Sunday, November 10, 2013

I See London, I See France, I See Captain Underpants


See that belly? It's the result of the 16 pounds (about 7.25 kg) of candy my son and daughter brought home Halloween night. OK, her belly isn't really stuffed with chocolate, but the kids did bring home 16 pounds of candy - and we only trick-or-treated through a small part of our neighborhood. Believe it or not, one of my students managed to haul home 30 pounds (about 13.5 kg.) (I asked the kids to collect data on their candy so we could work on mean, median, mode and range. Averages are more meaningful to kids when they use data that is important to them. But I digress...)

While the Captain Underpants books may not be among my favorites, my daughter adores them.  She's only in second grade, but she has read them all. When she told me she wanted to be Captain Underpants for Halloween, I honestly had no idea how I was going to pull it off. I mean, we live in Northern Michigan, so going out in undies or even a swim suit wasn't really an option. So, I started searching and managed to find this "skin suit" on line. It wasn't quite right, but after pricing materials at the fabric store, I realized it was my best bet so I broke down and bought it. Be aware that at the store I linked to above, the child size medium suit was large enough to fit me, which ended up being OK since we were enlarging her tummy, but otherwise it would have been way too big. 


After removing the face piece, the gloves and the feet from the suit, I tightened up and shortened the legs and the arms. It fit fine and it was stretchy enough that even with the gigantic tummy K could wear long johns underneath to keep warm. (Luckily her rain gear also fit.) All Captain Underpants needed was new undies, a cape, a bald cape, stuffing for that belly, and she was good to go.

We knew we were onto something when strangers started coming up to us the day we trick-or-treated through town asking to take K's picture.


Of course she needed a treat bag, too. Just like I did for her brother, I found a graphic on line, reversed it, and ironed it on. The graphic is below just in case you might want to make a tote for your favorite little superhero. Now I'm hoping that we have "dress as a character from a book" day during March is Reading Month this year, because I'm certain K will want to wear this again.


Right click to download the full-size image.

Captain Underpants TM by Dav Pilkey.
All rights reserved.

4 comments:

IndyGram said...

So very funny....and cute! Go K! She may be the only child I know with the confidence to go out in public with this!!!!

susan said...

omg! liz this is too cute! i think im going to start blogging again...whether anyone reads or not...like way better than fb.
looks like the kids are doing great, they are getting so big? if your girl went as captain underpants what did your boy go as?
can you believe this weather?!! got my garlic in late sept. and it was snowing already. i planted three times as much this year, i would like to be able to give some away. it is cruel to give only one or two bulbs...once you have fresh out of the garden garlic anything from the store is yucky.
take care and have a great week...captain underpants indeed!
:-)

Lauren said...

What did you use to stuff the costume with?

Liz said...

L, my daughter is wearing a "belly" under the nude suit. I made it out of two old t-shirts. It goes up over her shoulders to support the weight of the belly. (It's stuffed with the insides of an old pillow.) I was worried if she wasn't carrying the bulk of the weight with her shoulders, she'd constantly have to hike up her tummy. Hope that helps. Email me if you would like pictures of what the belly looks like.