Halloween 2008

So, a week before Halloween, I decided that Nick and I should dress up as Mario and Luigi, but not just Mario and Luigi, I was planning on being Fire Mario in a warp pipe. The plan was to make a pipe out of something ring shaped, such as hula hoops, and to make 'fireballs' out of tennis balls covered in red and orange tissue paper. Oh, and we needed to find white overalls, white painters hats, and red and green long sleeved shirts.

First we tried to find materials to make the pipe, and discovered that hula hoops are not as common as we thought they were...Toys R' Us and Target didn't sell any. We then decided to focus on the clothes, and ordered our hats and overalls online, mainly because we knew that we wouldn't be able to find them in any stores.

Monday at work, I had the idea that we could use chicken wire (which is currently known as poultry fencing) to make rings as the frame. We found mesh fencing instead, which was fine, however, it was still too flimsy to hold it's shape, so we decided to paper mache it all. Neither of us have paper mached since elementary school, so we completely forgot just how messy it was. Fortunately we covered the floor with newspaper, but I managed to fling paste on the ground, on my PJ's and my feet. But, it really helped to give stability to the mesh fence rings.

We then used dowels to connect the top and bottom rings in order to give a solid, cylindrical frame. In order to make the lip at the top, we duct taped a lot of floral foam bricks to the outside of the top ring. Then we covered the entire thing in green felt, which was also connected with duct tape (seriously, duct tape was our friend on this costume). Nick used the leftover felt to make straps for me to carry the pipe on my shoulder by sewing hooks to the end of the straps and crazy gluing the hooks to the top ring. He also created a pouch from some more felt and taped it to the inside of the pipe so that I could carry my 'fireballs' while walking.

After some worrying about getting the pipe into our car, we showed up to the office with a fully intact pipe. Nick helped me get into it for the costume parade where this one picture was taken:

I thought we looked great, and a lot of people were impressed with the construction of the pipe. Unfortunately, we didn’t win any of the categories for the costume contest, but hey, we gained a warp pipe, which is currently sitting in my office. I have no clue what we’re going to do next year, but I’m thinking that expectations are that we need construct something with moving parts…