Halloween Costumes - What to Wear?

Tim Burton's The Nightmare Before Christmas was on TV this morning, reminding me that Halloween is right around the corner. Time to get in gear. In the past, I've used Halloween as a creative outlet. I have really enjoyed making Kenzie's costumes and seeing her face light up when she saw the finished product.

My kids' first Halloween has always been simple. So far, they each have worn the pumpkin costume Baby Kenzie is modeling below that Brien's Mom made for his brother, Sean, when he was a baby. We called Kenzie, PumpKenz. and Connor, PumpCon. Sadly, Cooper's name doesn't quite go with the pumpkin tradition, but he wore it anyway last year. (His birthday is October 24th, so he arrived just in time for Halloween.) Cousin Owen's name fits - JackOwentern, so it's definitely time to pass down the pumpkin costume to Sean and Martha. After all, it was made for Sean originally. So, I will have to get on the ball and start thinking about what to do for Cooper this year, but first...

A trip down Halloween memory lane:
2006 - PumpKenz


2007 - Butterfly & PumpCon (notice the drool)

2008 - Wall-E & Coggy Doggy (Blogged about these that year)


2009 - Jessie from Toy Story 2 (and now 3), Cowboy & plain old Pumpkin

My, does time fly!

This year, Kenzie, like all little girls, wants to be a princess, and Connor says he wants to be Spider Man, so it doesn't look like I'll be using any creativity this time around since I don't sew, but I thought posting about a few of my past costumes might come in handy if you are looking for some do-it-yourself ideas.

Butterfly Costume
I loved making Kenzie's butterfly wings. For the wings, all I needed was a yard or two of thick black elastic, two pieces of black foam board, glue, colored construction paper, tape and spray glitter. For the antenna, I added some pipe cleaners to a head band we already had. I dressed Kenzie in a black turtleneck onesie over black pants and put some of my old black dress socks over her tennis shoes, and voila, the cutest butterfly ever.

Cowboy Boots
For Connor's cowboy outfit, I didn't want to spend any money on a pair of boots. He couldn't be a cowboy without them, so I used some craft supplies on hand - brown foam sheets, a black marker and some string - to make some fake ones to wear with some brown shoes he already had. Black shoes would have worked too. Folded in half and rounded edges with scissors, drew a boot design with marker, cut a hole on each side, looped the string through and tied in a bow in back. Mission accomplished.


Yarn Toy Story Jessie Wig
My mother-in-law helped me with this simple solution. We had a hand me down costume, but the wig was long gone, so we bought reddish yarn, cut long strips the same length, took a short string and tied around it in a knot in the middle. We put it around Kenzie's head (with the knot centered in the middle of her forehead) and took the two pieces and tied in a knot at the back. Then we cut more string lengths to make the third section of the braid. We tied this section in the middle with a short string just like the first. We laid this new piece over the knot and braided into the original two pieces. We used another short string to tie off the end, trimmed it up so the yarn was the same length, and the wig was ready to go. We didn't need to make it any thicker because the top of her head was hidden by the Jessie hat.

I hope these ideas come in handy or even inspire you to make your own solution that works with your kids' costumes this year. It is so much fun to get everyone all dressed up for Halloween.