monster truck hallowe'en

Ok - so I wanted to make a really amazing costume for my little guy for Hallowe'en. He came home over a month ago from daycare telling me he wanted to be a backhoe for Hallowe'en. And just when I'd figured out how I was going to do that he changed his mind and now wanted to be a monster truck. The challenges - it had to be a costume he could wear at preschool and that would stand up to rain (you know - rainy west coast weather!). Everyone's suggestion started with a cardboard box but I thought that the preschool element eliminated that as a possibility. So I went with foam sheeting. And being a monster truck, it had to have big, big tires (to roll over and smash the cars!). So I started with the tires. Two foam sheet circles and a cushion foam circle cut out and covered with black duct tape - times four.

I put chrome duct tape in the middle of the tires to simulate the center of a real tire.

Then I attached the tires onto another foam circle to attach them to the truck body (in hindsight I wouldn't do this again - just tack the tires onto the foam). Then I cut out the truck bodies, and painted them.

I googled a flame template to copy onto the truck body - as T wanted flames on his truck.

I discovered, by accident, (D dripped water onto the truck body and it ran) that the paint wasn't waterproof. So then I covered the truck body with clear packing tape. I sewed shoulder straps and side straps onto the foam body. And then came the attaching the tires to the foam body. I tried sewing through the center

but T ripped off the first tire in about 2 seconds (leading to a regrettable mummy moment of yelling at T but midway through the yelling I realized that if T could rip off the tire that quickly, the design was flawed and would not work in the preschool setting. I put T in his room until I calmed down and then apologized to T. I was haunted by the possibility that I had wrecked T's enthusiasm for Hallowe'en and his costume but he bounces back so much faster than me.) So I tried velcro and glue (here is the costume covered in books trying to get the glue to stick)

and in the end the tires were glued, velcroed and tacked onto the foam body and they held. T loved being the only monster truck that we saw trick-or-treating and lots of people loved his costume. It didn't match the picture I had in my head of how I wanted it to look but it worked for him so I guess it was a success. Next year he wants to be Batman!