Saturday, October 18, 2008

Pikachu


This was the year of Pokemon. Allison had had a Pokemon-themed birthday party a month earlier, and, being resourceful, I kept the head from the Pikachu pinata. But of course Karen wanted to be Pikachu too, and I only had one head. I looked carefully at how the pinata head was made, and tried to more or less reconstruct it using cardboard, tape, and yellow tissue paper. In some ways, I actually thought it came out better than the pinata head -- at least it fit a bit better. I bought the girls both a yellow fleece sweatshirt, figuring they could rewear it afterwards. And I bought some yellow RIT dye to turn some old, about-to-be-discarded tan pants and white sweats yellow. The tails are made of painted cardboard, stapled on to the sweatshirts, and supported at the top with yarn attached to the sweatshirt tags (despite how it looks, don't worry, it's not around their necks!). I also attached brown felt cutouts (using washable glue, so they could be removed afterwards) to the backs of the sweatshirts to make Pikachu's stripes.

I dressed myself as Ash, using clothes I already owned, but I made myself Ash's cap by gluing white fabric (from an old tshirt) onto a red baseball cap, and adding the design with a green marker. My poke-ball is something that one of the kids made, and I just attached it to my costume with a safety pin. Trevor is wearing the one store-bought costume we've ever actually purchased -- we bought it for one of the girls when they were younger, and I just didn't have it in me to make another pokemon costume for him this year (but I think we told him it was a ladybug pokemon).
Unfortunately, this was the wrong year for costumes made out of cardboard and tissue paper, as this was the one Halloween we've had since the kids have been trick-or-treating where it rained. Trick-or-treating in the rain was unpleasant enough, but it's worse when your costume is falling apart. No-one protested cutting the evening short. You can see the miserable state of the two heads by the time we got home.

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