Trunk or Treat

We went to our ward's Trunk-or-Treat this year, or as I was always accidentally calling it, Trick-or-Trunk, which sounds a bit more sinister.  Our ward does this every year but we had never been before. Jeran and I dressed up this year and decorated our trunk and handed out candy too.  Jeran isn't big on dressing up but I proposed an idea he just couldn't pass up.

We were astronauts.

And our trunk was the moon.

It was pretty sweet.

In case you're wondering, here are some details on the different pieces.

The Portable Life Support Systems (PLSS) units, are the backpack-like things the astronauts carried to provide them with oxygen and perhaps a few other features. Ours were made from a few cardboard boxes pieced together and painted white (just white primer rolled on). We printed a flag, an Apollo mission patch, and the Water Reservoir Recharge label and used spray glue to attach them, and the straps were made from an old shirt and stuck through slits with dowels holding them in place.

The helmets were made from papier maché. The forms were punch balloons with cereal box bases around the neck area. I actually had to make three helmets because I had two punch balloons but one of them had a slow leak. I discovered this half way through applying the paper mache and attempted to keep it alive until it dried by frequently reinflating it, but it ended up drying more like a shriveled brain than a helmet. 

(Aside: The failed helmet was really pretty weird looking and I thought it would be great or something else although I couldn't think what, but apparently Jeran is grossed out by wet paper mache and the paste, so I just threw it out. See the picture at the very end of this post.) 

So after the first set was dry, I deflated the good balloon and made a second with that. I used newspaper strips with flour and water paste, with white paper on the outside layer to make painting easier. I cut out the face holes and some shoulder divots and we spray painted them white. Jeran painted a red stripe on his to indicate that he was the mission commander.

This is the Luner Excursion Module (LEM). Jeran made it from cereal boxes and a balsa stick. He spray painted the top and covered the bottom in shimmery copper scrapbook paper. It looks great!

The suits were just white pants we already had and I got two long sleeve white t shirts at Target. I figured we would want to glue things on them and didn't want to wreck any of our own shirts. We had a flag on the left arm, the NASA patch, the Apollo mission patch, a name, and several valve covers, which were really milk, salad dressing, syrup, etc. caps that we collected over the past month or two and painted red and blue. We hot glued or spray glued these all on. Jeran also got the red arm bands as the mission commander.

Ta da! Houston, we are go for launch!


For the trunk, we got black butcher paper (or bulletin board paper) and put that up around the edges, with glow-in-the-dark stars taped to it and a print-out of the earth from space. The lunar surface was a gray fitted sheet wrapped around our trunk liner with a few bowls and soccer cones underneath and some light colored rocks from Michael's strewn about. (Aside: I can't believe how hard it is to just "find" rocks around here! Growing up in Utah, we would just walk outside and have millions of rocks of every color, shape, and size to choose from. Here I have to beg or buy rocks.) We were pretty happy with how it all turned out and it was really fun getting everything ready. HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Here is a picture of the failed helmet.

Failure vs. Success. Apparently it is quite important that the underlying object stays about the same size while  the paper mache is drying. I guess if we'd had a third party, someone could have been a pretty scary alien with that on their head.