Best Homemade Halloween Costume: Phew, I’m Still Original

In my last post, I said that as far as I knew, I was original. Which is true. As far as I knew.

Over the summer, I promised to deliver the planet’s most unique idea for a homemade Halloween costume, and best of all, it could be made by you from a cardboard box. I had everything worked out down to the last detail. Then, former fact checker that I am, I googled it, laughing to myself at the very thought that I might not be the first to cook up this brilliant inkling for a Halloween suit.

Then, gah! There it was. My precious baby idea, spread across a Google image search like a small-town girl next door turned playboy trickster. My sweet little brain pet was splayed out there for the world to see, and in no way patented by me.

Devastation ensued.

The brainchild was a simple yet intricate creation that could convert any Halloween reveler into a claw machine. I had it all figured out, from the buttons to the stuffed animals to even a way the person inside the machine could pull a string and make the claw go up and down.

Google image shattered my fantasy of a hap-hap-happy Halloween. Without the Internet, I would have gone blissfully on in my costume, never suspecting that a handful of others across the globe had the same spark of holiday ingenuity. I felt just like Torrance Shipman in Bring It On when she found out that creepy traveling dance coach had sold her a bum routine that he was peddling up and down the West Coast.

Since I promised to deliver a great costume idea revolving around a box and I know there’s a wide audience of eager fans reading this with their saved boxes by their sides, I at least did you the favor of presenting a handful of other ideas on a platter. The least I can give you is research. Here goes. With your box, you could be:

• A lego
• Life (aka, a box of chocolates)
• A cereal box
• Barbie in a box
• A boom box
• A lunch box
• A copy of my wonderful and well-reviewed book, Temp: An Accidental Fairytale, which is available for free Prime and Super-Saver shipping on Amazon.com

With some flesh-colored spray paint and a little creativity, you could also be a Like Like from the Zelda series. You know, they’re the pink fleshy monsters who suck you up and eat your shield, which then costs about 100 rupees to replace. They tend to hide out in fake jars and treasure chests, then spring out and nail ya.

To be a Like Like, punch your cardboard box around until it’s shaped more like a cylinder and decorate accordingly. There! That’s one of a kind! If you want to go the extra mile, you can even dress up like Link (although my preferred code name is Mr. Fox) so it looks like the Like Like ate you. Boom! Original again!

There, order and balance have been restored. Phew. As someone who makes a living off being creative, it’s kind of important that other people not think of things before me. I should probably rush off to the costume patent office before this one gets snapped up, too.