Halloween has been wonderful this year for my not so little family. It was a bit rushed I have to admit and stress was high the hours before trick or treating as my husband and I and or son tried to be quick about finishing up the last details on Mr. Handsome’s minecraft Steve costume. Steve you see is the main character in the video game minecraft. It is an addictive game for kids and adults. It is wonderful geekery. You can change how Steve looks with different armor and by uploading different bodies and of course your user name above his/her head. We went with the standard basic Steve look this time.
We spent over a week on minecraft costumes. I thought they would be easy but I was wrong, yes it happens! 🙂 The best parents, specially crunchy parents, can admit when they are wrong! So just what was so hard about the costumes? The scaling was at first. We needed to measure the kids and then keep the the minecraft scale. As we used a home printer to print the pixels they needed to fit our parameters. Course then we had to line everything up and deal with over lap. We used really messy spray adhesive to try and keep the paper from puckering and it worked but well…. messy. So many area of my home now have a sticky film thanks to the spray. Poor tables! Alas, I will be cleaning up for a week I think finding spots! I hope it comes up!
The easy costume was the minecraft creeper our 5 year old daughter insisted on. I wish we could have simply purchased costumes. Yes, many crunchy attachment parenting people make adorable costumes but I am not beyond paying someone to do all this work as life is short and crazy busy sometimes.
I think our kids learned a lot about planning and failing and overcoming though from this project! In the end we taped the arms to the Steve body and my brilliant husband brought the packing tape with them trick or treating so when a foot fell off the creeper costume he was right there to fix it! In the end though, the rain won! Paper and cardboard costumes do not hold up to the rain, even with a sealer spray over the creeper costume!
Everyone who knows minecraft loved the costume and many people told the kids they would win best costume of the night if there was a contest. The most important thing is that the kids got to be what they wanted and they know we support them.
We have wonderful happy little geeky homeschoolers who play minecraft maybe more than they should but they are learning so much from it and it can be so educational. They teach me more about the game all the time and I love seeing the excitement in their eyes when they learn something new and try to come up with plans to battle the griefers with obsidian issues. Problem solving skills building with this game is fabulous. Putting these costumes together is much harder I promise you!
