10 Oct Homemade Halloween!

There can be a lot of pressure to make Halloween perfect for your kids, especially when we find ourselves comparing efforts on Instagram and Facebook. However, creating a cute, memorable and unique Halloween doesn’t require spending tons of money or hours crafting.

Consider adding a personal touch to your Halloween experience by creating some of the elements yourself. It’s never been easier to get great ideas with tools like Pinterest. A simple web search can yield dozens of homemade Halloween ideas that even a novice crafter can try.

Costumes for Kids and Adults

Check out this list of last-minute Halloween ideas for quick kids’ costumes. You can probably make some of them without buying any new supplies at all. Examples include a mummy outfit made from strips from old T-shirts and a cowboy costume with a felt vest, felt hat and cardboard box horse.

Here’s another slideshow that includes great kids’ costumes. Try the cute “spaghetti and meatballs” outfit composed of items available at the grocery store. Or, make the surprisingly cool Rubik’s cube costume made out of a cardboard box and construction paper.

For some slightly more complicated kids’ costumes, look through this list from Real Simple. They feature an adorable ice cream sundae costume and other looks inspired by animals, foods and more.

Adult Halloween costumes can follow many of the same ideas as the ones for kids. And, you can draw inspiration from movies, celebrities, plays on words, news stories or even viral videos. For example, this slideshow has simple but funny T-shirt ideas using plays on words like “fork in the road” and “deviled egg.”  You can also incorporate nostalgia to dress as characters from your own childhood.

There are also plenty of ways that families can dress up together. If one family member has a costume he really wants to wear, the rest can follow the theme. For example, one pirate becomes a pirate family, a baby lion becomes a lion family. Another popular option is to dress up as a group as characters from the same TV show or movie, like the Scooby Gang from Scooby Doo.

Trick-or-Treat Bags

You don’t have to stop with costumes when it comes to homemade Halloween projects. Kids will love their own personalized trick-or-treat buckets or bags.

This list features cute bags shaped like candy corns, pumpkins and owls. A few options feature Halloween colors, fabric and ruffles.

If you can’t or don’t want to sew, consider spray painting or decorating a typical plastic pumpkin bucket. Or, take a blank canvas tote and iron on a design, like these.

Decorations

If you’re already committed to store-bought costumes and bags, add a handmade touch to your Halloween with some decorations.

For outdoor decoration ideas, check out this slideshow. It features archways-turned-monsters, giant spiders from recycled materials, and affordable DIY ghosts for your trees and yard. If you have a garage, tape on some eyes and scary teeth for a quick and clever way to add some fun to the look of your house.

If you want to decorate the indoors of your home or classroom, you can do a surprisingly good job with black cardboard. Cut out shapes of cats, mice, bats or other spooky creatures and attach to lamps, luminaries or windows. Click here for more ideas, including a neat “floating ghost” made of cheesecloth, Styrofoam, liquid starch and a recycled plastic bottle.

Pumpkin Carving and Painting

It used to be that jack-o-lanterns consisted of a couple triangular eyes and a mouth with a few teeth. Now, thanks to the internet, we can browse a lot of different options for our Halloween pumpkins.

Clever ideas in this slideshow include sticking gourds, squash and pumpkins of various sizes and colors together in to make animals and monsters. Other pumpkins incorporate Halloween candy, cornstalks or hay as the jack-o-lantern’s hair or teeth.

Some cute pumpkin ideas don’t even require carving. As you may have seen, more folks are opting to paint pumpkins or apply decorations like metallic gold tape.

Remember that you don’t have to create every element of your celebration yourself. However, adding even a few personal touches will make your experience more fun and unique. Happy homemade Halloween!

PHOTO: D’Arcy Norman / CC 2.0