real mom vs. super mom halloween costume

About six weeks ago, Shawn told me he wanted Jude to be "Max" from Where The Wild Things Are. The story is about a little boy who is just wild. He chases the dog around the house, and when his Mom says, "You're wild!" he tries to bite her. Max's Mom immediately sends him straight to bed without supper, and later that night, his entire bedroom turns into a forest. He sails over the ocean to land on an island full of Wild Things. When the Wild Things threaten to eat Max, he astounds them by staring into their eyes. Logically, the Wild Things then make Max their king, and he declares, "Let the wild rumpus start!" After the wild rumpus, Max realizes that he's lonely. He sails back over the sea, back to his bedroom, where his Mom has left his dinner on the nightstand.

It's really a sweet book about a boy just being a boy, and from what we've seen from his short life so far - is a pretty adequate description of what we're in for with Jude.




So I set to work to make a Max costume for Jude. Now, in just doing a quick search for Max Halloween costume, I saw some really amazing homemade outfits. I mean truly - there are some talented Mammas out there who must've spent FORever working on those things. Me? Well I just happen to not be supermom. I happen to be a very, very real mom. So I set out to make a costume that would be cute but that wouldn't take me more than a day or two to make.



So below is a real mom's guide to making a Max Halloween costume -


1. Wrap a foam ring in brown fabric, hot gluing as you go:


2. Take yellow foam board:

3. And cut it to resemble a crown. I made my crown pretty high because I was basing the costume off of the illustrations, and not the movie. Then hot glue the crown pieces together. I have a feeling there's a better way to make this part of the costume, but I couldn't think of anything else - so this is what Jude got!

4. Cut a piece of elastic and hot glue it on two of the inside edges. This was to hopefully help Jude keep the crown in place:

5. Try the crown on Jude, who is utterly embarrassed, it seems:

Now for the claws!

1. Cut 12 triangles from white fabric. Each "claw" uses two pieces of fabric, and I did three claws on each foot. In hindsight, I could've fit four, but I wasn't about to go back and do another two. Why not? Say it with me, friends - I'm not supermom.

2. Sew the triangles together:

3. Here are the "claws" all nice and sewn together. I don't have a picture of this part, but then take a Sharpie and mark little toenails.

4. Then stuff each claw with batting. If Shawn were here, he'd pick up the Soft n Crafty and say, "You dropped your name tag."

5. Then I hand sewed each claw onto a pair of white socks. The socks and claws were way too small for me to figure out how to machine sew this.

6. Then I tried the socks on Jude, who immediately pulled them off. My hopes for Halloween night were not high since he'd made it clear he wasn't a fan of either the crown OR the socks.

I found this adorable little outfit on eBay and got quite the adrenaline rush when I got in a bidding war during the last five minutes. But I won. Ha - take THAT! This outfit was perfect because it had big buttons, was white, and had an adorable hood.

I found some very tail-like material at JoAnn's (in the ribbon/sequin aisle. you have to have them cut the yardage you'd like) that was perfect. I just hot glued one of the ends onto the butt of the romper, and I was good to go! I will say that I thoroughly hot glued it - I had a feeling Jude would have fun trying to pull at it and didn't want it to fall off halfway through the night.

The ears to the costume were a bit more complicated, and unfortunately, I don't have pictures. Shawn found some zebra headband ears that we thought we could just bleach white. They were, however, impervious to our bleaching efforts, so our little Max just had some zebra ears. We put the headband on his head, cut two small slits in his hood, and pulled the ears through.

Even though I saw some pretty stinkin' amazing Max costumes online, I happen to think our own Max was the best. Maybe that had something to do with who was under the costume.

I'll try and put up pictures of Jude in the completed costume tomorrow - but make sure you bring along a mop before you log on to the blog. Your heart will probably melt all over the floor, and you'll need something with which to clean it up.

On a slightly different note, it turns out that Jude and I actually had the swine flu. I'm so grateful it didn't turn into anything more serious for Jude and am amazed that Shawn didn't get it. My sweet husband has been oinking at me everytime I cough or sneeze, though. I wasn't quite as lucky as Jude though, and ended up getting bronchitis right after the flu. Right now, it looks like everyone is healthy in the household - so keep ya germs to yo-self! We've had enough sickness up in here! So all of that to say that I'm sorry I haven't been updating the blog, but rest assured that I have puh-lenty of pictures just waiting to be posted!