Our family loves a good theme costume and we have such a fun time thinking creatively and thrift-ily (is that a word?) to make our costumes every year, but sometimes the hardest part is deciding on an idea we can all agree on!
So, I’ve compiled our favorite costumes over the years and added them here with tips for your own DIY versions of each costume.
I’ve also included some additional ideas for more or alternate characters to go along with each theme if you have a larger group or want to make sure everyone loves their costumes and it fits them just right. There are even extra example photos and some fun stories sprinkled throughout if you click to read about each costume so enjoy and let us know what your favorite family or group costumes are in the comments!
Classic Clue Characters
This is a classic idea that still works and can be adapted to different size families! Other characters you could use include: Mrs. White, Reverend Green, Mrs. Peacock, or Professor Plum, but there are many others in other versions of the games/films.
We chose to go with Colonol Mustard and Miss Scarlet (with a wrench and a candlestick) because those are the elements we had. Plus, Miss Scarlet was always the prettiest, fiestiest lady… at least in the version I had as a kid.
There was very little DIY needed here, we just thrifted a golden yellow shirt and used an old magnetic name badge from a work nametag and printed Wyatt a psuedo military badge with a few medals pinned onto it (stolen from a high school letter jacket!).
My costume was pretty quick, semi cheap, and mostly easy to pull together from thrift store finds. Though it was harder than I thought to find a fun red dress so I ended up with black velvet and puffy red sleeves!I added a red feature boa from the kids toy section at Wal-Mart and big red earrings that were my mom’s in the 90s and I love them even though they turn my ears green!
Thrifting is the biggest part of this DIY. Give yourself plenty of time to shop at various stores to find the pieces you need for your chosen characters. And be flexible. We had originally planned to do Professor Plum with a purple sport coat but couldn’t find that. List of weapons/props include: candlestick, wrench, rope, lead pipe, knife, and the revolver. (Please always be safe when carrying weapons on Halloween, even pretend ones!)
Circus Stars
Again, this one is great because it can be adapted to fit larger or small groups, and babies if you want to be a lion tamer with a little (sleeping or crying in these photos!) lion.
Wyatt chose not to dress up this year because we didn’t really have a party to go to that required costumes, but other characters you can add include a weight-lifter/strong man, clowns, other circus animals like elephants or giraffes or monkeys, tight-rope walker. Just channel your Greatest Showman vibes here and have fun!
I wore Will in our yellow Solly Baby wrap, (which we loved!) and just made him a headpiece. This was very DIY-able and I could have done it many ways, but I used an old gold t-shirt and cut it out in a little bonnet shape, then made and attached a lot of little fluffy pompoms out of brown yarn. If you “unwind” the yarn it looks more like hair, if you can see the difference in these two pom poms pictured. I added some strips of the gold from the shirt and also used t-shirt scraps for the ears. I used Velcro to attach it under his chin.
If my outfit looks familier, it’s because I took scissors to my previous year’s Miss Scarlet costume and turned the dress into a jacket, hot gluing some red and gold ribbon on the cut edge to seal it and act as some fancy trim. It was tight before I got pregnant so this was for the best! My hat was also a hot glue DIY using cardboard rolled into a tube and black felt around it and under it to make a tiny top hat that I hot glued onto an old headband. Black tights, old red shorts from my high school volleyball days, and some more gold accessories later and I was good to go here!
This is a great example of using what you have! I even reused the red feather boa to make the flames on my hula hoop ring of fire, then cut out some yellow cardstock to finish off the flaming look. For other characters, I’ve seen some really cute ideas to make weights for weight-lifting costumes with black balloons and a long cardboard tube, such as one from wrapping paper.
Mary Poppins Jolly Holiday
This was a dream costume year for me. We even ended up painting the backdrop from behind us on some giant cardboard for a trunk-or-treat our church was having that night. But Wyatt only wore his costume for a few hours that night and ended up sick on Halloween so I am vowing to return to these costumes at some point in the future! If you have more kids around the same age, it would be adorable to make multiple penguins, or Jane and Michael of course!
Wyatt and I also had thrift store pieces that I dressed up with a combination of hot glue and simple sewing. I’m not a seamstress so most of my costumes are no sew! Wyatt’s sport jacket and my white lacy shirt got some matching ribbon hot glued on. Our hats were lucky finds from the dollar store and Wal-Mart, though I had to trim mine and spray paint it white, and both hats got some ribbon/tulle for the look they needed. I also wrapped my umbrella in tulle and ribbon.
We made Will’s penguin costume by adding a sort of black cape with a white fleece belly piece over a pink puffy costume shell from the clearance section at the thrift store the thrift store but you could totally just use a black fleece sweat suit. I’m not even sure what the thing we had originally was. A pig maybe? I hot glued this all together, just tucking it up into the leg opening and neck opening of the pink puffy shell we had. I LOVED how round it ended up, super cute for a wobbly little toddler, and cushy when he fell down, too!
He wore a black hooded sweatshirt underneath that I attached eyes and a beak made out of felt to. He already had the yellow moccosins and man, this is just the cutest, right?!
One of my best tips to keep costume costs down is to use what you have. Wyatt wore a shirt and pants he already owned and I already had this tulle skirt and I didn’t want to ruin it so I used glue gots to stick on the little red bows to the bottom. The shirt was from the thrift store so I was fine “ruining it,” though I prefer the term “committing it to a permanent costume” by hot gluing the ribbon on.
Hungry Caterpillar Lifestages
This was Em’s first Halloween and one of my favorite themes because Will loved this book at this age. My eyes look so tired here, and I WAS actually exhausted with a 6 day old baby, but we had fun!
If you had more people, it would be super cute to add more food with bites taken out of them (like the pizza and chocolate cake page–we love that page!) or super funny to make a cocoon too, though it would likely look a bit like…well, poop? Ha!
I wore newborn Emma in the yellow Solly Baby Wrap and clipped on a pair of old dress up wings that I painted like buttefly in Eric Carl’s classic colorful style. I remember painting this when I was in labor with her actually, before we knew she was a she even–so we were going for gender neutral here and it worked out perfectly. She also had a hat with eyes and antenna glued on, and when she was in the wrap, we just wore it backwards so her “eyes” could be seen. My goodness, she was a tiny squish of a thing in this photo!
I made a little leaf shape out of felt, added a cotton ball egg, and attached them to a headband to be the “little egg on a leaf” from the very first page of the story. If you weren’t wearing a baby, you could go all out and dress like a tree and put the egg on any leaf, though I did like it as a hat.
Wyatt had the easiest element of all this year, a painted apple on white craft foam that we stuck to his shirt with a safety pin. Can’t get much easiser than that. He didn’t even wear “apple colors” but you could totally do this in a bigger way if you wanted! Full on apple suit? Sure!
Will wore green pants and a shirt, and I hot glued different colors of green felt together in stripes to make a cylinder shape that would fit around him and then cut some arm holes. You could totally sew this of course, but I prefer to keep things no-sew whenever possible! Hot glue is the secret weapon to any Halloween costume, I swear.
I used safety pins to attach eyes and an antenna that I made from colored felt to a red stocking cap (which he still wears now in the winter years later) and he was good to go! One bonus tip is to usea pipe cleaner between two layers of felt to give the antenna a bit more stability.
If I do have to buy clothing pieces, I try to buy things that we can use again, which is why I often pin elements on with safety pins rather than sewing. That, and I tend to fight with my sewing machine over half the time so it’s faster to just do it this way.
Ice Cream Man and His Treats
This year was all about Will wanting to be an ice cream man, and Em was really little so we decorated our wagon to look like an ice cream truck so she could ride while we went trick or treating. That wagon was the hardest part but Wyatt is great at cutting and building out of cardboard so he handled that while I printed out details, painting the cardboard white and made the rest of the costumes. If you wanted to adapt this for larger groups, you could totally add more ice cream treats!
I was an ice cream cone and the hardest part was finding a skirt in the right color and shape. I found this pencil skirt on Amazon and then used felt to add a hot fudge and sprinkle color to a plain white sweatshirt. I made it as a collar that fit over my head rather than sewing it onto the shirt.
My hat was super fun to make whipped cream using white fabric batting in messy folds and white yarn sewn with a large needle to stitch it into place. It’s harder to use hot glue on foam and other more meltable fabrics. A red balloon worked for a cherry. I also taped a “stem” made from red cardstock onto the cherry balloon and made a few more sprinkles from the felt. So cute!
Em was our Choco Taco and it is one of my favorite costumes we’ve ever made! We used some craft foam (I think it was the 1-inch thick kind) and covered it in brown felt with a lot of hot glue. I used an old white sheet for the inside lining, I also glued on two strips of the sheet to make ties to hold it together. Again, just hot gluing it on. Then I just painted on the yellow to add the waffle cone texture, and added more felt details for the peanuts on the edge.
Her bow was adorable too—I used a wrapper from a real one (that we ate) and twisted it into a bow shape and added it to a headband she already had.
Wyatt was the easiest costume this year with some craft foam covered in brown felt and attached over his shoulders sandwich board style to make him an ice cream sandwich. All he needed was a white shirt underneath for the ice cream.
Will wore red pants he already had, suspenders and a bow tie from Target, and I printed out a paper hat for him.
I also made a tray from cardboard by wrapping it in colorful wrapping paper, attaching a ribbon for him to wear it around his neck and then and filled it with treats that we ate and then resealed up with tissue paper on the inside to make them look new. He loved using this as his candy bucket when we were trick or treating.
Since we were going to a trunk-or-treat, we also made some giant popsicle decorations for our car to make it look like a giant ice cream truck to match the mini one on the wagon. Wyatt made a stand out of 2x4s to hold up the popsicle and sat it on the roof of the car (it wasn’t attached) and it was pretty epic when we combined it with an ice cream truck music playlist on the speakers.
As for the cardboard cover for the wagon, make sure the roof is tall enough for a kid to comfortably sit up in without having to slouch. And the wheel wells need to be plenty oversized to allow for the wheels to rotate and turn. We used a large box (or you can make one yourself) and then cut and folded down the front half to make the windshield and hood part.
Taste the Rainbow Family (or just weather!)
Ok, hear me out, you could totally do a weather theme for your family or group costume…or you can go one step further and be the “Taste the rainbow” Skittles family! This year Will wanted to be a raincloud and Emma heard that idea and wanted to be a rainbow. If you went with a more general weather theme, the classic “dad” part of this costume is a weatherman and if you needed to add more costumes to your group, you could try some other weather elements like a lightning bolt, tornado, or windblown character but we went with a “Taste the Rainbow” theme instead since it was really hilarious to the kids.
I used a clear plastic umbrella (the same one from my Mary Poppins costume above) and taped on raindrops, using fishing line for some of them to let them hang lower. Then he got a raincoat, rainboots, and a giant pillow fluff hat that we made using spray adhesive and spray paint. We needed more glue on the poly-fill to hold it together because it got a bit loose while he was running around. I might even use hot glue and some string to help tie it down and hold it securely.
Emma got some colorful tulle sewn onto her thrifted dress, and a headband made with hot glue to match. Then I hot glued some felt cloud shapes to the bottom of the tulle and my goodness, I loved this costume on her so much!
She also wore glittery gold boots, because of course, you need some gold under the rainbow, right?
I got to wear this amazing yellow skirt that I found on a secondhand shopping site (and still wear often in real life because I love it).
I also thrifted a bright yellow sweatshirt and painted a sun design onto the front. Then I used glitter craft foam to make a sparkly gold headband and popped on some gold sunglasses.
Wyatt literally used glue dots to attach Skittles to himself, multiple times for multiple events! He cut the sleeves off a button-up shirt and we got him a big bag of snack size skittles to give out to people all night.
If you’re not familiar with who this is, you can Google the commercial to see the original character. It’s sort of a gross and ridiculous concept!
No major bonus tips for this one as it was pretty simple. The big thing here is finding the base pieces you need (yellow clothes, raincoat and umbrella, dress to attach the colorful tulle onto). I will say that I bought some plastic raindrop shaped prisms for Will’s raincload that were pretty but they were sort of dangerous when swung around by a 4 year old so maybe skip them, or attach them more securely. And for sure try to get your poly fill cloud more secure.
Mario and Friends
While it isn’t original to dress as Mario and Princess Peach, it was fun to see Wyatt and I as a larger than life Captain Toad and Toadette compared to our much smaller Princess Peach and Mario. This was our 2020 costume and it worked well to glue felt onto beige masks with Mario’s nose and mustache and Peach’s lips so the kids could attend some events even during Covid.
You could totally add other characters like Yoshi, Daisy, Luigi, Toad, Bowser, King Boo, and more.
Will got some thrift store overalls with added felt bottons and a felt “M” added to a red cap. I specifically chose overalls that were a more blue color rather than a true denim.
We always have fun making custom treat bags and this year, Will’s was my favorite.
One of the hardest parts of this was finding a solid red ballcap in Will’s size but you could totally buy the Mario hat from a costume store if you needed to.
Emma was so excited to be Princess Peach and I couldn’t believe how difficult it was to find a pink dress in her size at the thrift store so I ended up buying a white one and dying it with RIT dye and it turned out a bit more lavender than I was hoping.
Her crown was made from glittery gold craft foam hot glued into a cylindar and decorated with shiny paper jewels and then hot glued onto a headband. And we pinned on some darker fabric to make the poufs on her dress. And while we didn’t love wearing masks, she did love her lipstick mask which made it fun even in a hard year.
Wyatt and I went all in with Captain toad and Toadette. We used two old cowboy hats and added a ton of plastic grocery store bags, brown packing paper, and wrapped it all up with a white sheet on top. While they ended up looking really great and being firm and sturdy, they were also super heavy and gave us a headache to wear all night! I would highly recommend going smaller if you aren’t as committed to the “realistic scale!
Then we used felt to add the other details (plus a spray painted yogurt container for the light on Wyatt’s hat). Wyatt wore an old work shirt of my dad’s, a red hankerchief and some tan jeans. We also used a paper towl tube and some craft foam hot glued together to make him a pickaxe.
I also painted foam balls and attached three to each side with yarn for Toadette’s pigtails. Did you know foam balls like this are suprisingly expensive?
My jacket was hot glued together, of course. I added some gold craft foam onto some red felt that I cut into a jacket shape, and wore a thrifted tank dress over some thrifted white jeans. We both wore white long-sleeved shirts as well and we looked pretty darn good!
Bug Family
We were snug as bugs this year! Will’s light up lightning bug was one of the most challenging DIYs so far and Emma LOVED her rainbow “window wings!”
It would be super fun and easy to add more bugs (grasshopper, spider, lady bug, centipede, praying mantis? dung beetle??) Wyatt says a rhinosaurous beetle would be sweet. (Not pictured is Wyatt’s alternate costume from one event we went to: a fly swatter! Which could also be a super funny addition to a family costume!)
Emma saw a photo on my Pinterest of a kid with stained glass butterfly wings and was determined that was the kind of butterfly she wanted to be, so Wyatt cut out the windows in foam cardboard pieces, I cut and hot glued colorful cellofame (I had to order this from Amazon but they might have it in larger craft stores) into each space and then covered the cardboard with black felt, hot gluing it on, of course.
Then that all got hot glued to a black puffer vest for her to take off and on easily. and to keep her warm, because we’ve learned it’s important to have a way for her to wear layers under her costume so we don’t have to fight with her to wear a coat or freeze on Halloween night!
Will wanted to be a lightning bug and that involved a washed out jug of car window cleaner fluid that we shoved a battery powered strand of lights into. Then I used black felt covered cardboard for his wings and shell on the back. I used fabric paint to add some detail on the wings and a painted piece of cardboard for the red head, with large eyes. Admitedly, the eyes are weird and not how they should look but I was sort of struggling with how to balance the front and back of the costume. For the front, I used felt strips in shades of brown that I glued together with hot glue and attached to a dark brown puffer vest to make it easy for him to take off and on.
Wyatt was a stink bug, which was very easy to make with cardboard and spraypaint and then brown fabric so he could wear it like a sandwich board. Then you just need brown clothes underneath.
I went super easy with my costume this year as a bee, just buying a black and white striped dress and dyeing the white stripes yellow using RIT dye. I actually had a different bee “shirt” that my grandma made for a bee costume when I was about Will’s age but it’s quite small on me now, believe it or not. Ha! I also bought the headband and wings because I had used my old “bee” wings for Em’s Hungry Caterpillar butterfly costume a few years ago.
Pokemon
This year was a difficult one because I was determined to not buy Pokemon costumes…why do that when we can make them for the same amount of money and a lot more stress, right? Ha! Just kidding. Sort of.
But, if you want to make your Pokemon costumes, and I do actually love to make costumes, this is how we did it. And it’s super fun to use this idea with a big group. You can add trainers, Pikachu, Charmander, Meowth and so many other favorite characters. Our kids originally wanted more evolved, less well-known characters but I encouraged more recognizable choices. If you have a big group, though, go for it!
Emma got a dyed dress, pants and shirt, and we added an Eevee tail to that which I made from fabric and stuffed like a pillow and hot glued onto her dress. I also thrifted a toddler size faux fur jacket and cut off the bottom of it (adding some of the scraps to the tip of the tail) to make her fluffy fur collar. Then just some hot glue and felt on cardboard attached to a headband for her ears. The scale is important here, and the Pokeball treat bucket, because so many people thought she was a fox. Or a deer.
For Squirtle, we used cardboard (cut and folded courtesy of Wyatt’s engineering skills). The center shape was an elongated hexagon that we glued six trapezoids around. I attached brown felt to to make Will’s squirtle shell. I glued that on a yellow t-shirt withe the sleeves cut off that I drew his chest detail onto and got him a teal sweatsuit for the main body. (He still wears this hoodie a lot this year, even after I sewed the felt eyes onto the hood–he loves it!)
Wyatt made the bulb part out of cardboard and it turned out amazing. It’s a basic pointed flower petal shape and we cut out five petals and hot glued them together one at a time. He creased and rolled them into the shape we needed before gluing but it will still help to have two sets of hands for this. I covered it in fabric and hot glued it onto an old fabric drawstring backpack. I did stuff it with some plastic grocery bags to give it a bit more stabilty in case it got crushed, but the cardboard was pretty sturdy. I used RIT to dye a thrifted sweatshirt that I wore inside out to hide the writing on the front, and also dyed the white jeans from my Toadette costume above. Then I just glued some felt shapes on to make my “spots.”
Wyatt’s Snorlax was pretty easy, just adding felt details to a sweatshirt and hat. Just be aware when attaching anything to stretchy knit hats…the design will also stretch so you’ll need to take that into account when you’re laying out your design.
The kids LOVED painting their pumpkin treat pails to look like pokeballs. And it REALLY helped people know they weren’t just regular animals . That said, the paint did scratch and chip off pretty badly so you might try using a primer or a thick durable topcoat to protect them.
90s Toys
As the kids get older, it’s getting a little harder to find things they agree on, but I’m determined to keep the tradition going a little while longer so this year we had a lot of fun going “vintage” with toys that Wyatt and I played with as kids!
These were all pretty easy to make, except for Will’s Bop It costume…the hat gave us a little trouble at first, but it ended up pretty cool. And of course, he also wanted sound effects so I ordered a mini bop it for him to keep in his pocket. (Did you know they don’t make this original Bop It anymore? They are different shaped now!)
Beanie Baby
Emma had her heart set of being a flamingo for Halloween this year but because we couldn’t agree on animals for the rest of us, I proposed being a flamingo Beanie Baby and she ended up loving that idea even more because it matched one I actually had as a kid.
We used a too-big hoodie so it had a tunic length and then made a beak and eyes out of felt and sewed them onto the top of the hoodie. (I stuffed the beak with empty plastic bags to give it shape. But any DIY animal costume will work here, or you can recycle an old costume from a previous year, and then you can just make a tag to wear as a necklace. I even wrote her a little poem on the inside that she loved reading to people!
Bop It Game
Will’s costume was fun to make but the hat did give us a bit of a challenge. We ended up using flexible foam pipe insulation that they sell at hardware stores, and taping them together with gorilla tape. Then, I coated it all in Plasti-dip spray so I could spray paint it yellow before gluing it onto a ball cap that he wore backwards. It was honestly still a little heavy and floppy on his head, but it worked! For his button, we used a large frisbee that we painted blue to match his socks and a cardboard Bop It logo glued on.
Gameboy and Cartridge
I used sticky-back felt to add details to an oversized blue t-shirt dress for a super quick and cheap Gameboy color costume. This was seriously one of the easier DIYs we’ve ever had to do. Wyatt made a cardboard game cartridge and we painted it gray and then printed off an image from one of the games he had as a kid. I added a few extra details and then glued it onto one of those drawstring backpacks that he wore backwards, but you could also attach it to string and wear it around your neck, it will just swing a little more when you move around.
Do you love a good group costume? Which one is your favorite?
