monsters!
Designer Daddy’s Top 10 Halloween Costumes of the Last 10 Years
The start of the new decade also marks a couple of personal milestones: becoming a father and the birth of this blog. To commemorate ten years as both Daddy and Designer Daddy, I’m sharing a series of Top 10 lists throughout the year. Each post will feature the most amazing/fun/memorable things/experiences/whatevers from the last decade.
As a dad with a creative/crafty streak, few things have brought me more joy than dressing up my kid in Halloween costumes. It doesn’t hurt that I also like to play dress up from time-to-time — but that’s another list for another time.
This is quite the spooky scrapbook, documenting my son’s favorite heroes and characters over the last 10 years. You may notice that some years are represented more than once. Typically, each year included a school party/costume parade as well as trick-or-treating, so some years I overzealously made two different costumes. This exhausting practice has since been retired.
Enjoy these magically monstrous moments, including tips on how to make/where to buy the costumes. And oh yeah, Happy Halloween!
New Year, New Children’s Books, New Giveaway!
Disclosure: This post contains affiliate links. Meaning, at no additional cost to you, I will earn a small commission if you click through and make a purchase.
During the coldest, darkest part of winter, is there anything more satisfying than cuddling up with your youngster for a bedtime book? Regardless of the season, story time has always been one of my favorite parts of parenting… and of childhood. From Dr. Seuss to The Chronicles of Narnia and everything in between, the books I grew up on helped shape who I am. Similarly, I hope the books I read to my son will fill his childhood with happy memories and fill his mind with hopes, dreams, and maybe even a little wisdom.
I want to share my love of reading with you and your kids, so I’m giving away a bunch of new children’s books! Two winners will win three books each (see below for more details), all of which are sure to become classics in their own right!
HOW TO WIN:
Just leave a comment naming your favorite children’s book of all time. It can be your own favorite or that of your child. One entry per person, please.
BONUS WAYS TO WIN:
Visit SuperLunchNotes on Instagram. I’ll be featuring a different character from children’s books every day this week. You can leave a comment each and every day for additional chances to win. Tag a friend in your comment to receive an additional entry!
Contest ends Friday, Jan 19 at midnight. Two (2) winners will be chosen at random and notified by email.
October SuperLunchNotes: A Month of Villains!
Admit it — villains are more fun sometimes. They get all the good lines, they have the coolest gadgets and flashiest costumes, and they always go out with a bang. So in honor of Halloween and all things villainous, October SuperLunchNotes were ALL BAD GUYS ALL THE TIME. So sit back in your high-backed chair, stroke your white cat or twirl your mustache, and enjoy these devious doodles.
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10.2 Cruella de Vil
Monstrously Delicious Back-to-School Meals with Barilla
This is a sponsored post written by me on behalf of Barilla; the content and opinions are my own.
Jumping back into a school year schedule can be scary. Trying to serve school night meals that are quick, simple, healthy, and delicious can be downright terrifying.
Adding to the terror is the fact that I’m not much of a chef. What I am is a crafty mad scientist. I don’t so much mix ingredients as I do assemble supplies. Hence my most successful creations end up looking more like experimental DIY projects than respectable meals prepared by an adult.
And yet, all that playing with food and making things more fun than they need to be works well with being the dad of a picky eater. And I’m not talking prefers-blanched-asparagus-over-steamed picky. I’m talking eats-roughly-the-same-number-of-things-as-he-is-years-old picky.
Luckily, my persnickety seven-year-old loves pretty much every variety of pasta. Also lucky? Barilla has 38 different pastas and 14 different sauces with which to satisfy my hungry, finicky beast.
In addition to their endless meal combinations, Barilla products fulfill that whole quick, simple, healthy, and delicious list I mentioned earlier. It’s not surprising they’re the #1 pasta brand in both the United States and Italy… as well as the preferred brand of my first generation Italian husband!
While our family certainly enjoys tried-and-true meals like spaghetti with meat sauce, lasagna, and baked ziti, I like to get creative from time-to-time to hold my son’s interest. Who am I kidding? It’s just as much fun for me! Here’s one of my favorites… MONSTER PASTA!
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12 Days of Christmas Lunch Notes
As with many of my ideas, this one started bright but with very little planning — certainly not enough to allow for the predictable unpredictableness of the holidays.
“I SHOULD DO A ’12 DAYS OF CHRISTMAS’ SUPERLUNCHNOTES! I’M SO NIFTY & CREATIVE! AND I’M SURE I CAN THINK OF ALL TWELVE, SO THERE’S NO NEED TO PLAN THIS OUT VERY FAR IN ADVANCE!”
I was zipping along doing a note a day to culminate on Christmas Eve. But then my 7 year-old got sick. Then some work crises sprung up. Then I traveled to Texas for a friend’s funeral. Mix in all the seasonal insanity of shopping, decorating, planning — and for the first time in our new house — hosting, and that puts me here, on January 2nd, posting about Christmas. Right on schedule.
In my defense, my (after-the-fact) research shows that “The Twelve Days of Christmas” is in fact about the days following December 25th, not those preceding it. Ergo, this post is actually a little ahead of schedule. Gold star for me. ⭐
Blah, blah, blah — here are the notes, along with a few notes on the notes.
Brains, Schmains: How About Some Zombie S’mores!
S’mores are just about the most perfect snack. First, there’s the simplicity of them: chocolate + marshmallows + graham crackers; heat, eat, repeat.
They’re also super easy to customize, personalize, and accessorize. Maybe you like yours with peanut butter, or Nutella instead of chocolate; or maybe once in college you experimented with s’mores made from Pop Tarts and have always fantasized about trying that again.
And finally, s’mores are always in season: they taste just as gooey and delicious whether you’re huddled around a campfire telling ghost stories or huddled on the couch binge-watching The Walking Dead.
Speaking of zombies…
A while back I made some spooky monster s’mores for my son’s class Halloween party. They were such fun to make (and a big hit with the kids), that I thought I’d revisit this snack-craft and see what other monstrosity I could come up with. Then it hit me — ZOMBIE S’MORES. What could be more fitting than a gooey, melty, drippy snack made to look like a gooey, melty, drippy reanimated corpse?!
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Know Your Movie Robots: From Cute to Crazy & Everything In Between
For nearly as long as there have been movies, there have been movie robots. Throughout the decades, they’ve come in all shapes, sizes, and temperaments. These mechanical men (and women, monsters, and teddy bears) never cease to mesmerize moviegoers as they intermittently aid or annihilate mankind.
With so much rich, robotic, cinematic history — and with so many different makes and models — I thought it would be helpful to create a graph categorizing some of the best known/loved/feared movie robots. And with the impending arrival of Avengers: Age of Ultron, you really need to know what you’re getting into. This guy Ultron is bad news (see #20).
The ‘bots are arranged on a quadrant graph from nice to nefarious, and from super smart (fully independent) to not-so super smart (only do what they’re told). See if you can guess them all, then scroll down to where they are listed chronologically by their first film appearance.
Without further introduction… these are the droids you’re looking for.
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Disney Junior’s ‘Miles from Tomorrowland’ a Sci-Fi Mashup of Galactic Proportions
If you’ve got a preschooler in your house, you probably already know there’s a new show premiering on Disney Junior on Friday, February 6 called Miles from Tomorrowland. But what you may NOT know is which video game (subconsciously) inspired one of the characters; or what aspect of the show was the brainchild of a pair of 3-year-olds; or which two iconic sci-fi actors may face off in an upcoming episode…
The Best of 2014: SuperLunchNotes!
I hope to get around to a “Greatest Hits of 2014” post for all of DesignerDaddy.com, but until then this one will have to do. It’s been a while since I’ve posted any SuperLunchNotes, so here’s a Year In Review/Top 14 (give or take)/Best of 2014 thing. It was hard to narrow them down or pick a statistical manner in which to list them, thus I went with a mix of most popular and personal favorites of both mine and Jon’s. Bon Appétit! (Note: click all the smaller notes to view in Big-O-Vision!)
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Movie-Inspired Halloween Costumes
If you’re frantically looking for easy, last-minute Halloween costume ideas, this is probably not the post for you. But if you love Halloween, creativity and the movies, you’ve come to the right place!
I recently started writing family-related content for Fandango, and my first assignment was an article about creative family Halloween costumes. Our family has always had a blast dressing up together, and I knew I had more than a few friends out there who did the same. So I pooled my massive sea of Internet resources, and they delivered… TOO MUCH! I ended up with more content than Fandango could use, so I wanted to give these other cinematically-creative families the spotlight on my own site. Go grab some popcorn, sit back, and enjoy these picturesque, movie-inspired Halloween costumes!
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Rocket from Guardians of the Galaxy
An avid comic book fan, James decided to make his young son into Rocket Raccoon for an upcoming comic-con, who had seen (and been enamored by) the Guardians of the Galaxy trailer he’d seen on TV. The costume was a simpler version than shown here, but James made it all himself. At the convention it caught the eye of an experienced costumer who ended up making the custom mask, feet and tail shown in the photo. Way to work a room, Rocket! James’ son will, of course, be trick-or-treating in his full Rocket gear this Halloween.
Get the look: The jacket was made by cutting up and sewing pieces from a red t-shirt onto a navy turtleneck, accented with gold buttons. The raccoon tail (found at a frontier shop) was sewn into the seat of blue sweatpants. Read more here.
