Holloween Costumes

In keeping with the traditions of my mother I don't buy costumes for my kids, I make them.
I have two rules when it comes to Halloween costumes. The first one is that they are not allowed to be anything scary or evil. I know what you're thinking... that's what Halloween is about, scaring the pants of people. Well, I think of Halloween more as one big dress up party and I don't like gross scary stuff, so that's my rule. Deal with it.
The second rule is that you can't be the same thing twice. Each year has to be something different. This rule is especially difficult for my oldest son because if he had his way he would be the same thing every year.
This year the little one wants to be a robot like his brother last year and my oldest wants to be a dinosaur.
When starting to plan the costumes, I remembered that the boys had a large plastic "blow up" toy dinosaur that they put a hole in. Instead of throwing it away I put it in the closet not knowing what I would ever do with it. Turns out I needed it for a Halloween costume.

I cut it apart and put arm holes in it so that he could ware it like a coat and used duck tape to hold whole thing together. I thought I might use juice pouches to fill in some of the spaces if the plastic dinosaur shell was too small but all of the dimensions worked out well. With a green shirt and sweat pants on, everything will blend together.

I guess you could say I was determined to use juice pouches to make a costume because I asked the little one if he wanted to be a juice pouch monster but he insisted on being a robot. It didn't take me long to figure out how to use juice pouches though. Instead of a box, spray painted silver, like I did for his brother I made the body of the robots out of juice pouches and used dryer vent for the arms and legs. The finishing detail will be to glue some circuit boards that we took out of some old toys to the front of the body.
Can't wait to add their photo to the gallery bellow. Have a safe and happy Halloween. Scary too (since I know most people who aren't me like it that way) but mostly safe and happy.

The first time we went trick or treating I dressed my oldest up in one of my shirts, tied scarves around him and bought a few props to make him a pirate.

His first year of school he had to dress as a story book character and bring the book to school with him. He went dressed as Remy the rat from Ratatouille.

Next he was a very green alien and the little one had a penguin suit that a friend gave us.

Last year they went as a robot and Handy Many. The little one had to stop his brother every few houses and fix the robot.