koozies at Walmart for a buck and snapped up four.  Again, with a few snips here and there, we were on our way.  Black duct tape in hand, I gave those babies a good swaddling.  My son simply slips them on over his shirt.

After the paint dried, the real fun began.  Luckily, my folks were in town for a visit so my much more artistically talented dad taped the body details for me.  He also drew the eyes on yellow posterboard paper and I taped them to the helmet.

Tomorrow my son will take to the hallways of his elementary school for the costume parade.  Here’s praying the tape holds up!  : )

But of course it was worth it. We bought concrete form tubes (also called Sonotubes) at the hardware store: 10″ diameter for larger grown-up noggins, 8″ inch diameter for kid craniums. We sawed the tube into individual helmets, then traced cardboard circles for the tops. We used sponge for the “connectors.” And spray-painted the whole deal bright Lego yellow.

We skipped the rest of the costume because, even though we made an effort, we weren’t going to go overboard on effort. (Here is a link to some folks who went above and beyond in making Lego costumes.) The Lego miniman smirk was the best part of the helmet, I think. The worst parts: no peripheral vision and gradual, but undeniable, aphyxiation. Happy Halloween!

It could happen.

In continuing with celebrating Halloween I’m sharing some of my kids’ costumes.  I’ve been pretty lucky with my son because he usually  wants to be something we already have the stuff for right here in the house-like when he wanted to be a football player.  We just HAPPENED to have a football dress up set.  Yeah!  He was Jeff Gordon for several years, and that was just fine with us.  And his first real costume was also reused for his sister-a red M&M costume that I picked up a consignment shop for $4.  That’s $2 per year-I’ll take it!

My daughter was a pumpkin her first Halloween.  A friend I worked with happened to have a costume that her daughter had worn at the same age.  She very happily lent it to me.  It was adorable.  The next year she was the M&M.  After that it started to get complicated with her.  Two years ago she wanted to be a fairy princess like Abby on Sesame Street, only once we went anywhere she didn’t really want to wear the wings.  Last year I just told her what she was going to be-a sparkly witch.  I actually helped MAKE THIS ONE. I SEWED.  Yes, Little ADD ME!  It turned out quite cute.

I have seen a lot of very, very cute costumes on some of the sites I visit daily.  Like a lego costume-as much as my kids love legos I hope that one of them decides to be one for Halloween someday. I found the instructions on how to make the lego costume on the Country Living website.  I could do that!

Here is the lego costume that I think would be adorable. The source of this picture is in the link.

As I kept looking online, I noticed that there were a lot of variations in the lego toys and costumes,  Here we have a costume that is show on Instructables.com on how to make it.  I kept flipping through and eventually found some lego superhero costumes that were really great too!

Cute lego guy from the Instructables website.

Princess Difficult is going to be a black cat this year, but she has informed me that she is going to be a “Pink football player” next year.  That could be a bit complicated.  Or maybe not.  By then, her brother will have outgrown the helmet.  We have pink spray paint.  She has a pink jersey.  This could just work!  Now that she has mentioned this, The Professor has begun planning his costumes for the next few years.   Every year a superhero, just a different one.  Next year he wants to be Batman.  He is even trying to figure out how we can hit the reduced price costumes after Halloween to see if we can snag some of those costumes.  That boy!  I think I can probably take him up on that, after all, I suppose if we were able to find something cheap and maybe just a little big for next year he could use it as dress up.

I tried to put pictures in order of the kids in their costumes.  I’m having some issues with this, so I apologize.  They are here, just not in order.  But I assure you that cuteness abounds in this slideshow…

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You may have noticed that Legos are quite popular at the Dummy house.  And most recently, the Lego Ninjagos are the greatest thing since sliced bread.  Naturally when we asked Big A what he wanted to be for Halloween, he said the Green Ninja.  Well, you can buy a plain ol run of the mill ninja costume, although I couldn’t find a green one anywhere.  But who wants to buy a costume that everyone else will be wearing when you can MAKE a one of a kind costume instead?

What you need:

• cardboard-preferably corrugated cardboard as it is very sturdy
• hot glue gun
• box cutter
• spray paint and spray primer
• felt
• exacto knife
• painters tape
• measuring tape
• black permanent marker

For the body: I started out with a moving box.  I opened it up, cutting at the seams of the box until I had a flat sheet of cardboard.  I cut at an angle because if you look at a Lego mini figure, they are shaped like a triangle without the point on the top.  So I cut the front, leaving 2 large tabs for the shoulders across the top.

For the arms, I laid Big A’s jacket on the floor and put the cardboard over it and used that as a template for where the arm holes should go.  Big A was in bed, so I couldn’t just measure him, which would have been the easier method!  I cut out the arm holes large enough for Big A to move comfortably with a sweatshirt on underneath.

I used hot glue to glue all the seams together.  The front panel glued to the side panel, side panels glued to the back panel, and the shoulder tabs bend from the front and then glued to the back panel.  (I really hope that makes sense, I’m not a great tutorial writer!  Sorry!)

For the head: The head was a large sand pail I found on clearance for $0.50.  It was the perfect shape and color for a Lego man’s head.  For this part, I placed the pail on Big A’s head first to see how it sat.  Next, I took it off again and measured from his shoulders (where the bottom of the pail sat) to his eyes so I would know where to cut the eye holes.  Using an exacto knife, I cut the eye holes out.  This was a little tricky, it isn’t easy to cut a round shape out of plastic with a knife.  The knife kept wanting to go in a straight line, and I had to be very careful not to crack the plastic.

Since Big A wanted to be the Green Ninja, we bought a can of green spray paint.  VERY IMPORTANT: You have to prime the cardboard and the plastic BEFORE you spray paint them!  If you don’t, the paint will run and drip and will not stick to the plastic or the cardboard.  To paint the body, I just painted the whole thing, easy peasy.  It took 2 coats to get it totally covered, and I used a hi-gloss paint.  For the head, I covered the eye area with painter’s tape, making sure there was a rounded part of the yellow that would show through the “shroud” of green paint.  Again, it took 2 coats and I waited 24 hours before very carefully pulling off the tape so as not to peel the green paint off with it.

I outlined the eyes and face mask area with black permanent marker.

For the accessories on the body, I used colored felt and copied a picture we have of the Green Ninja.  I cut out the felt in the shapes I needed and hot glued them in place.

To keep the head from moving around when Big A walks, I added velcro to the inside of the pail, and another piece to a Winter hat.  That way they stick to each other and he can turn his head and the pail turns with him.

Here we are at the festival, Big A the Green Ninja and Little C as Curious George. 

Big A won 1st prize in his Ninjago costume at a local Halloween festival last night!  He was super excited!  If you like it a whole bunch, feel free to pop over to this costume contest and vote for him!

Of course, I think my kids look adorable in their costumes!  But it’s even more special since I made both of them, and even though there are a ton of kids out there dressed like ninjas and monkeys . . . mine are unique and special and they love them and that is really all that matters!

Naturally, when we asked him what he wanted to be for Halloween, he said Curious George.  Ok, so Momma can go out and spend $50-$60 on a costume he will only wear a few times and then most likely it will sit in the dress up bin until it is outgrown and then head to Goodwill.  OR . . . Momma can make a monkey costume.  Ah, but one problem, I really don’t sew.  Hmmm . . . What’s a girl to do?

I have this gift you see.  I can look at something and see it as many other things, or being used for many other uses most people would never dream up.  I was at the thrift store (love that place!)  looking for a monkey suit or something similar.  I didn’t find a monkey, but I DID find a lion!

How does one make a lion into a monkey you ask?  It’s not super easy!

First, I had to remove the lion face from the hood.  I used a seam ripper and popped that face off, it was kind of creepy and horror-movie-esque.  Then I gave the lion a haircut.  I made a HUGE mess cutting all of the fuzzy mane off.  I tried using a hair clipper, but that wasn’t working so I had to just used kitchen scissors.

The lion had long claws on each paw, which I also cut off.

I opened the existing tail and shoved some pipe cleaners in it so it would stand up and curl at the end a little.  Then I covered it in brown felt.

I covered the belly in brown felt and, per Little C’s request, gave the monkey a belly button.

I made some felt ears and glued them to the sides of the head.  I bought a yellow hat for $2 at the thrift store and put a black strip of felt around it just like the Man with the Yellow Hat wears.  Little C was most excited about this part!

There you have it!  No longer a lion, but an adorable and unique Curious George costume!  Very warm too!  I plan to make a felt banana to sew onto the hand as well, but I was happy with how it turned out, I HAD to share it now!

 
If you like that . . . just wait until you see Big A’s Ninjago costume!  I’m saving that one . . .  it’s a surprise!

It was so easy and took about 3 hours to make the three of these. In directions I found it suggested to spray paint the boxes which can be done. However, I didn’t like the tape showing and I didn’t have enough time for it to dry. But, you could match the duct tape (which is what you use to tape down the containers) to the spray paint if that bothers you. Now that there are so many wonderful duct tape colors I picked up 3 rolls per adult box and 2 rolls for the kid box.

Hints: *When taping the round macaroni or soup containers to the box, go ahead and use the same color duct               tape as you will use for the box. The tape will buckle a bit but it’s OK.

* Duct tape one side at a time and start with the side with the containers. Go in a straight line to keep                 from buckling. Will do some of that around containers but that’s OK.

Wish I had: I think a LEGO hat would have been cute, writing the word LEGO on the back and wearing           clothes that were all the same color. But, I was doing well with getting this done and you may have better ideas.

I’d love to see your completed product!

 Have fun with it!

Lady Gag Gag

Aidan was a Lego brick (again). While he is very cute, he’s not so bright.

Aidan, just think outside the box! (Stuck on the slide in costume.)

But it’s just not about the kids. Tom and I went to our friends’ party who are crazy-over-the-top when it comes to Halloween. Their house has been featured on the news and has caused major traffic jams from gawkers. Their neighbors just loved when a news helicopter swooped around their house at 6 a.m a couple of  years ago. Here are some highlights — my pictures don’t give their front yard justice:

Tom dressed up as Cam from Modern Family. “Hand to God!” Fortunately (?) all of the clothes were already in his closet. I went as the host, Paul, who won the Seattle Sutton Slim Down challenge this year and is a contest junkie. I did blow a fuse trying to blow-dry my hair to match his perfect coif.  The best part about dressing as the host is that I won awards for Best Costume, Most Original Costume, Scariest Costume and Sexiest Costume.

Cam and Lily (Sorry that I don't know how to pixelate the package)

Tom's Muse or Alter Ego

Speaking of sexiest costumes, almost every chick at the party was decked out as a slutty kitty, a naughty nurse, a provocative pilot and yes, a prostitute peacock. (Let your imagination go wild here.) Beside the gal dressed as a can of Red Bull, I was the only one who was guaranteed to not get lucky that night. (Unless Tom was into Paul. Or Pat from SNL. Or a librarian dressed as a gay gym teacher.) We got the hell out of there before the orgy broke out! Good times~

From Ripley's Believe It or Not!

Paul and Paul

My Muse: The Original Paul

Halloween is just about the only day when girls can dress slutty sexy and no one can really say anything about it. Am I right? Well, it’s also the day when the geeks show their true inner spirit and come dress as their, well, favorite, uh geek gadget. Hmm. Not very attractive if you ask me. But then who am I to judge? I’m not really in the inner-geeky circuit. These costumes were pretty original and funny and whether or not you love ‘em or hate ‘em, you gotta give them credit!

Check out the rest of the costumes at EgoTV

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LEGO people. Simple, yet brilliant.

A MySpace page costume. A sign of the times

This Toy Soldier costume must have taken a lot of effort. I found this photo on Flickr and in the description, it said that the guy would approach a house, ring the doorbell, and before anyone answered, he would throw down the wooden base and assume his position on the sidewalk. Sweet.

Tetris blocks. Retro.

If Tetris blocks aren’t 80′s enough for you, how about this Transformers costume.

Forget about those cutesie costumes for dogs, this one is incredible!

This one is just cruel! Poor kid.

Happy Halloween!