Creepy Crawly Halloween

We love Halloween in this family. So we start talking about costumes early. This year in an effort to save money and start a tradition like I had growing up I was going to make all my kids costumes.

I decided to start with Monkey (4) because he has a serious opinion about Halloween and costumes. He believes (this is a quote) you should only be "some kind of animal because it's the only day during the year you can be an animal". Well OK then. So what does he want to be? A house centipede, and this is the picture he brings me:Well besides be in impossible to make (just Google centipede costume and see what kind of ideas you get!). On top of this I am utterly terrified of centipedes. The reason I don't go running and screaming out of my house when I see them is that I am trying to not pas son this fear to my children. It seems to have worked on one.

So just as I was trying to figure out what color and how to make a centipede he goes on a playdate with another 4 year old. He comes home and tell me "Mom? Do you know what Johnny Boy is going to be for Halloween? Spider Man!"

Now my son has protective cheap parents who don't take him to movies and don't pay for cable and a dad who is not really into comic books, so he has no idea who spider man is. I am sure he thought it was a spider of some sort. Because his next statement was" I have to be a tarantula for Halloween because it's the biggest baddest spider and it's eats everything!". Well okay, I'll take that! It has 92 fewer legs!

So this is the new inspiration, this is what he has to look like:Okay than. I went about looking for a spider costume. I figured we could find a costume and just embellish it. So we sit down at the computer and pull up a bunch of sites. I show his this one:
"Um Mom that's not a spider"

Okay. So off to the designing board. I was lucky and found a free pattern (although I would have paid) for a basic spider on Burda Sytle. the hardes part was finding a black sweatshirt and the finding the perfect fabric. It was also terrifiny yhay I would disaapoint him I had no idea what the imagination of a 4 year old had in his head. Did he really expect to look just like the picture? Did he realize he would be part of the costume? Here is what we made (sorry for the funny image, I promised hubby the kids faces would not appear on my site!)

Front:And the best part? The back! It's so creepy walking behind him!

Lucky for me imagination and relaity worked out, this time! The excitement and joy on his face that it's exactly what he wanted is priceless. Now if only I had a video camera and could record his creepy spider walk and all the kids he is freaking out (we had a trial at a party...some little ones including his sister are scared of him!).