Every year in August, I start discussing Halloween costume ideas with my kids. With 5 kids, I know I’ll be doing a lot of planning, shopping, and persuading them to come up with something within my time, budget, and sewing skills.
Halloween is a favorite holiday because of the creativity involved in making costumes. I love seeing what my kids are interested in this year and trying to make their vision become reality.
Homemade Halloween Costume for Kids
While we don’t do completely homemade costumes every year, I try to keep our Halloween costumes as frugal as possible. With 5 kids wearing a costume, store-bought costumes at $20 to $40 each can add up to a lot of money for a few hours of fun. I encourage my kids to come up with costume ideas they can re-purpose into play items; this helps us get more mileage out of the money we spend.
Finding Supplies for Homemade Halloween Costumes
Whenever possible, we start at our local thrift store, Goodwill, for costume pieces and then go to Target or The Dollar Tree for the accessories. Sometimes the kids have accessories in their costume box at home. Accessories can also be made from recycled items like cardboard, toilet paper and paper towel rolls, plastic containers, and cereal boxes.
Soldier Costume
This soldier costume is a perfect example of items that can be re-purposed for everyday use. The camo pants and sweat jacket came from Target; my youngest son is now wearing them after my 3rd son got his enjoyment from them. Occasionally used for Nerf Gun battles, the hat remains part of our dress up box. The binoculars came from the dollar store.
Old Navy also carries camo pants and sweatshirts for boys.
Lion Costume
This Lion costume is the only one I sewed from a costume pattern. I made it for my oldest son when he was 2 years old. My 2nd and 3rd sons have each worn it around the same age, and my youngest son wore it 2 years ago. I put the lion costume away for the grandkids since it carries so many memories for me.
If you don’t have the time or skills to sew, use beige-colored sweatpants and a sweatshirt to create the costume body. Add on a homemade tail, and add felt ears to a white or beige baseball cap. Or, add felt ears to a black headband.
My second son came up with this race car driver costume when he was in Kindergarten. The red shirt and pants are from Old Navy; we decorated the shirt with sticky-backed felt from Michael’s Craft Store. The sunglasses are mine, and the hat is from my son’s baseball team. His medal is also a memento from playing baseball.
I made Shaun a firetruck to go along with a fireman costume that we purchased. It was my alltime favorite costume EVER http://www.pinterest.com/pin/209276713905767053/
He looks so cute in his costume! I love the fire engine.
This is the first since Big was 3 that we didn’t do homemade and gave the kids each $XX to spend on their costumes. It really came down to time for us.
LOVE your costumes!!
Thank you! I always try to encourage homemade, but as you said, sometimes it comes down to time.
Such cute ideas!
My favorite costume was one we got at a thrift store for only a couple of bucks. It was a skeleton. Someone had taken a black jumpsuit (could just as easily be sweat pants and sweat shirt) and ironed on bones. We bought a skeleton mask to go with it and we had a very good costume. My used it for several years as the older one passed it down to the younger one.
Ooo, that’s a cool idea! I saw some colored jumpsuits in the costume section at Target and debated about buying them for next year. Maybe I’ll go back.
I love all of their costumes, totally original and not expensive to wear!
What awesome costumes Barb. The lion is too adorable! xo P
All of these costumes turned out so great! Re-purposing the costume into everyday clothes or toys is an excellent idea. The soldier one almost looks store-bought! The race car driver is so unique. It’s great someone was able to wear the medal again.