Y’all, September is officially halfway over…HOW did this happen?! Before we know it, October will be here and we will be rushing to pull together creative Halloween costumes, am I right?! I thought I’d provide a little inspiration for y’all to get on the Halloween horn by sharing our favorite DIY Halloween costumes of the past 🙂
I love Halloween for so many reasons!
1.) It signals Fall, and Fall has always been my favorite season!
2.) I love the generosity of the night! People are genuinely happy and excited to give to children! I think this aspect of the holiday is so overlooked!
3.) Um hello, candy! Who doesn’t love candy?! And LOTS of it!
4.) This is a holiday that promotes creativity…I’m all on board for that! I love me some creative thinking!
5.) Okay, who doesn’t love channeling someone else they’d like to be for ONE night?! I know I’m guilty!
6.) It is the favorite holiday of my best friend, Kate, so it makes me think of her and all of the wonderful memories we have made over our nearly 25 years of friendship!
I’m sure I could think of more reasons why I love this holiday, but I’ll get to our costumes already…!
I admittedly fell into the trap of store bought costumes in my college days…you know the ones…the ones that make you both cringe for wearing something that short and revealing but also make you wistfully yearn for that pre-baby body…yeah those ones! I did however once get creative with a DIY Halloween costume…let’s kick it back 9 years to 2007 when I channeled my favorite actress, Audrey Hepburn a la Breakfast At Tiffany’s! Sigh, nobody knew who I was, but that’s college for you! I still think it was pretty darned good – minus the blonde hair of course!
This was put together with a thrift store bought dress, my grandma’s hand-me-down jewels, and some staple props like her mini crown, oversized sunglasses and long black gloves!
I would say my Halloween creativity really took off when I became a mom! Becoming pregnant with our first child with the 12 week mark falling right around Halloween sparked the idea for a costume reveal! I scoured the web for fun ideas and almost settled on a skeleton with a baby in its belly and even an oven with a bun in it, but decided on an original thought instead! With Patrick playing football with the Tennessee Titans at the time, it seemed fitting to do a football themed reveal since all of our Titans friends would be at our Halloween party! Below, you’ll see Referee, Patrick, flagging me for “Holding…A Baby In The Belly” at which I opened the flag revealing we were having a baby!
But wait, it gets even better! We made our dog a “Wide Retriever” and spelled out our due date on the back! Loved this costume and baby reveal!
The following year was Beau’s 1st Halloween! Beau became such a fun name to make nicknames out of, and one of his early ones was “Beau-Boy” I don’t know when and I don’t know how, but somewhere it hit me that he needed to be “Beau-Boy the Doughboy”! Enter the worlds cutest baby costume…the Pillsbury Doughboy!
Seriously…this is STILL the background to my phone! I can’t part with it! I smile every time I see it! This is the perfect baby costume for many reasons…1.) with a white fleece footed onesie, baby will be warm on the cool fall night! 2.) The added spatula is the perfect toy to gnaw on and keeps them distracted from the hat! 3.) What character is cuter than the PILLSBURY DOUGHBOY?! Seriously!
We put Greta in it last year and she also loved the spatula!
I wasn’t sewing yet, so I had someone on Etsy make the suit for me. She added the little scarf to it to complete it! I got the chef hat at the dollar store and used Velcro to fit his little head, and adheased a Pillsbury logo which was cut from a box of cupcakes. So simple, so cute!
In the fall of 2015, Beau loved an owl candle I had in our bathroom. He would go in and point at it and say “Hoo! Hoo!” so it seemed only natural that I should make him an owl!
With the help of my mother-in-law, we created Beau’s owl cape by hand! We cut out each feather from felt and sewed them on to keep them sturdy! I glued more feathers onto the front of pants and a shirt.
I had a mask for him to wear but he refused…lesson learned that 1 year old’s most likely won’t wear something on their face or head!
Patrick was released from the Titans this year so we had a lot of time on our hands – haha! We made ourselves costumes for our church costume party but didn’t get to go because Beau got sick! We still took pictures in them anyhow 🙂 We told ourselves in this tough season of waiting out the Lord’s plan that “Everything Is Awesome” and made ourselves Emmet and Wyldstyle from “The Lego Movie”
These were completely DIY – made from boxes, poster boards, paint and lots and lots of duct tape! We also used foam wreaths to help keep the circle shape of the heads!
With the addition of Greta to our family last year, we made our first family costumes with “The Garden Family” theme. Patrick was a mushroom, Greta was a snail, I was a flamingo and Beau was a garden gnome 🙂
We won 2nd place at the Franklin Pumpkinfest Halloween Costume Contest for these costumes! All which were handmade by me!
This idea was sparked by Greta. She was crawling at the time and I thought to myself, “How cute would it be to make her a snail?!” Um, pretty cute if I do say so myself!
I used a pattern to make her footed onesie, but I created the snail shell myself using two different colors of fleece and stuffing and rolling and hand stitching it for support. I just sewed some snaps onto the shoulders so the shell could easily come off 🙂
I handmade Beau’s vest and pants, but I did buy his garden gnome hat at Gymboree. When I saw it I just thought I’d save myself a little bit of work 🙂 Lesson learned, 2 year olds also don’t easily keep hats and masks on! This is the ONLY photo I have of him actually wearing it!
Patrick as the Mushroom…what a hit! Initially he was supposed to be the flamingo and me the mushroom, but the skin-suit was too big on me so he got to be it! I made the Mushroom head by starting out with a cheap foam cowboy hat from Joann Fabric. I then taped loads and loads of plastic grocery store bags around it until I got the desired fullness. I covered it with fleece and just stapled it to the hat. I then glued batting to the bottom to give it the textured look. I topped it off with some felt circles and ta-da!
I worried so much about everyone else that I didn’t even get a good photo of my flamingo costume! I just tied pink feather boa’s to elastic to make my skirt and brought one of the boa’s around my neck where I had glued a flamingo head made out of felt. Super simple, but super messy with all the falling feathers!
Greta also got to be a Cabbage Patch Kid doll last year! Friends of ours lent us their Cabbage Patch Kid hair hat, so I can’t really say how this was done, but I know you can easily find them on Etsy! I just cut out the logo and taped it to her dress 🙂
So that’s all I’ve got! I hope you’ve enjoyed and you are inspired to come up with a creative DIY Halloween Costume for this year! I know it’s now got me thinking of what we should be this year! I have a few idea’s swirling around my head 😉
Be Blessed + Be A Blessing
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