Homemade

I used to mock the idea that one could actually create a homemade Halloween costume from stuff lying around the house, at least for someone with craft skills as limited as mine. But this year, that's what we're doing.

I started with the excavator costume that his day care lady made him for their last show, which she let him take home. I removed the wheels, the bucket, and most of the markings, leaving me with essentially a big yellow box with suspenders inside it. Then I printed a Wall-E logo on both yellow and white printer paper, and used a red marker, a craft knife, and rubber cement to assemble a convincing four-color logo to attach to the front of the box. I also created illusory arm-tracks using duct and electrical tape. The control panel image came from a hi-res JPG I also found on the Internet, then cropped and printed out on white and yellow paper and colored accordingly with brown and orange marker and crayon before gluing it in place. One of the first Wall-E toys he got was a little robot arm that looks like Wall-E's, so we just picked up another one.

My mom has offered to construct treads out of batting and corduroy, and I've been saving paper towel rolls to simulate the hydraulic cylinders on Wall-E's back. I'm debating whether to add rust to the body with spatters of crayon, paint, or carrot cake batter. My wife found a set of eight paper Wall-E party masks online and ordered them. And that's it. Total investment so far: $18. Now we can splurge on a little red cooler to use as a trick-or-treat bag.

I think the trick is that when you have kids, there's a lot of stuff around the house you wouldn't otherwise have.

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