The Making of the Man With the Yellow Hat

First off - let me say that I thought I had an ingenious idea this Halloween.  I had found a monkey costume for Drake at Gap for .99 CENTS.  So - I thought about making a banana costume for Cole since I waited a tad too long to order one for him.  Oh yah and even if I had ordered it in March...seriously...who pays $30 DOLLARS for a 3 year old's costume?  Not this momma.
A banana also seemed like a bunch of work to create.  More sewing than I wanted to do.

Then I thought of THIS ↓ -

Aren't they just too cute for talk?

I had NEVER seen this done before.  Obviously, I thought I was brilliant.  :)

Then, we went to the trunk-or-treat tonight at our church, and there was another Man in the Yellow Hat with a Curious George.  Not so original after all.  Haha!  But still, he was a lot of fun to create.  Several had asked how I did it.  So here's the How To.  And what NOT to do on some things.

Main goal for costume - look cute and make it as cheap as possible.  This is how I managed that.  

Since spray paint and me are like Frank and Joe, it just naturally was the first thing I needed to get this party started.  No, I don't normally paint our clothes.  But, it worked for this.  That is, after 3 failed attempts on 3 different articles of clothing...good thing they were all from the goodwill.  I used a white cotton button-up oxford for the MWTYH's top and some gray play pants which happened to have blue stripes going down the sides.  These blue stripes were not going to be covered by the spray paint, so they had to come off.

*Suggestion: IF you are going to spray paint clothing yellow, find white or light colored clothing.  Also, don't use polyester fabric.  Cotton works the best. ;)

*Suggestion #2: IF you have time, use Rit dye and just change the color that way.  Probably healthier for all of those affected with the presence of the MWTYH.

I spray painted EVERYTHING.  If anyone just happened to breathe when our family walked by, I'm sure they would have had the pleasant aroma of Krylon wafting in their nostrils.

For shoes, I had picked up some goodwill rain boots that I -- wait for it -- spraypainted brown. :) 

For the belt, again goodwill.  And painted it yellow.

For the tie, I bought 6" of fabric from JoAnn's.  I used one of my dad's old ties as the pattern.  Traced out front and backing, and my mom stitched it for me while I was spraypainting some rain boots.
I used a marker to color in the polk-a-dots so it looked like it was supposed to.

*Suggestion: Do not use a water-based marker to color in tie.  With the rainy weather, those polk-a-dots smeared.  You couldn't tell from a distance, but up close, it showed slightly.

For the hat, I bought 2 pieces of yellow poster board.  I wanted it big - exaggerated BIG.  The yellow hat is the BIG DEAL.  I rolled poster board up to make a cone shape and super glued it so it wouldn't unroll.  I trimmed the large end of the cone straight, so it would lay flat on the table.  I cut the top off, so it didn't look like a witch's hat.  Glued a circle piece to fill in the top to complete that part.
On the other poster board, I took my 10" kitchen skillet and traced a circle.  :)  Cut that out.  Placed the trimmed cone shape on my 10" cut out circle.  Traced that out.  After all of the cutting was done, for clarification, I had one piece of poster board cut down to a 10" donut.
Took my cone-ish part and slid the donut piece over it.  It was snug, but I superglued it in place.  (Or so I thought.  See Suggestion #2.) 

It sure sounds like that hat took awhile to make - but it didn't.  Easy as pie.

*Suggestion: Make hat while your child is awake.  I attempted to size Cole's head while he was sleeping.  Obviously, I failed.  I ended up having to make 3 hats.  The last, once he got up from naptime. ;)

*Suggestion #2: If the MWTYH happens to destroy his hat on the way to the annual trunk-or-treat, do not attempt to superglue it back on while he is wearing it.  Superglue does NOT come out of hair.  Upping Cole's dosage of Vitamin B tomorrow and praying that clumped chunk grows rapidly.

Cole was SOO excited to dress up as one of his favorite characters.  He kept asking me about it, like every hour for the past 2 days. :)  So, when I was dressing him this evening, we were in the bathroom.  He was standing on the closed toilet, and was admiring his get-up in the mirror.  He kept giving himself two thumbs up, and raising one hand (like the president does when he comes out on stage).  And phrases like, "Wow, would you yook at dat!"  It was HILARIOUS.

I definitely feel I got the job done cute and cheap.  Here's the cost run-down.
   • Krylon - Indoor/Outdoor Paint ~ Wal-Mart $3.67

  • Rain boots ~ Goodwill $2.00 
• Belt ~ Goodwill $1.00 
• Botched clothes from paint ~ Goodwill $2.90

 • Two pieces of poster board ~ Dollar Tree $1.38 
• Piece of yellow polk-a-dot fabric ~ JoAnn's $.80

 • Clothes I ended up painting ~ Free, given to me.

Total Cost of Success: $11.75
Compared to $30 - savings of 61%. ;)

Curious George finally lost his pacifier and the MWTYH was caught mid-sentence asking for some more of his candy.

Happy Halloween! :)

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