I once went as a candle. You can either do a shower curtain type hoop outfit or paint a big box white - wear a black turtle neck underneath. I have long hair that I hairsprayed into the shape of a flame using orange and red hairspray, then painted my face in yellow, orange and red. People seemed to get a kick out of it.
I know a guy who went as a 'smore one year. Basically, he smeared that gooey marshmallow stuff all over his body and then stuck a graham cracker and chocolate bar to his head (he had shaved off his hair). This was at a rowing party down by the river. When the party was really going well, he squirted lighter fluid on the mess, lit himself on fire, and then ran and jumped off the dock. I heard it was hysterical… (although I don’t advise trying it yerself)
Super easy and adorable costume: Tourist. Wear longish shorts, a Hawaiian shirt, black socks and sandals. If you’ve got a fishing hat, even better. Sling a camera around your neck. Now here’s the fun part - put on a pair of dark sunglasses, and apply bright pink blush to every part of your face not covered by the shades, so when you take the shades off, you’ve got a frighteningly realistic “sunburn”. If you don’t have pink blush, you can achieve a just-as-cute but not quite as laughter-inducing by applying a heavy coat of zinc oxide just to your nose.
A friend of mine once put a box over her shoulders, put a lacy tablecloth over it, glued on a battery powered lamp and a box of Kleenex. When asked what she was, she replied, “One night stand.”
Last suggestion: black turtleneck and slacks, black hat, black domino mask (that’s the kind the Lone Ranger wears) and a colorful serape and some wings. Voila - you’re a Spanish Fly.
Costumes I’ve done, in rough chronological order:
-Creepy old man mask on a wig dummy styrofoam head; I set that on top of my head and wore a large trenchcoat so you couldn’t tell it wasn’t my real head. My younger brother went trick-or-treating with me as a pirate, and when the person came to the door with candy, he took his toy sword and lopped off my styrofoam head. Just about caused a heart attack a few times.
-My best friend dressed up as a grain silo; I wore a sandwichboard in the shape of the sun; my brother wore a white sheet with holes cut in it. Fodder, Sun, and Holey Ghost.
-I went to a mirror shop and got them to cut a couple eyeholes in a 12" square of plastic mirror, and wore the mirror as a mask. When people asked me, “What are you?” I answered, “You.”
-I got another styrofoam dummy head, and did the whole trenchcoat thing again, except this time I mounted the head and mask on a stick, so that I could swivel my “head” around completely. As I walked past people, I nodded the head at them, and then rotated it slowly so it kept facing them even as I walked past.
-Last styrofoam dummy trick: two-headed ogre.
-Flying monkey.
-I was supposed to be Destruction, one of Neil Gaiman’s Endless, with my other friends as the other Endless (we had no one to fill in for Despair, strangely); unfortunately, the guy supposed to be Dream completely flaked on his costume, and looked nothing like Dream, so throughout the night people kept asking me if I was that annoying painter on PBS.
Daniel
I was a Pez dispenser one year in college. Got a long, tall box (probably for a mini-refrigerator), cut a hole for my head to stick out, painted the box and wrote “PEZ” on it, and went around all night spitting Pez out at people. Good times.
I’ve also been “Clark Kent changing into Superman.” I just wore a normal business suit, partially unbuttoned to reveal the blue Superman logo T-shirt underneath. But instead of just leaving it there, I got knee-high red soccer socks and wore them over my normal dress shoes so I could have red boots, and I got enough red fabric at Wal-Mart to pin to the T-shirt’s shoulders, so I could have it hanging out of the back of the suit for a cape. If you can hem it, even better. Finally I popped the lenses out of some black rectangular plastic sunglasses, dyed my brown hair black, and gelled it back with a spit-curl in front. If you own a suit and a Superman T-shirt, you’ve got the hard parts out of the way already! (Of course, you could easily get away with this as Supergirl, even though she now wears a white belly shirt with the “S” logo.)
Here’s a picture of me in this costume, by the way:
http://www.geocities.com/bigbadvoodoolou/changing.jpg
(You may have to copy and paste the link into your browser for it to work.)
This.is.pure.genius!
Personally, I would stock the frid with empty beer cans glued on and a can of sardines. Heh. Not that kid should see this.
Or, spray paint it black, cut a bix square in the center of the box, hang curtains and put fake arms out the side, and use your real arms ( encased in black sweats) and hands to do a puppet show. I is a genius. The possibilities are endless!
Now I shall scour the area for a refrigerator or Big Box.
Thanks, Jenaroph!