It started out with AJ, my 8 year old, mentioning that he’d like to be a toilet for Halloween this year. His idea evolved into an outhouse, and I never could have imagined how popular and fun this outhouse costume could be.
Yes, an outhouse. Can you believe it?
How we made our Outhouse Costume
Please bear with me and use your imagination….
Supplies needed:
- One large kid-sized box
- One medium-sized box
- One new, clean toilet seat, lid removed
- A half-used roll of toilet paper
- More duct tape than you think you might need
- Paint (use several colors lightly swirled together for that “woody” look)
- Serrated knife or blade for cutting cardboard (please make sure an adult does this!)
- Big, strong scissors
- Rope
We found a friend who had an extra kid-sized box in her attic. We had another box that fit perfectly inside so. On the bottom of the smaller box, we traced the inside of the toilet seat and cut a hole.
Next, we cut a large door in one side of the large box. I cut the door so that it opened on the already-bent edge – it created a natural hinge, but I did reinforce the “hinge” with some extra duct tape.
I had my son step into the smaller box so that his upper body was coming out of the hole I had previously cut. With the box at his waist, I had him reach down to where his hands would naturally grab and I cut two hand-hold holes for him. I then set the larger box on top to measure where I should secure the two boxes together. I wanted to make sure you could both see the toilet seat out of the door AND that his head didn’t push onto the top of the large box. When pencil marks were set, I had him climb back out and I taped the bottom of the two boxes together. I used a LOT of tape.
The next step was cutting the moon in the outhouse door (which also serves as a way for AJ to see where he’s going!). I drew a penciled circle with a small bowl and then drew the rest of the moon from there. Once the moon was set, it started looking more like an outhouse!
The BEST thing we did for the outhouse was the paint job. I mixed white, pink, blue and a little bit of green paint with a dark brown wood stain. I mixed gently with a spoon so there were still swirls of color.
AJ and I set the outhouse out on the backyard grass and painted away. I love how it turned out!
My husband added some rope “suspenders” to the small box so that he could rest the costume on his shoulders while he walked. They weren’t perfect, but they helped! I taped a roll of toilet paper to the side of the box, inside.
To get in the costume, I lifted the box and he crawled in from underneath. Once he got inside, I handed him the toilet seat, which he fit on over his head and let rest around his waist.
When he wore the outhouse costume at his elementary school’s Halloween parade, he was literally the talk of the school. Parents were running over to us to snap pictures on their phones. Kids were pointing or running after him calling “I have to use the bathroom!” AJ was beyond thrilled the be the center of attention.
Phew. And that’s how my son became an outhouse for Halloween.
Hosted by Cecily and Lolli
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I love when kids have creativity and your son has it in bulk!!! Awesome costume.
thats hilarious and really creative! sounds like you put a lot of time and effort into this – you must be a great mom!!
LOL now that’s creative! I saw a million spidermans this year and would have loved to see more creative costumes like this!
That’s great! Leave it to a boy to come up with that!
The costume sort of reminds me of the year my daughter wanted nothing more than to be R2D2 and there were no costumes in her size, only infant. So we used a trash can, cut a hole in the bottom, painted it, padded it, strapped it on her and she had her nice big and bulky R2D2 costume. The top could come off when she got tired of having limited vision.
I better not show her this costume though, or she just may decide this is what she wants for next year, LOL!
How awesome!
Glad I could help! :)
Ha…that is so, so fun!
Goodness, how amazingly creative was that costume! :)