Last year, about a week before Halloween, Jack announced that he knew what he wanted to be for Halloween 2021. This isn't unusual for my kids, they both pick their costumes well in advance, but I make them wait until May before we begin talking about costumes for the following fall, particularly with growth spurts and changed interests in mind.
Jack is really into claymation, and as such he's a big fan of the British cartoon Wallace and Gromit he decided this is who he wanted to be. We talked a great deal about whether he'd want this to be a group costume (as in would one person dress up as Wallace and the other as Gromit), but he was insistant that he alone wanted to be both.
This is how we made his Wallace and Gromit costume and how much it cost.
This summer I began scouring thrift stores, closets, and our dress up box for an outfit to transform Jack into Wallace. We decided that Gromit would likely be a stuffed animal that he carried.
From our supplies we found a dress shirt, black pants, and a bright red tie. The shirt and pants were hand me downs from a cousin, and the red tie came from something Chris used to wear with a black suit about 15 years ago, so that cost us nothing! The major problem was finding a green vest. After searching thrift shops since July I decied in early October that the green vest wasn't going to happen. Instead I purchased a sized small women's V-neck green shirt for $4.99 from Value Village and cut the sleeves off.
