Halloween Procrastination

I've had a hard time maintaining a posting schedule lately, because Halloween.

I actually only had Halloween listed as one item on my "to-do" list among other tasks like "send out thank you notes for Cael's party that was almost a MONTH ago", "dog haircut", and "finish painting" (another project that got back-burnered).

It also appears that someone wrote "poop" in shaky handwriting on my to-do list, but I would have to make time for that later, because as of Friday afternoon, my boys had no costumes, no carved pumpkins, and no candy to pass out.



There was time to resolve the latter two issues, but the boys were pretty unhappy when I announced that I would not be purchasing costumes this year, and they would have to come up with a plan using materials we had on hand.

We spent literal hours googling "last minute costume ideas".  No thanks, I don't want my nine year old son to be a sexy pirate!

We tried "last minute costume ideas FOR KIDS".  Who has 20 feet of extra sofa batting and a gallon jug of aubergine glitter?

Okay, maybe we'd have better luck with "EASY last minute costume ideas FOR KIDS".  Sure, that cardboard box vending machine was cute, but it was too late in the game to construct a 6-piece harness.

"EASY LAST MINUTE DO-IT-YOURSELF HALLOWEEN COSTUMES FOR BOYS AGES 7-10 THAT ARE MADE FROM STUFF AROUND A NORMAL HOUSE AND DON'T TAKE OVER 36 HOURS OF LABOR AND AN ENGINEERING DEGREE TO ASSEMBLE!"

Finally.  Our final search yielded two results: a lumberjack and an iPad.

Graham latched on to the iPad idea, and Cael was ready to channel his inner lumberjack as soon as I agreed to draw him a beard for trick-or-treating.

He really is his father's son.

It was easy enough to pull off this look with a plaid flannel shirt, jeans, some suspenders ( I did break down and buy these), a beanie, and a plastic axe that actually came with a store-bought fireman costume from a few years ago.

Graham's would be harder to execute, but as soon as I had the image in my head, I started to get excited.  I cut up an old computer box, spray painted it with some metallic spray paint I already had on hand from that painting project I had put out of sight and out of mind.

Unfortunately, it has also put me out of hardware.



I covered the front of the cardboard with some black posterboard, measured and printed out some app icons for the iPad screen, and glued them on in the proper position.  A few more details like the battery and signal strength gauges pulled it together, and I was finally able to sleep knowing that I could throw any old costume on Adler.

When the time came for trick-or-treating last night, I was proud to see my kids so happy, excited, and sufficiently costumed for very little money.



And the money was a very important part, because not only had I not forgotten about the pumpkin carving, but I went a little overboard.

Check back tomorrow for a photographic explanation of my orange hands...