More than meets the eye

First off, big thanks to my parents for turning around a package to me very quickly. I had ordered something from Amazon (you'll see it in a minute) that they wouldn't ship to Italy. What might this piece of contraband be that Amazon, in their unrelenting corporate responsibility, saw fit to prohibit from shipping to Italy? Explosives? No. Demolition how-to manuals? Of course not. High end computer technology? Closer.

It's the Optimus Prime voice changing helmet, of course! What would happen if this fell into the wrong hands? Here's Aidan, totally enamoured with his new toy:





Wow. Pretty cool. And it can be adjusted to fit adult heads too. As soon as Halloween is over, this baby is mine. Which brings me to my next issue: Halloween costumes.

This year, I took it as a labor of love to make Aidan's Halloween costume myself. I enjoy making stuff like that, and thought this would be a good opportunity to flex that creative muscle. So at the beginning of the month, when Aidan asked for a Transformer costume, I knew I had my work cut out for me. After two weeks spending some free time in the garage, I'm starting to see the light at the end of the tunnel. After having cut and fit the chest plate, shoulder, and arm pieces from scrap cardboard, last night I went for the initial paint. Here's what that looked like:



The chest piece is laying flat here, but it folds up to make an Optimus-looking body for a 4 year old. I covered the cardboard in clear packing tape, because the paint coated it well and gave the tape a glossy metallic look. More robot-y. I'll have more pics as I get it together and have Aidan put it on. But once that happens, we might not get it off of him again.