Halloween Wheelchair "Voice" Costume!

Happy Halloween! 

It's been ages since I posted but the truth of the matter is that life has been pretty busy since I moved into our new townhome.  Basically, Matt is no longer in school anymore so I don't have any free time at all. Scott (my ex husband) takes Matt every other weekend from Saturday night until Monday morning so I have around 24 hours to get things all my errands, any house projects and anything else I want done.  It's really hard work caring for Matt 24/7.  I don't mind but I have to hustle every day to get everything done. I cook everything from scratch for him, prepare all of his meals, feedings (he gets one cup every hour so feedings take 2 hours) plus getting him up, changing him, dressing him, taking him out for walks and moving him with the hoyer lift. It all takes time.  He's a big man to move and it's a lot. Anyway, on to the fun stuff!

I decided to make a "Voice" costume for Matt this year. I like to select costumes where it's natural for the person to be sitting down since Matt is in a wheelchair.  In addition, I wanted to kick it up a notch this year, and send out a card.  Since Matt is non-verbal, I decided to add the words, "Because everyone needs a voice." to the card.  I think it's important for everyone to be heard and it's just a fun reminder to acknowledge the disabled.  I would give the world to be able to talk to Matt, to have a conversation with him, to find out what he likes and what is in his heart. I'd love to know what he's thinking about.  I do know what makes him smile but it would be pretty good to hear him talk. Matt's only spoken 5 words in his life. They are: hi", "Mom" and "I love you".  The "I love you" isn't really intelligible to most people but I know what he's trying to say.  He hasn't said the "hi" or "I love you" in years and only recently started trying to say, "Mom" again. I melt every time he tries to say it. It should not be hard to say "Mom".  (Here's a picture of me, lol.)

One thing that changed for us was that when we lived in our studio apartment, I could hear Matt if he needed me at night. Matt's bed was on one end of the apartment, the living area and kitchen were in the middle and my bedroom was on the other end. It was a very pretty apartment and if Matt needed to be changed at night or needed anything, he'd make a noise and I could hear him. In our new townhome, our bedrooms are next to each other but you have to go into the hallway to get to his room. As a result, I can't hear Matt breathe at night very well from my room. If he needs to be changed, he coughs "once".  He coughs "once" when he needs to be changed and sometimes he justs "coughs" to clear his throat. That means, I have to jump up and go and see if he needs to be changed or if he's o.k. It's a lot of work and when I am tired, I always pray that I'll hear him when I am sleeping. Sometimes, I wake up and wonder if I really heard him or if I was dreaming. I don't ever want him to lie in pee at night and it's stressful.  Matt doesn't have the strength to cough more than once so I have to be on my toes! It makes you appreciate all of the gifts you have when you understand how difficult it can be for the disabled.  That's kind of why I thought the phrase, "because everyone needs a voice" was a perfect tie in to his costume this year.

Since Matt is getting older, I thought I'd create a card and send it out for Halloween instead of Trick or Treating. He's a little old for that although if I could get away with it, I'd parade him all over the neighborhood because it's such fun! I still like to celebrate the holidays with him and I love creating costumes for him. And yes, I'll probably create them until he's 50 years old, lol.  I just love that young man and it's hard not to celebrate him. 

Here are a few pictures of his costume:

In other news, September marked three years Matt's been hospital free from pneumonia.  Since I started Now Foods Organic Virgin Coconut Oil, Matt's never been hospitalized since for pneumonia. This is huge because Matt used to get three pneumonias a year.  I give him the coconut oil plus a blenderized diet made with mostly organic foods and made from scratch and it's kept him healthy.  We did have some issues the past few months with seizures and secretions however. Matt's neurologist was sick and out for a few months so we saw the Nurse Practioner (in May) to adjust his Vagus Nerve Stimulator however she did not set the device at the proper setting. Matt had the new device replaced last November and they were ramping it up however she failed to increase the setting to his previous level (the level he used prior to the replacement). As a result, Matt had seizures for months which meant he had a lot of secretions. I had to do breathing treatments daily to manage the secretions (the increased seizure activity caused the increased secretions). Then I was up a lot at night making sure he could breathe.  We went to the neurologist last week and the nurse mentioned that the setting wasn't correct. They adjusted the setting and Matt's seizures decreased dramatically and he hasn't need any treatments.  I can't begin to tell you how much sleep I lost over the past 5 months let alone that Matt suffered.  I am glad the neurologist is back! I was unaware that the setting was too low or I would have mentioned it.

We also got to show off at the neurologist's office last week. Matt is now able to sit up in a portable wheelchair and use his feet to move it.  Granted, Matt can't sit up very long (less than 5 minutes) but he hasn't been able to do this in almost ten years.  He had a little trouble getting his left foot moving and then the doctor and nurse started cheering him on and  clapping and he was able to move his feet a bit. Dad pushes the wheelchair to help him but it's pretty amazing considering that he couldn't even move a toe in 2010 before I started the Now Foods Organic Virgin Coconut Oil and his blenderized diet.

Anyway, Matt looks great. I am so blessed to have such a wonderful son. Matt grew up into the nicest young man a mother could ever have.  I hope you have a Happy Halloween.

 

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Facebook Halloween Costume Tutorial

Thank you for all of your comments regarding the cancellation of Dear Son’s Halloween party. I appreciate your support. I will be following up with the Special Education Co-op on this issue next week; my mother was critically ill in the hospital so I was unable to follow up prior to this. As a result, this week, I nixed the elaborate Halloween costume for Dear Son that I was sooooo excited about. It was by far, the most elaborate costume I would have made to date. I was so depressed over that decision; I know it sounds silly but I really do love making these costumes! I hope the decision over the Halloween party will be reversed for next Halloween and perhaps I can do it then.
Although the wheelchair costume was out, I still wanted to create a fun little costume for Halloween so I thought I’d create a costume that any teenager could wear. This costume is fun and so simple.

The beauty of this project is that it’s fairly quick and the foam pieces are the exact same size as the styrofoam piece which makes everything go really smoothly. Essentially, we are making a Facebook costume and the concept is to make the costume look like a book so when your face is inserted, people will put 2 + 2 together and go, “Oh, Face + Book = “Facebook!”.

Here is what you need:

Styrofoam piece
5 foam pieces-3 medium blue, 1 white and 1 light blue (If you can’t find a lighter blue, you can use a felt piece like I did.)
Glue-I used hot glue however a spray glue might work better.

I purchased the styrofoam piece and foam at Michael's.

Here are the steps:

1) Leave the plastic on the Styrofoam.
2) Take a piece of paper and draw a circle around your face.
3) Cut the circle out of the piece of paper and place it around your face to make sure the paper is slightly larger than your face so the Styrofoam piece will sit on your face. Take time to do this step or the costume will be wasted if you cut it wrong.

4) With the plastic still on the styrofoam, take the piece of paper and center it on the lower part of the styrofoam. You’ll want to leave around 2 inches or so on the bottom and just center it in the piece of styrofoam. Basically, what you want to do is to make sure that you have enough left on the bottom and the sides of the styrofoam so it doesn’t break when you cut it or put the costume on. As Norm Abram of, “This Old House” used to say, “Measure twice, cut once”. Thankfully, I learned something after watching 1.5 million episodes of, “This Old House”.
5) With the plastic in place, outline the shape of your face with a pen. You’ll mark this right on the plastic that covers the styrofoam.

6) Place the styrofoam piece on a bamboo cutting board. With the plastic still on, score the plastic/styrofoam with a knife, scissors or exacto knife. Because I am not a crafter, and got rid of any crafting supplies I had when I moved, I used a scissors, lol.
7) Once it’s scored, gently cut through the styrofoam with a knife. I found a knife with a serrated edge worked great for this part. You must take your time though or the styrofoam will break. Leaving the plastic on, helps control all of that styrofoam from getting everywhere; o.k. not totally, but it helps a bit.
8) Remove plastic and cut remainder of the styrofoam.
9) Remove the staples from the foam piece gently so you don’t make impression marks into the foam.
10) Once it’s cut, dust off the styrofoam and cutting board and lay the blue foam piece on the cutting board and place the styrofoam piece over it. I layed the foam piece with the staple holes at the bottom of the styrofoam. Trace the outline of the hole, then cut the foam.
11) Glue the foam on the styrofoam. I used a little bit of hot glue but I think spray glue would work better. With hot glue, you have to make sure you don’t use too much or you’ll melt the foam. Also, you have all of those hot glue strings to remove.
12) Repeat these steps with your other piece of blue foam. The front and back pieces are basically done.

13) Next, we are going to work on the sides of the book. Take a ruler and measure the side of the styrofoam. Take the last blue foam piece and mark the width of the styrofoam with a ruler. The beauty of this project is that the foam piece is the exact same size as the styrofoam so you only make one cut. Cut the foam piece the width of the styrofoam.
14) Before you glue it on, you’ll want to write the “author’s name” on the book. In this case, I used Mark Zuckerberg’s name. I place the last name first, followed by a comma, and then his first name. On the bottom, I made up some numbers, like they have on the library books.

15) Glue the blue piece on the side of the book.

16) Take the white foam pieces and use the same measurements you had for the width of the styrofoam and cut three pieces the length of the foam.

17) Draw lines in blue on the white pieces of foam. These lines are to make it look like they are the pages of a book. Don’t get too complicated here, keep it simple. Three or four lines will do. They don’t even have to be perfectly straight.

18) For the front of the costume, we now need to make the Facebook logo. I used a light blue felt piece but it was hard to cut. In retrospect, I’d use a foam piece instead. It would be much easier to cut and stand out better. I cut out a square on a piece of paper first to make sure I had the size I wanted. Then I place it on the costume to make sure the proportions were what I wanted. Then I placed the square on the felt and cut it.
19) For the letter “f”, I simply wrote it on a sheet of paper first, when I had the size I wanted, I traced it onto the white foam. When you place the “f” on the white foam, flip the “f” over so it’s backwards. That way, when you trace the “f”, your markings for the tracing will be on the back side of the letter “f” and won’t show when you glue it on the blue felt square.
20) Glue the letter “f” on the blue felt square.

21) Glue the blue felt square on the front of the styrofoam.

22) For the back of the costume, I drew a “thumbs up hand” on a piece of paper. Once I liked the size, I traced it on the white foam. Again, turn the drawing over so when you trace the piece, the markings will appear on the “back” of the hand.
23) Glue the “thumbs up hand” on the board.

24) Next, cut a small square of blue felt for the cuff. I place a dot on the cuff but you could get fancy and use a rhinestone sticky piece or even a button. I had neither on hand, so I used a pen.
25) Take a piece of the blue foam (I used the cut out scrap from the face piece.) and place the “thumbs up hand” on it. Above it, write the word, “Like” above the hand.
26) Cut out a square around the “thumbs up hand” and the word, “Like”.
27) Glue the square on the back of the costume.

You are done!

Check out my handsome boy! Here are pics of the completed costume: front, side and back! (Whoops, the back of the costume with the "like" logo is at the top of the post!)

While we are not going out for Halloween, we did have a little fun taking pictures of his costume. It's not the ideal costume for a boy in a wheelchair however it was good to do something instead of doing nothing. Since we live in an apartment, we won't be going Trick or Treating. They did have some Trick or Treating near us on Friday however I am trying to keep Dear Son well and it didn't make much sense to take him out in the cold weather since he's medically fragile.

I hope you enjoyed his Facebook Halloween Costume! We'll be putting it out on Facebook too!

Note: Dear Son is nineteen years old and suffers from seizures, dytonia and severe developmental delay as a result of a random mutation of the ARX gene. In addition, he suffers from a progressive neurological disorder.

No Halloween Party Allowed at School! (Due to Religious Reasons)

I spent yesterday morning working on Dear Son's Halloween costume. As you may recall, I love making costumes for Dear Son and especially love making costumes using his wheelchair as a prop to bring these costumes from ordinary to "over the top". Last year I wrote this post on how to use the wheelchair to make costumes for kids with special needs and showed you all of his costumes from past years.
Last year, Dear Son was a bed bug and this year's costume was destined to be the best and most creative one I've ever done. I even posted about it in January.




Part of the joy of creating these costumes, is talking about them with Dear Son. Dear Son doesn't speak and let's face it, he can't move much so often times he's lying in bed or sitting in the chair and I talk excitedly about how much fun Halloween will be when he's in his costume and how much everyone is going to like it. He's loves a party and he loves being the center of attention. It doesn't matter if it's his birthday party or whatever, he loves it when I tell him everyone will sing, "Happy Birthday" to him or when I tell him everyone will say, "Great costume Dear Son". He just loves it. When you have a child like Dear Son, 90% of the exitement is the "anticipation" of doing something. Unlike other kids, who are able to get around and do more things on their own or even with their families, these kids can't do anything unless someone helps them. One of my main concerns about his "Make a Wish Trip" was whether we'd ever get there. We talked about it for 5 months and then he got the swine flu the day before we were supposed to leave and was on a ventilator. He was in the hosptial for a month and then it took another 6 months to recover. I worried we'd never get there.
Yesterday was no different. I started construction on the costume and spent the better part of the morning cutting up boxes, taping them together and getting the foundation or structure of the costume together. I was hoping to get the prop part of the costume finished this week and then start on the clothing part next week after I knew what the colors would be of the prop. Since Halloween falls on a Monday this year, I decided to email his teacher to verify the date of the Halloween party since Dear Son only attends school on Tuesday, Wednesday and Fridays due to his health. The doctor won't allow more days since Dear Son can't make it through the day. I was hoping I could get an exception from the doctor to attend school for Halloween and more importantly, I'd have to make bus arrangements one week in advance in order for them to transport him to school. I thought they might have the party on Friday or Monday and thought I should ask. After all, the whole purpose of this costume is for the party. It's not like we would go Trick or Treating. Dear Son has a feeding tube and can't eat by mouth.

Today, I received this response from his teacher:

"We are not having a Halloween party this year because of a religious conflict with another student in our class. We decided that we would have a fall harvest party (no costumes) and winter and spring holiday parties as the public schools do in order to respect those who do not celebrate the Christian Holidays. Sorry about this but we are obligated to remain sensitive to others' religious views. "

I must say I am quite surprised. In my entire life, I have never met anyone who talked about nor celebrated Halloween in any religious fashion. (My point is not that the religious issue isn't valid but more to the point, that in general, most people don't associate it in a religious context and even many Christian churches still allow Halloween parties.) Even if they had a fall harvest party with a costume, would that have been horrible? I mean, shouldn't the fun of all the kids be considered and couldn't they have done that while still being respectful of everyone? And what is typically done at these Halloween parties anyway? Isn't it just food, music, dancing, dressing up in costumes and having a few good laughs while listening to Monster Mash? That's what they did last year and the kids had a great time.

Overall, I am a bit annoyed. As a mother of a special needs child, Halloween isn't always easy. It's hard finding costumes for your kids when they can't do the things other kids can do. It's not easy when they can't walk taking them out for, "Trick or Treating". I can remember many years we never went out Trick or Treating because Dear Son wasn't feeling well or it just didn't make sense to take a disabled kid out in cold, rainy weather to go Trick or Treating when he couldn't eat the candy nor even say, "Trick or Treat". In fact, when Dear Son was growing up, there was only one year I ever took him out in the neighborhood for Halloween. It was the year, he was the Cat in the Hat. I finally got over worrying about what people would think since he couldn't say, "Trick or Treat" or walk and took him out in his wheelchair. I hooked up his communication device to the foot rest on his wheelchair and programmed in my voice to say, "Trick or Treat". Then I had to train him and tell him that we were going Trick or Treating and telling him that he should push the button with his foot (his left foot was the easiest way for him to operate the communication device since he didn't have any use of his arms/hands) to say, "Trick or Treat" and then people would put candy in his pumpkin. I had to get a special hook for his wheelchair to hold the pumpkin since he couldn't hold it and I couldn't push the wheelchair and hold it. We had a ball. Of course, it wasn't easy. He'd hit the button with his foot when we were between houses and then when we'd get to the door, I'd tell him to say, "Trick or Treat" and hit the button and he wouldn't, lol. We did this through the neighborhood. When people would see him, they would comment on how cute he was and he would smile. He loved all of the attention. Then they would put a million pieces of candy in his bucket. I would tell them he couldn't eat it but I swear, most people would put a giant handful of all kinds of candy in his bucket. That was then.

And now, we can't have a Halloween Party because of religious reasons. Really?

Note: Dear Son is nineteen years old and suffers from seizures, dytonia and severe developmental delay as a result of a random mutation of the ARX gene. In addition, he suffers from a progressive neurological disorder.

Just Sayin'...

Dear Son's 2011 Halloween wheelchair costume is done. Or rather, I have the costume and concept sketched out already. I won't put it all together until October.

It will be:

• Totally amazing. More amazing than the Tin Man I made. Although, that was pretty good.


• Knock your socks off. Yes, even better than the Jack in the Box costume I made.

• One of a kind. Way better than the chef costume, which I ahem, purchased. I think I get a few extra points for drawing on that cute moustashe though.


• Drop dead gorgeous. And I do mean, "gorgeous". As in eye catching. Even more eye catching than the Cat in the Hat.


• Unforgettable. Yes, even more unforgettable than the Bed Bug costume. And we all want to forget the bed bugs!
  
  

I am so excited about this I can't stand it. They don't even have this costume in any costume shop. I came up with the idea in mid-December. I had a few ideas prior to that of some cool costumes to make with his wheelchair; I could make them really cool too but this idea, is just plain "over the top".

The only challenge is finding the headpiece, not sure I can make that myself since I've never made "hair" but heck, I can probably make it if I can't find what I need like I did when he was a scarecrow.

Too bad Halloween is just once a year. I don't even decorate for Halloween, I just like making Dear Son's costume. Not sure what I'll do until then (tapping fingers on desk).

Note: Photo credit for pumpkins is Pottery Barn (I believe).

Happy Halloween~Bed Bug Costume for a Wheelchair Tutorial

Don't Let the Bed Bugs Bite!

I wrote a post earlier in the week on, “Creating Halloween Costumes for Special Needs Kids in Wheelchairs” and thought I should follow up with a little tutorial on how to create a costume. It has been a lot of fun this past week thinking about and creating this costume. Half the joy of it was telling Dear Son about it and talking about how much fun it would be. Dear Son’s eyes would light up and he would smile as I would talk about the project. Part of it is that he loves it when I do things for him. He also loves a party and getting dressed up. View of the entire "Bed Bug Costume".

I originally saw this costume on the Ellen Show however they had a child with a bed hanging around his neck. Attached to the bed was an actual comforter and dust ruffle and the child was not in a wheelchair. I thought it would make a great costume for a wheelchair. I also knew that I could make a cooler bed. For this tutorial, I included a little more detail so you could better understand the creative process involved in the costume. That way, it might make it easier for you to get some other ideas as to what you may want to do for your child. Here are the steps:

1. Sketch it out. Once I’ve decided on a costume, I’ll typically sketch it out. That gives me time to think about the costume a bit and how it might play out. I sketched a box and then thought about how I’d make a quilt. I decided on a patchwork quilt to give it a pop of color. Remember, you want to keep it simple. If you are unsure how to do something, look at a children’s book-they keep the images very simple. So in this case, I did a simple patchwork quilt. I knew Dear Son would be the “bug” part of the costume. Since he’s a teenager and not a young child, I wanted to make his clothes/costume more age appropriate. I decided on a black top, some black leather gloves for his hands and then some antennas (I know those aren’t age appropriate but let’s follow along, lol.) Since he’s a bed bug in a bed, I decided on pajamas for him. Since he’s older, I chose a black, waffle shirt, which looks similar to a long underwear shirt. I used some soft, black and grey plaid flannel pajama pants. It’s soft and casual and normally only something he’d wear around the house, but he’ll wear it for the costume. You could do black sweatpants, but I like the whole bed theme. Next, I thought about what might make the costume better or what would look good with a quilt. I decided to make a top sheet, folded back and then have a message written on it kind of like a sheet that is embroidered. The message on the sheet would be, “Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite!” That way, people understand the costume and it’s fun. Also, it gives more color to the costume.

2) Measure the wheelchair for the box. Next, I measured the wheelchair for the box. You’ll want to use the tray for the wheelchair so you can attach your box to it. Be sure to attach the tray to the wheelchair, while the child is in it, then measure for your box. You’ll measure the actual width of the tray and then add another inch on each side so the box will be able to slide over it easily. Next, you want to add the length of the box. This will be the area from the center of the tray, near the child’s abdomen and measure it out past the end of the tray so that the box will cover the child’s knees easily. Finally, you want the height of the box. You’ll measure from the top of the tray down to where you want the box to end. In this case, I wanted a box that measured: 32 W x 36L x 12” D. You can be flexible with all of the measurements except the width. If it’s too big, it will fall off the wheelchair tray and if it’s too small it won’t fit. The length and the depth are more forgiving. Finding the right size box is the hardest part of the project and the most time consuming. Start early. I tried in the past to buy a box at a mailing store (Fed Ex) however at that time, they didn’t have the size I needed. In this case, I couldn’t locate the exact size but a friend was able to locate two boxes and I assumed I would tape them together. You’ll see what I chose below.

3) Figure out the supplies you’ll need. In this case, I’ll need a box, paint, some foam pieces, poster board, markers, a drapery panel and then the usual: scissors, glue, tape measure and ruler. I knew I had some paint on hand, along with the markers and drapery panel. I needed a box, the foam pieces, the antennas and a black shirt. The official list for this project is at the end of the tutorial.

4) Be open to new ideas. For this project, I knew I would get the box, tape it, paint it the background color for the quilt and then paint the top sheet part white. I stopped at Michael’s, the craft store and saw a display cardboard piece that would typically be used for science type projects and decided it would be perfect for my project. The measurements were great as well since it was: 36 W x 48 L x 12 D. In addition, I wouldn’t have to tape the boxes together, paint over the tape which would save me a lot of time. The price was $4.99. (*Note: I should tell you that since this box is intended as a display piece, it folds with the colored part inside; you’ll need to fold it the other way so it sits on the wheelchair like a bed. Not a big deal, but since it’s intended to bend the other way, they have additional cardboard so it’s tough to turn the other way.)
These are the foam pieces I used.

I looked at the foam pieces next and really liked the green and turquoise but nixed the idea. I fell in love with the green and purple but it wasn’t very masculine so I decided to go with Chicago Bears football colors of blue and orange. I selected the blue display board and picked up some foam pieces.

While I was looking, I noticed these foam sports balls (see above photo) so I picked up a package to use for the quilt. Since I wasn’t going to paint the box, I decided to pick up a piece of poster board to use for the sheet. If you had a girl, you could select different colors and some different foam pieces. If your child wasn’t into sports, you could choose some different foam accent pieces.
Photo of black, fuzzy sticks.

Now that I had the basics, I looked for the antennas. I went to a few places but couldn’t find what I was looking for so I decided to make them. I used a black headband and then purchased some black fuzzy sticks (these were known as “pipe cleaners” when I was growing up, lol) for antennas. Originally, I thought I would attached some black felt balls to the end (made with black felt and stuffed with cotton) however when I attached the fuzzy sticks, I realized I didn’t need them. I just took 6 fuzzy sticks, twisted them around the headband and then bent the edges to look like bug antennas. Don’t overanalyze the costume. Just keep it simple.

So in summary, when I went to the store, I nixed the original box along with the idea to paint the box, and nixed the store bought antennas. I added the foam sports balls accent pieces. These changes were key. So the new (official) supply list would look like this:

*Display box from Michael’s.
*1 white poster board.
*3 foam pieces
*1 package foam attachments (I used a sports theme with baseballs, footballs, soccer balls and basketballs.)
*1 drapery panel
*Package of fuzzy sticks.
*Headband
*The craft supplies include: marker to match colors in quilt, scissors, glue sticks, tape measure, ruler, duct tape, chalk.

5) Cut the box to fit over the wheelchair tray. I had Dad help me with this since it the box was so large. I also had him get Dear Son a black shirt for the costume.

6) Cut the poster board to fit the box. The white poster board will be the top sheet on the bed portion of the costumer. The goal is to make it look like the top sheet is folded back over the quilt, like it would in a real bed. Since I didn’t want a seam in the center of the box, I decided to cut the poster board in three parts: one large center piece and two side panels. I made the center piece larger so I could cover up the areas of the arm rests. I made the center panel of the sheet 6 inches tall and 28 inches wide. Each side panel was 6 inches tall and 10 inches wide for a total of 48 inches (28 + 10 + 10=48). At this point, just cut the poster board but don’t glue it to the bed yet.

7) Cut the foam pieces. Lay the foam out and then lay the sport pieces on them. The foam measured 18 inches across so I cut the foam pieces in 6 x 6 inch squares. Cut all the foam and lay out the foam squares on the board. Don’t glue anything yet and don’t cut the bottom pieces of foam.

8) Lay out the foam sports pieces on the board. I tried to make it look random yet I didn’t want any duplicates meaning I didn’t want two baseballs next to each other. You could also customize it more by writing the child’s name on the football.
9) Write the message on the poster board. In this case, I am going to write the phrase, “Don’t Let the Bed Bugs Bite!” on the white poster board. This is supposed to look like it’s embroidery on the sheet. You could have used those squirt type paints (don’t have a clue as to what these are called) and write with the paint. I am not a crafter so just walking into a craft store drives me crazy so I am sure there are plenty of better ideas on how you might do this part but you’ll need to ask a crafter. I used a ruler on the bottom to guide my letters a bit. The poster board was 28 inches across and I had six words in the phrase so I knew each word should take up no more than 4 inches (28 inches /6 words = 4.66 inches per word). If I kept each word at approximately four inches with some space in between, I’d have enough room for the phrase to fit across the top of the sheet. You could also embellish it a bit more and add some rickrack to the sheet, draw rickrack on the sheet or even use the paint to make a border on the sheet.

10) Glue the poster board to the box. Now that you have positioned the white poster board piece to the box, you can use glue it to the box with a glue stick.

11) Glue the foam pieces and then the sports pieces to the board.

12) Measure the foam pieces to the bottom of the box to make the end pieces of the quilt then glue them. I didn’t want to leave the bottom of the quilt empty, so I cut small pieces to fit the end of the quilt.
13) Drapery panel bedskirt. Take a white drapery panel and fold it in half lengthwise. I folded it in half so it would cover his legs and not be so sheer; if you didn’t fold it in half, it would just be sheer and you could see the child’s legs through it. Tape the folded edge to the back of the cardboard with duct tape (see photo above). Next, measure 13 inches from the top of the drapery panel (make sure it’s from the top of the drapery panel and not the top of the duct tape) and make a cut with the scissors. Tear it the rest of the way down (or you can use a scissors and cut the fabric. It’s just easier to tear it. I marked 13 inches all the way across with chalk and then made sure when I tore it, that it tore it along the chalk line, and stayed even.) I tried to make it even with the sides of the box. 14) Antennas-Take 6 fuzzy sticks and twist them around the headband. Then bend the edges. The goal is to make it bug like. You can take a black eye pencil and draw on a nose, moustache and some lines above the eyebrows-anything to make it a little bug like.

The costume is now done. Total cost was: $ 8.87. I am sure Michael’s probably has some fuzzy sticks but I went to another big box store looking for some antennas and when I didn’t find them, I had to go with Plan B and found the fuzzy sticks. My costs were as follows:

1 qty. blue display board-Michael’s……. $4.99
1 qty. white poster board-Michael’s …….$ .59
3 qty. orange foam pieces-Michael’s…….$2.52
1 pkg. black fuzzy sticks-Big Box Store…….$. 77

Making this costume was a lot of fun. Dear Son loves it when we talk about his Halloween costume and seeing it when it’s done. He loves dressing up. Our cat Wiggles also got involved and sat near the supplies and got into the fuzzy sticks, which the cat loves. Dear Son loved the cat getting into trouble (He loves it when anyone gets into trouble-it makes him laugh.) so all in all, it was a great time. It’s also a one of a kind costume for less than $10. Had I taken the time to paint the other boxes, my cost would have been $3.87 since the boxes were free and I had the paint however I decided I liked the paint color of the blue display box so I decided to purchase it and then I didn’t have to put the time and effort into painting the box. For the bed, you could also glue little bugs on the quilt to make it scarier but I was fine with the quilt as is. If you wanted to add the bugs, you could do it several different ways: you could draw them on, glue on black spiders, make bugs out of black felt to glue on, etc. I also saw some clear, plastic balls with spiders inside that would have looked cool glued on the bed, but I decided to keep it simple and skip that. According to pictures on the internet, the actual bed bugs aren’t black but I didn’t feel the need to make this costume “accurate” per se; I just tried to keep it simple and fun. Depending on your child’s abilities and/or developmental skills, this would also be good therapy for them-the cutting skills for occupational therapy, the measuring skills, etc. You could do a little bit every day and have a whole week of fun.

Overall, I think the project turned out great. I hoped you enjoyed our little tutorial. You can find more projects over at Just a Girl Blog for Show and Share Friday.

Happy Halloween!