It's a Thomas Halloween

Happy Halloween!  Of course, we had a very Thomas Halloween here in our house.  I was googling different Halloween costumes for Nikhil a few weeks ago, trying to pick something he liked.  I was considering Angry Birds, but the ready made costumes were $50 and to DIY required a lot of sewing (something I really don't like to do!)

And, then I found a couple ideas online for making Thomas.  I'm much better at doing crafty things like gluing cardboard boxes together, and Nikhil gave his seal of approval, so Thomas it was!

Here's what I was doing 2 days before I delivered Taj.

I just glued 2 cardboard boxes together, then cut the number 1 and the red stripe out of construction paper.  I used black posterboard to make the cylindrical prop for the Thomas face so it stuck out a bit and wasn't flat.  The funnel was just a toilet paper roll wrapped in the black posterboard.  We cut strips out of fabric and hot glued them to the interior of the box to be "suspenders" for Thomas.

I had some help from my Dad, who painted Thomas 2 different colors to get the exact shade.  Now some may think, well it's a costume for a 2 year old, how exact does it need to be?  Then, you certainly haven't met Nikhil.  He's like quality control for Thomas drawings.  If I leave off one wheel or change the color of one line when drawing Thomas for him, he says, "No Mommy, like this".  So, I wanted it to be perfect.

Here we are the night before to do some final measurements.  But, Nikhil wouldn't take Thomas off.

Nikhil had a costume sharing day at school the week before Halloween.  He was so proud to wear Thomas.  It was certainly worth all the hard work!  One of the little girls in his class wanted a Thomas costume too!

For Halloween, when asked what his name was, he always answered "Thomas!"

And, to add to our Thomas Halloween, Jeff spent over 4 hours, carving our jack-o-lantern.  Here's the product of his hard work. Niki loved it!!