DIY Halloween

For a mom who doesn't love Halloween, DIY costumes are the best part

Halloween isn’t my thing. We have the decorations: fake headstones and feathered crows, pirate skulls, skeleton parts, and a talking fortune teller in a crystal ball, but I leave all the decorating to Ed and whichever child he can convince to help him. I’ve never enjoyed wearing costumes, and for years my Halloween efforts relied on my (real) prominent canine tooth, black clothes, and pale make-up for an uninspired vampire-ish person. The one year I put effort in was when the other moms on my street all went to the neighborhood party as a witch, so I built myself some Maleficent horns and added a black cloak to my usual all-black ensemble.

Despite my own dress-up reticence, I absolutely love creative costumes, and helping my kids imagine and create the kinds of costumes that stand out in a sea of store-bought masks has always been incredibly satisfying. I never could talk either child into the look I once saw Martha Stewart create for “dirt,” which involved green hair and worms crawling down from it, but together we’ve imagined some pretty fun ones.

The photo at the top of this page of Logan as Wolverine involved some very simple cardboard cutouts of claws spray painted silver which he wore with enthusiasm all day. I found this tutorial about making them from foam core, and it’s a prop that’ll get hours of play beyond the costume if your kids have read the comic or seen the movies.

And the photo below is of a costume so good it was used twice:

This version of Connor’s Monster Under the Bed was a high school redo of the same look from elementary school, and was a bit more complicated to craft (although the bed lasted for a few years). It was made from cardboard, with Nespresso box legs, a pillowcase bedding, and a teddy bear wired in. The whole thing was mounted on a baseball cap, which had to be steadied by hand sometimes, but it was incredibly gratifying to watch a teacher see the costume, study it for a moment, mouth the words “the monster under the bed,” and nod with satisfaction to himself for figuring it out.

Einstein was easy and a lot of fun for Logan because of the wacky hair and mustache, and the doctor’s white coat is easily made with Dad’s dress shirt.

Connor’s robot make-up (below) was more complex to do before school, but we practiced the day before and used make-up prosthetic glue to hold the zipper and metal watch pieces (from Michaels) in place. It took about twenty minutes to recreate once we figured out what would work.

He really liked this costume because he could wear his normal clothes to school because the make-up was so striking.

The headless man was a little more complex to construct, only because the jacket structure kept falling. We rigged it well enough for school, but it was too precarious for trick-or-treating, so he went as a ghoul. This tutorial seems like a much more solid construction than what we managed, but the costume itself was a lot of fun.

As our kids got older they devised their own costumes from the costume box that has been added to throughout the years, and these are some of my favorites:

(Connor took three years of Latin in high school, can you tell?)

Logan devised this one after we watched the Chernobyl mini-series on HBO, which I highly recommend for anyone who was alive in 1986. I remembered it, of course, but had NO idea how very dire things got.

And for Connor, the programmer, this Halloween costume might have been the scariest of all.

Last year Logan got into my closet for his Elton John look, though I can’t claim any credit for that excellent shirt (that came from Ed’s side of the closet).

And if anyone has suggestions for this year’s costume, Logan is looking for some inspiration.

Happy Halloween to all who celebrate, and if you have photos of your own favorite DIY costumes, please share!