At 12 & 14, I thought the boys were over Halloween. Well, the 14 year old is pretty much over it and was satisfied with wearing my goodwill-sourced zombie hockey player costume. The 12 year old led me to believe that he was cool with the zombie football player costume; until October 28, I thought we had it under control. Silly me.
The 12 year old is a gamer and his game of choice then, prior to the release of the latest version of Call of Duty, was Minecraft. On that Friday night he announced that he wanted to be Steve from minecraft for Halloween and started to tell me about his elaborate plan for the costume which basically consisted of encasing him from head to toe in cardboard boxes!
We spent Saturday with me trying to convince him that he needed a plan that was more easily executed and safe. His initial design would have left him walking like Frankenstein and unable to put his hands out to catch himself if he fell…nevermind carrying his own treat bag.
By Sunday morning we still didn’t have a plan we both found agreeable. He was determined to paint the character mask by hand and I was making a shopping list of the all the paint colors I’d need to buy later in the day.
I desperately searched the Internet for other options. And there i found the blog post that saved Halloween.
A dad posted a pdf of the graphics for the Steve mask and instructions on what size box to buy at the copy center. I showed my son a photo of kids wearing the completed Steve mask and we finally had an agreement.
Our Walmart shopping list was reduced to finding purple sweatpants which we located on sale for $5 in the girls department. He still insisted on making the ax but I simplified the process by using a square punch from my scrapbooking supplies. For a weapon made of a pizza box and some cardstock, it turned out to look quite impressive; and it looked great as I carried it all evening while trick or treating because he lost interest in carrying it as soon as he showed his costume to his Minecraft-playing friends.
I know I’m late writing this as it’s now just two weeks before Christmas but I had to let Steve Lange know that his Halloween costume rocked!
