Wednesday, October 27, 2010

Group Costume -- S'mores Around A Campfire

This is by far our cheapest, most creative costume yet. I went as firewood (which also doubles as a dryad costume.) Our nieghbor girl went as the fire. Her mom came along as a graham cracker. Our eldest went as a chocolate bar while hubby went as a marshmallow on a stick. So far we've won "Silliest Costume Award" at the scout Halloween party and still have one more big event to go. (That's all the events we could squeeze in this year, since we're working extra jobs.) So here's the breakdown of how to make each element.

FIREWOOD: brown corduroys, brown shirt, hair braided with a few small braids, twigs stuck through the braids to fork out above my head, larger twigs held in hands and threaded out of belt loops.
TOTAL COST: Nothing. The clothes came from the closet and the twigs came from below the neighbor's tree.

FIRE: orange jumpsuit, flame fabric cut as a poncho but you could also cut out whimsical triangles of this fabric or of plain yellow fabric, hair sprayed down with glitter.
TOTAL COST: about $5 for the fire fabric and $1 for the bottle of glitter hair spray.

HERSEY BAR: brown pants, brown shirt, flat panel of cardboard spray painted brown and painted with black lines like a bar of chocolate, string stapled on the back to hold it up on his shoulders, and a hole cut out for his face.
TOTAL COST: $3 bucks because we didn't have any brown spray paint. The clothes came from his closet and we went dumpster diving at a trendy decor shop (which didn't have nasty trash) for the cardboard. $1 for a package of "design research."

GRAHAM CRACKER: Plain brown table cloth and cardboard painted with brown dots.
TOTAL COST: Nothing. Table cloth and cardboard were free. If she needed to put a hole in it to make a poncho, the cost would be about 3$ to buy another at, say, Goodwill or Walmart.

MARSHMALLOW ON A STICK: (Hubby lost weight, a lot of weight, this year so he really didn't want to be the marshmallow, but at the last minute our son decided he really wanted to be the chocolate bar, so a huge, HUGE kudos goes out to Dad for being the "bigger" man.)  Okay, the marshmallow was a giant box wrapped in white trash bags and old mattress pads. A layer of old sheets was stapled over the top. Then I covered a really long stick broken in half (again from the neighbors tree) with aluminum foil. I stuck one end through one side of the box pointed up. The other half I stuck into the other side pointed down.
TOTAL COST: Nothing! Dumpster diving for the cardboard and all the other supplies came from our bags of old stuff in the basement. If I didn't have a box of old sheets, etc, I could buy sheets at Goodwill for about $3 and Walmart (for one top sheet) for around $5. If you have to buy a mattress pad, I suggest you take an old one off a bed for the costume and replace it with a new one.

Show me your homemade creations with a list of ingredients and costs.  I'd love to feature your work of art in articles for next year.  The most creative, cheapest costume will win a spot on my Wall of Fame.