The Joy of Homemade Halloween Costumes

Growing up my mom always made homemade Halloween costumes every year. I totally loved that my costumes looked amazing and that nobody else ever had a costume like mine. Plus we didn’t have a lot of money, so she didn’t have a lot of other options. Many of our costumes were designed to double as PJs later. Note the green footies!

Holy stinking cuteness! I totally love the look on my brother’s face. It is like he is thinking, “Why did they stick me in this? I can’t even put my arms down!”

The time my mom took to make holidays special meant the world to me. So when I had kids of my own, I set out to do the same—not realizing how much time it takes! Good grief! But I can’t help it. For me making homemade Halloween costumes is as much a part of the Halloween tradition as carving pumpkins. But I am still not as cool as my mom. I still can’t ever find the time to make a costume for myself like she always did.

I am not one for purchased patterns (we don’t get along), so I design all my costumes and make my own patterns. I have also learned along the way that your kid will NEVER leave a headband antenna on, but if you can hide them on hair clips, you are gold!

Here are a few of my favorite homemade Halloween costumes!

The trick with this one was to find a black sleeper. And since black really isn’t a popular baby color, it was a bit hard. But it made it loads easier because I just had to make the wings and later G– was able to use the PJ’s at night. You could always use a black shirt and pants instead though. I got lucky and found this velour sleeper at a thrift store and it was soft and black just like a butterfly should be! If you wanted to do a bee this one is adorable!,

I designed this one so that B– could pull it up over his head when he wanted to and see out through the eyes. But there is a hole in the top so that he can also just wear it like a shirt. I then made dad a PacMan t-shirt to wear too!

For this one G– is actually just wearing a black shirt and pants I bought with a vest I made over the top. The lady bug wings Velcro off so that I could fit her in her car seat without having to take everything off. These leg warmers would have also been totally cute with it!