This years Halloween costume!

I am pretty pleased with my Halloween costume this year, and now that my students have all seen it, I can share it with the blog world!

This year, I decided to go as a wacky waving inflatable arm flailing tube man (those tubes you see in parking lots of car dealerships and grand openings.) I saw this gif way back in June, and knew I had to try and recreate it for Halloween. I didn't really know that I would be 6 months pregnant by the time Halloween rolled around, but it was still do-able!

Here's a video of me in my costume from last night:




There were no instructions to be found online, so I just kind of guessed about how to do it. It was a lot of work to make, but I've always been willing to do the work for a good costume (see Lego Man!)

The materials I used for this costume were:

• One of those tubes kids use in the backyard (tent tube?)
• 2 meters of stretchy jersey fabric (yellow)
• black and white felt (eyes)
• black nylons (mouth)
• two pieces of velcro (to velcro the mouth closed)

To start, I sewed a long yellow tube which I fit over the tent tube. Instead of stitching it up at the top, I just tied it in a knot from the inside, which sealed it perfectly. Then, I cut holes where my arms would naturally fit, and sewed two long skinny tubes on as arm holes (I made them much, much longer than my real arms - about three times the length!)

For the eyes, I just sewed directly onto the tube where it seemed right (I had my husband help from the outside to pick the right spot.)

I cut out the mouth shape and sewed it right onto the tube, then cut a straight line at the top of the mouth from the inside. Out of this slit, I can see a bit and also poke my head out. I attached two pieces of velcro so that I can keep the mouth opening closed.

It's such a great costume. It's crazy impractical (I can only handle about 15 minutes at at time before I need a break) but it makes me laugh so much that it's totally worth the irritation of taking it off and putting it on all day. At the end of the day, my students laughed a lot, which is basically always my goal.