Happy Halloween - Roman Style!

I had planned to make this post a bit more detailed, but with our power going in & out + wrangling 3 kids in the midst of it all, this is more of a "brief synopsis" mode -

This year our middle guy had his heart set on being a Roman Soldier for Halloween, so the Mr. and I decided to take on the challenge and by some miracle I think we pulled it off:

We found a great tutorial for making the helmet from cardboard and a broom on Instructables.  My husband did a terrific job putting it together and made it nice & metallic with some shiny chrome Duck Tape.  It has taken some serious effort to stop our guy from just playing in it around the house before our Halloween festivities!

I made some snap-on wrist cuffs, leg armor and breastplate with silver pleather & red fleece I had leftover from some projects last year.  I used some cool silver plastic snaps I bought at KAMsnaps to make them easy to wear.  We bought a cheap men's XS red t-shirt for the tunic and used my old Red Riding Hood design (minus the hood) for a fleecy warm cape. Brown pleather strips attached to a sash made the apron bit and I hand sewed some old silver buttons to the tips of each strip.

And of course since we barely pulled it together in time, it was almost a Halloween costume disaster.  We debuted it at an outdoor event the other day and were stuck in the pouring rain for most of it.  Then halfway home the little guy got sick in the car all over the whole ensemble.  Soaked and puke covered is NOT a good look.  But having experienced enough kid-tastrophes, I always buy washable fabrics when I make their stuff, so thankfully we were able to wash everything.  Now our little soldier can march on tonight.  And get a happy sigh of relief from his slightly worn out parents.

Have a Happy (and hopefully somewhat warm & dry) Halloween Everyone!!