fall carnival 2012

Last Friday was our school's annual Fall Carnival.  That means we have to prepare Halloween costumes a little bit earlier than Halloween.



I love to go the homemade costume route.  But on an early October trip to Walmart, Diego and I saw this blue ninja costume and that was exactly what he wanted to be.  I couldn't beat $9.99 so we bought it.  And he wore it almost everyday since.
If you ask him what he's being for Halloween, he'll say, "An azul minja with one sword."  Yes, that's minja with an "m"...and he does have more than one sword, but that's what makes it so cute, right?  The swords were actually an add-on of $7.00, but definitely worth it.  I did make the headband...it says hi-ya.  Just a strip of a t-shirt tied around his head....the one it came with was 10 sizes too small and cut the circulation off to his brain.



One aisle over, we found this beautiful Cleopatra costume.  Again, it's hard to beat $19.99.  She tried it on as soon as she got home and fell in love with it.  It was comfortable and beautiful.  We added the cute little black kitty cat and the Elizabeth Taylor eyes.  It turned out there were a lot of Cleopatras at her school, all store bought costumes, and all somewhat different.



Joaquin was another story.  I bought him two costumes from the store.  The first was some scary pumpkin thing.  He tried it on, and it just didn't fit right (thank God).  The second was a werewolf.  Again, he tried it on and I actually burst out laughing.  The face mask had been all smushed up in the package and stayed like that on his head.  He looked like someone had punched him in the nose.

I had wanted to make him one the whole time and he was dead set against.  I threw out every idea possible, and he shot them all down.  I even bought fur fabric to turn him into a werewolf, but it ended up being itchy and he just couldn't wear it.

We were down to a week before the carnival, and he still didn't know what he was going to be.  Then I ran across this amazing costume on the web.  (definitely click on the link.)

I read through the whole post and the comments.  That cool head cost her $50 and was way to complicated for me to make.  But I knew I could do it with poster board I had stashed under the sofa.  So I set to making it when Joaquin was fuming about not having a costume one night...I told him to trust me and he'd love it.



And he did!  It cost us next to nothing and was so easy to make!  It's really just two pieces of poster board cut for the head and painted like the wimpy kid.  The black mouth is mesh from an old ballet skirt Isabela never wore.  Very soft on his face and easy to see through.  The tricky part was figuring out how to get the mask to stay on his head.  I ended up hot glueing a skull cap hat to the inside of it, so he just put the hat on his head and it's in the right spot every time.

The book is a box I made out of poster board with the cover printed off extra large from the computer.  I cut and pasted the image together.  He can actually put his candy in the box when he goes trick or treating.



So we finally made it to the carnival...which is all about playing games and running into friends and teachers.



Seeing the wimpy kid in school just cracked me up the whole night.  And there definitely was not another wimpy kid at the carnival.



At one point, we stopped in the cafeteria for pizza.  I caught Joaquin trying to eat a piece of candy through his wimpy kid mouth and thought that was hilarious.  I made him pose for this shot.



There were a lot of ninjas in school that night, but Diego was one of the smallest.  Turns out those swords are pretty strong.  JP said he dueled it out in the gym with another ninja and ended up breaking the other kids' sword.  He was very sorry.



Isabela caught up with her best friend at the haunted house.  Cleopatra and a zombie prom queen...two very cute girls.



Joaquin informed me this is third year in a row that he's won the costume contest.  I'm not sure how that keeps happening, and it sure makes Isabela mad.  She won in Kindergarten when she was the Man in the Yellow Hat and hasn't won since.  Her grade always has some stiff competition.  But this year was different...she loved her costume so much, she didn't care.  No tears shed this year.  But she's already planning for next year.



Check out our costumes over the years:
2007 a princess and a cowboy
2008 Curious George and the Man in the Yellow Hat
2009  a Spanish señorita and Darth Vader
2010  an owl, a lumber jack, Mrs. Claus, an Elf, and Santa
2011  a ghost, a witch, and a skeleton