Halloween 2012, DIY Adult Rocket Ship Costume

This year's costumes were Plan B... and that's okay.

Plan A was Little Red Riding Hood. Veda was to be Little Red, Linus would have been the Big Bad Wolf, and I was going to be Grandmother. I actually made one of those costumes - a red hooded cape for little Veda. But after all the time I invested in knitting love into every stitch, Veda refused to wear it. Yeah, I was slightly crestfallen. In case you're interested in what wasn't meant to be, here's a photo of the cape on Ravelry. Ours looked just like it, and I'd post my own photo of ours, but... you know... no one to model it.

Linus never got into the wolf, either. I checked an age-appropriate version of the book out from the library and read it to them. At the end I tried to stir up some excitement for the idea from Linus, but he just shook his head, stuck out his lips, and said, "No, I'm astronaut," like he thought I'd never paid attention to anything he'd ever told me, which in this case is sort of accurate since he tells me many times over every day that he's an astronaut.

I decided to give the people what they want.


So here we are:

 

 

The astronaut costumes were not homemade, which bums me out, as I'm a fan of homemade costumes. But if you're going to be an astronaut, you really do need authentic-looking gear. We first spotted these take-off suits in the gift shop at Kennedy Space Center, but they were crazy expensive. Luckily, Amazon had them cheaper. And they'll use them frequently for dress-up, so I feel better about shelling out the money. 

 

My costume, though? My costume cost about five or six dollars to make. Here's what I used:

• Glittery scrapbook paper, cut and hot glued into a cone ($1 on sale at Hobby Lobby)
• Hair elastic I already owned (what the paper cone is mounted to)
• Black dress, camisole, leggings, and ballet flats I already owned
• 1/2 yard orange flannel (about $4)
• 1 sheet yellow felt (.25)
• 2 sheets red felt (.50)

And that's it. It took a couple of evenings to cut out the felt/flannel, glue it together, and sew it to the underside of my dress. But nothing hard.

 

By the way... when I was looking around on Google for rocket ship costume ideas (that I never really found), the first search result I looked at was for "Adult Rocket Costume". You know what it was? A "crotch rocket" costume. I'll leave that one to your imagination. It was being modeled by the sort of man I imagine might enjoy all of the ridiculous "sexy" costumes out lately. You know... like "Sexy Hamburger" or "Sexy Rooster". Am I turning into a prude, or is that trend utterly stupid and UNsexy?