Carpool Costume

I go to a certified green school, so we do a lot of composting, recycling, and carpooling. My mom is one of the carpool captains, so I thought it would be fun to be a 'car-pool'.

I made the car with boxes we had in the garage. I used some leftover paint from my bedroom. I then used little plastic containers that we get from restaurants (my mom saves all that kind of stuff), and I cut out paper and colored it to be the front lights and the tail lights. I made a license plate that had Washington on the top, that's where we live. I also drew Mt. Rainier because our license plates have that too. I put Oct 31 in the place where the tabs go, and then put ND-Rose as the license plate number, because my first two initials are N and D, and my last name is Rose. Because the carpool lanes in Washington State are called HOV lanes (high occupancy vehicle), I decided to make that the make of the car, and designed the logo that goes right above the license plate in the back. I then cut out two people out of cardboard and glued them on to the back, because you need at least two and sometimes three people to be in the car to be able to go into the carpool lane. I drew a windshield on the front including wipers and rain drops. It rains a lot here in Seattle. I also cut out half-tires from cardboard and decorated them with the rubber wheels and the hubcaps. My mom was the one who did the hot glue gun, she wouldn't let me do that part. We cut a hole in an infant pool that she ordered on line, and a whole in the cardboard box so I could put it over my head. We used a lot of duct tape too. My mom used hot glue to put the pool on the bottom of the car. And it's a carpool!

Some people were confused when they saw my costume. They thought it was a bumper boat that you find at fun centers. Someone thought it was one of the 'ride the duck' tour vehicles that take people around Seattle because it goes into the lakes as well as the roads. I think people were thinking too hard to figure out what it was. But then when they guessed it, or when I gave them clues to guess it, they laughed really loud and said it was very clever. We had a big celebration at my school, including a carnival and a costume parade, and a lot of the teachers thought it was a brilliant idea, because it was creative and it wasn't something I just bought at a store, and it wasn't a cartoon character.

This is the first time my mom and I worked on a costume for several days. We did a little at a time so we could get it done by Halloween. I liked the fact that people couldn't guess what it was right away and it made them think. It also was fun to have a project that I would work on with my mom, so I could spend some fun time with her.