Thrift Store Treasures: Homemade Halloween Costumes! Smartie Pants, Anne of Green Gables, Gypsy, Ghostly Girl and Mad Hatter

 In recent years, with 5 kids, we have moved towards trying to come up with cheap, creative homemade costumes. Because Halloween can add up! Here are a couple fun ones we did in recent years. Most everything was purchased from a thrift store OR found in our own house!

Smarty Pants: We bought glasses from the thrift store and popped the lenses out. The suspenders and red generic converse were also from the thrift store! Once we pulled out my daughter's jeans and a white button up shirt, all we had to do was throw in some pony tails and tape smarties to her pants. Super fun and easy!

I have got an AVID reader who was so excited to be Anne of Green Gables.  Other than the wig that we purchased at Halloween Costume shop (it was an Anna wig from Frozen), everything else was from the thrift store!

Straw Hat

Black combat boots

Floral Jumper

Tea Dyed underdress

Green sweater

This one got TONS of complements from all of the readers out there, especially the girls!

Gyspy:

Other than my pink shirt underneath and multiple long necklaces/bracelets from my jewelry box, everything here came from the thrift store:

Skirt

Belly Dancing skirt topper

Vest

Scarf

Handkerchief

Shawl

To top it off, we wrapped a plastic baseball in tin-foil to give me a crystal ball

Ghostly Girl

Not sure why my daughter wanted this, but she did. We went to the thrift store and found this dress and then cut it up and added fake blood to it from a costume shop.  Simply by buying a cheap makeup kit from the same costume shop, we were able to give her a ghostly look. Then we ratted her hair and added leaves to it.

One of my all-time favorite thrift store costumes.  My daughter was the Mad Hatter. If you notice, it's the same vest and scarf from the Gypsy costume.  Complete bonus was that we found the Mad Hatter hat at the thrift store.  She had her own pink boots and crazy patterned tights. Everything else was a thrift store find:

Scarf

Jacket

Vest

Skirt

Hat

I loved this Mad Hatter costume far more than any commercial bought one I found. Just goes to show you that you don't have to spend a lot for an adorable costume!

Happy shopping and Happy Halloween! For more Halloween ideas, click here!

Easy Volcano and Paleontologist Costumes

Halloween is tomorrow, so most people probably have their costumes all in place, but I wanted to share my boys' costumes this year in case you are looking for a creative, last-minute costume idea. We threw these costumes together in just a couple of hours.

Volcano

My five-year-old decided he wanted to be a volcano this year (Last year he was a crayon--he definitely likes to have unique costumes).

The main part of the volcano is gray fleece. I chose fleece so that I wouldn't have to worry about hemming. I just draped the material around my son, measured an opening for his head, pinned it down one side, and sewed a straight line where I had pinned it. Then, I cut holes for the arms and the main part was complete. We used red and orange felt for the lava. We cut the felt into wavy strips and hot-glued the "lava" on the gray fleece. We added a few extra diamonds of red and orange felt around the neck to make a sort of collar. Then, we had my son wear a red shirt underneath and the outfit was complete.

Paleontologist

All we used for this costume was a kids' fishing vest that my son filled with dinosaur toys and other tools that a paleontologist might use such as a microscope and paint brush. He added an old beaten-up cowboy hat and a regular gray t-shirt and jeans. To complete the ensemble, I made him a paleontologist nametag with a picture of his favorite dinosaur which I printed out and hung around his neck with a piece of rope.

Here my 5-year-old volcano explodes and my 6-year-old paleontologist tries to escape the blast.

They are very excited to go trick-or-treating tomorrow! Happy Halloween! (See our other Halloween Costume and  Halloween Party Ideas too!)

Halloween Balloon Pumpkin Faces

Last year for my son's Halloween party, we made these little gems!  The kids loved them and they were incredibly simple!

Supplies needed:

Orange Balloon

Black Sharpie

Green Sharpie

Green felt cut in the shape of leaves

Scissors

Instructions: 

1. Have children blow up the balloons to preferable size.

2. Decorate balloon to look like a Jack-o-Lantern with balloon tie on the top of the pumpkin.  

3. Cut a slit in the end of the leaf with scissors to allow balloon tie to snugly fit through.

4.  Enjoy!

See our other very fun Halloween Ideas, Crafts, Treats,and Games PLUS creative Costume Ideas!

Halloween Party Favors and Crafts: Candy Spiders and Pumpkins

This might look familiar if you saw my Halloween Spider Hairstyle.  It's actually what inspired the hairstyle! These are 2 adorable Halloween crafts that can be used at a class Halloween party, as a gift, as table decor,  or as a party favor. And they are SO easy to make:

 

Materials Needed:

Netting (Orange or Black depending on which you are making)

Pipe Cleaners (Green or Black)

Googly Eyes

Hot Glue Gun

Candy Corns

Pumpkin Instructions:

1. Cut netting into squares about 4 1/2" x 4 1/2"

2. Lay Candy corn in the center (8-10 pieces)

3.  Pull all sides of the netting  to the center as if you are now holding a bag

4. Wrap one green pipe cleaner around the pumpkin

5. Twist each end of the pipe cleaner around your finger to create the vines

 

Spider Instructions:

1. Cut netting into squares about 4 1/2" x 4 1/2"

2. Lay Candy corn in the center (8-10 pieces)

3.  Pull all sides of the netting  to the center as if you are now holding a bag

4. Take 2 black pipe cleaners and cut them in half.  Now wrap each of the 4 pieces around the end.

5. Bend the 8 sides in angles to look like spider legs.

6. With a hot glue gun, glue 2 googly eyes to the top of the pouch.

Check out our other Class Party and Treat Ideas for Halloween!

Halloween Math Games with Manipulatives for Preschool or Elementary School

Here's a simple and fun way to have Halloween Math time.  Simply use dried beans from your cupboard (kidney beans or other) and paint one side of each bean orange and the other side white.  Let them dry.  Then paint ghost faces on the white side and pumpkin faces on the orange side with sharpie markers (or another permanent marker).

Once they are all dry, here are 3 simple games you can have your students or children do.  Who said learning can't be fun??

1.  Patterns.  As shown in the picture, you can have the children practice various patterns.  ABAB, AAB, ABB, etc.  For example, in the picture above, the top line is ABAB (ghost, pumpkin, ghost, pumpkin).  The second line is AAB (ghost, ghost, pumpkin, ghost, ghost, pumpkin).  For an example or for younger children, you can set up the pattern and have the children guess what would come next.

2. Sorting.  With a large pail of painted beans, dump them onto the floor so the one side of the bean is face up.  Allow the child to sort all the pumpkins and all the ghosts.  Or all the orange beans and all the white beans.

3. Graphing.  You can paint other kidney beans gray with a cat face or green with a monster face and have the children make a picture graph to see which character has the most.


Check out all our Halloween Fun!

13 Spooky and Fun Halloween Party Games, Treats, Activities and Crafts!

In honor of the spooky month, we share 13 fun ideas for crafts, treats, games and activities at a 

Halloween party.  Use these for parties in the classroom, with your sports team or dance class, with you friends or family or even a church party!  Happy Halloween!!

1.  Spider Oreo Treats!  

The Kids lifted the top part of the cookie off and slipped 4 long strings of pull n' peel licorice across,creating 8 legs.  Then they placed the oreo top back on. With frosting, they put 3 dots per cookie for 2 eyes and a nose.  Then they placed mini m & ms on the cookies on top of the frosting dots.  Very simple and cute treats and crafts!

 A fun variation is to have the bowling pins be rolls of toilet paper with ghost faces drawn on.

2.  Pumpkin Bowling:

Use 10 empty, clean and dried out water bottles with the labels removed.  Fill them with candy corns to a desired height.  You can fill them all the way up or partially as shown in the picture.  Place them in a bowling pin formation with 4 bottles in back, then 3 on the 3rd row, 2 on the second row and 1 on the first row to create a triangle effect.  Students stand back at a specific line and "bowl" a mini pumpkin towards the bottles, seeing how many they can knock over. 

3.  Paper Plate Pumpkin Totes

Using orange paper plates, glue 2 yellow triangles for eyes.  Then use orange construction paper to cut out a semi circle (the size of half of the paper plate).  Glue yellow triangles or teeth onto the construction paper.  Then glue the sides of the semi-circle onto 1/2 of the paper plate.  This creates a pocket to collect treats and prizes in.  Next, cut out green construction paper in the shape of a stem and 2 leaves.  Glue this to the top of the paper plate.  Finally punch two holes, one on either side of the stem/leaves.  With green string or yarn, tie each end around one of the two holes and you've created a handle.

You can have the kids use this to "trunk or treat" out of the back of various cars or our family likes to have the kids trick or treat to the various doors of the grandma's house.  Behind each door are the aunts, uncles, grandparents and great grandparents with goodies and treats.

4.  Homemade Haunted Houses

Supply children {and adults} with boxes, black butcher or construction paper, other paper {purple, orange, yellow, green work great for Halloween}, stickers, green toothpicks, cobwebs, paints, markers, etc.  Let the children work alone or in groups to create a haunted house.  A very fun creative outlet!

 5. Wrap the Mummy Game

Group children together in pairs, triplets or any number.  Then give each group a role of toilet paper.  The goal is to "wrap" the mummy {One brave individual} with the role of toilet paper the fastest.  

 

What's fun about this game is no matter if you win or lose, it's a fun process!

6.  Haunted Gingerbread Houses

Rather than the traditional Christmas Gingerbread houses, let children decorate a haunted house.  Fun candies could include m&ms, candy corns, candy pumpkins, marshmallows, and other Halloween treats.

 

7.  Minute to Win It Games!  See our previous post with oodles of Minute to Win it Games Halloween Style!

 8.  Photo Shoot

Create a backdrop of some sort and allow children to have a Halloween Photoshoot.  You can email parents the picture, take a polaroid or even give each child a picture as a keepsake.

9.  Monster Lab

A very fun hands-on activity we posted previously to use your senses, eat some treats and simulate a monster lab all at the same time.  Click here for all the details! Virtually a science lesson while the kids think they are playing - my kind of activity!

10.   Donuts on a String

If you are ambitious, you can even make our homemade donuts!  Tape or use a push pin on the ceiling to attach a string.  The string needs to be about to the height of one's shoulder or head.  Then tie a donut to the end of the string.  Party guests have to hold their hands behind their back and eat the entire donut off the string, without letting it fall on the ground.  See who can do this first.  Another great game because even if you lose, you still get a donut!

11. Toss the Ring on the Witches Hat

A simple, last minute and easy game!  You will need rings (you can use swim rings even) and a witches hat.  Have the guests stand back and see how many rings they can get on the hat.  

12.  Pumpkin Golf
This was a big hit.  The party guests had to golf a golf ball into a jack-o-lantern.  You will want to create some sort of ramp up to the jack-o-lantern's mouth.  I used a piece of cardboard and folded up the edges so the ball couldn't roll off the side.  It would be really cute if I had painted the ramp orange or black!

13.  Painting Pumpkins

Carving pumpkins with a large group can be a nightmare.  It's hard enough with 5 kids at home!  So a fun idea is to pull out the acrylic paints, paintbrushes and pumpkins {It works great with mini or regular sized pumpkins} and let the kids paint their own designs. 

Check out our FUN and creative Halloween Treat ideas  and Halloween Costume Ideas for your party as well!

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Roundup: Halloween and other October Activities for Kids

It's that time of year again when we have so many holidays coming upon us! This month, we are celebrating the beginning of fall, Columbus Day, and of course Halloween! Around our house we are starting our celebrations early because baby #4 is coming at the end of this month so we will definitely be scaling back our activities then. Still, we are looking forward to celebrating as much as we can in the next couple of weeks.

Below is a round-up of a few October activities we have previously shared with you. We hope you have fun celebrating with your family, friends, and schools!

Halloween Party/Activity Ideas
Minute to Win It Halloween Party Games
13 Spooky Halloween Crafts, Games and Activities
Halloween Service Project
Halloween Monster Lab
Halloween Spider and Pumpkin Craft

Halloween Treats and Snacks
9 Halloween-themed Snacks and Treats
Homemade Doughnuts
Spooky Popcorn Gloves
Pumpkin StewApple Crisp and Homemade Icecream

Halloween Costume Ideas
DIY Halloween Costume: Refrigerator
8 Creative Halloween Costumes
Halloween Costume/Pregnancy Announcement: There's a Bun in the Oven
DIY Crayon Costume 
Spider Hairstyle

October Lesson Plans
A is for Apple Preschool Activities
F is for Fall Preschool Activities
Columbus Day Activities
X is for X-Ray (fun to go along with Halloween because of skeletons)
E is for Egypt (could go along with Halloween because of mummies)
Halloween Picture Books 
Easy Halloween Math Manipulatives

Field Trips
Also, don't forget to check out your local community for fun seasonal activities--harvest festivals, pumpkin patches, trick-or-treat parties, and more. I love how many low-cost, family-friendly activities there are this time of year.

For more ideas, you can also check out my Pinterest Boards with ideas I have collected around the web:
A is for Apple
P is for Pumpkin
F is for Fall
Columbus Day
Halloween

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10 Favorite Halloween Picture Books

One activity I love to do at Halloween class parties is have a story corner for one of the stations.  Sometimes I have had the story corner combined with a snack or refreshment, so while they are eating, they are still engaged and calm.  There are so many fun Halloween books and some of them are quite interactive as well.  So here I share some of my favorites.  Please comment below and share some of your favorites back!

Halloween Bugs

by David Carter

I love David Carter's creative and silly popup books with colorful and unique bugs!

 

Click, Clack, Boo!: A Tricky Treat

by Doreen Cronin

By the author of the famous, Click, Clack, Moo!  This is a fun Halloween spin on the book kids love so much.

Five Little Pumpkins

by Dan Yaccarino

Most children and parents have heard the poem, Five Little Pumpkins.  Here's a fun way to let the kids enjoy the poem to pictures.  And here is a link to a fun game you can play in conjunction with the book.

The Little Old Lady Who Was Not Afraid of Anything

by Linda Williams

A delightful book about a lady walking through the woods at night.  What makes this especially fun for youngsters is the repetitive chants throughout the book that they can learn and repeat with you as you go.  A perfect book for a story corner at a Halloween Party! I even found a fun game that goes along with this book with free printables! An another site with arts on crafts to go along.  I must not be the only one who loves this book!

10 Trick-or-Treaters

by Janet Schulman

A colorful and fun book that teaches children numbers and counting at the same time as the Trick or Treaters disappear one by one.

Inside a House That is Haunted

by Alyssa Capucilli

A great interactive book with lots of repetition as one by one spooky things are added.  Similar to "This is the House that Jack Built" format.  Young children do very well with repetitive books like this that keep them engaged and allow them to interact.

Go Away, Big Green Monster!

by Ed Emberley

A cute book that not only teaches kids not to worry about those nighttime monsters, but also reviews colors in a bright and fun way.  So many cute crafts go along with this, including these cute handprint monsters and paper plate monsters and other activities!

Room on the Broom

by Julia Donaldson

A fun Halloween story about a witch who has to decide if there is room on her broom for unexpected guests.

Humbug Witch

by Lorna Balian

A Halloween story with a twist at the end.  A witch just can't get her magic to work until at the end you discover she is actually a little girl dressing up!

By the Light of the Halloween Moon

by Caroline Stutson

A book I found recently that builds upon itself as spooky things happen by the light of the Halloween Moon.  A great one for young learners and interaction.

See our other Halloween Party, Craft, and Treat Ideas!

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Pumpkin Stew Recipe for Halloween

As mentioned in my Halloween Treat Ideas post, we love having homemade soup each Halloween.  I enjoy having 2 options because my kids LOVE taco soup as a tradition, but I grew up with my mom's homemade pumpkin stew and homemade donuts!  I love fall - so happy it has arrived!

Ingredients
Pumpkin
Chopped onion
2 tablespoons vegetable oil
1 ½- 2 lbs ground beef
2 tablespoons soy sauce
2 tablespoons brown sugar
4 oz can mushrooms (drained)
Cream of chicken soup
1 ½ cups cooked rice
1 can sliced water chestnuts (drained)

Instructions
 Cut off top of pumpkin. Clean out pumpkin. Preheat oven to 350 degrees. Sautee onions in oil until tender. Add meat and brown. Add soy sauce, brown sugar, mushrooms, soup. Simmer 10 minutes stirring occasionally. Add cooked rice and water chestnuts. Spoon mixture into clean pumpkin. Replace pumpkin top and put pumpkin on baking sheet. Bake 1 hour (or until the inside of the pumpkin is tender)

Check out our other Halloween Recipes, Halloween party ideas or our year round recipes!  Thanks for stopping by...

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Halloween Spider Hairstyle

We recently made a move and found out that they don't dress up for Halloween at the school!  If you know us and our love for creative Halloween costumes, you'll know we were a little bummed.  But that's okay, lots of chances to dress up at neighborhood parties and trick-or-treating.  I talked to my kids about how we can wear orange and black and fun hairdos to compensate.  Here's an idea we did last year that was simple and fun!

1.  We pulled my daughter's hair back in fun buns, but really you could do braids, twists, ponytails, etc.
2.  I used black 4 black pipecleaners per bun to make a total of 8 legs.  I twisted the entire pipecleaner around the bun, twisted the two ends around eachother to secure them and then bent each side of the of the pipecleaners to look like spider legs.
3.  Finally I hot glued 2 googly eyes directly onto the pipecleaners (not the hair!).
4.  I repeated the steps on the other side of her hair.

It was a really fun hairdo and got some fun attention.  Even if your child gets to dress up at school, you can enjoy this hairdo all month long.  Hope you enjoy!

Check out our other Halloween Ideas for parties, treats, and costumes!

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DIY Crayon Costume for less than $5

My 4-year-old was determined that he wanted to be a crayon for Halloween this year. So I made him this costume. This was a very quick and easy costume to make--I threw it together the night before we were headed to a Halloween party and it took hardly any time at all.

DIY Crayon Costume

Supplies

• 1/2 yard black felt
• 1 yard felt in color of your choice
• hot glue and glue gun
• cone-shaped party hat

I was just estimating how much felt I needed and I purchased a yard of colored felt but I ended up with a lot of extra felt and probably could have gotten by with purchasing half of the amount of felt. Even so, the felt was on sale, so it was only $4 total for the felt. I got the party hat from our local dollar store and I already had hot glue and a sewing machine so the total for the costume was $5 (and it would have been less if I hadn't bought more felt than I needed).

Instructions

Fold the colored felt in half and measure it to the length and width you would like it to be depending on your child's size. Sew (or hot glue) down the sides, leaving openings at the top for arm holes. Cut a hole at the top for your child's head. Cut decorative elements from black felt and hot glue on to the colored fabric.

To create the wavy black lines on bottom I first cut long thin rectangles to size, then cut a wavy line down the center of each rectangle and separated the two pieces slightly before gluing them on to the colored fabric. To create the crayon word in the center I first cut out a black felt oval, and then I cut out letters from my leftover colored felt and glued the letters on top of the oval.

To create the top of the crayon, I hot glued colored felt on top of the cone-shaped party hat.

Underneath the costume, my son also wore a shirt (that he already had) in a corresponding color.

Check out our other Halloween Fun and Costumes!

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Last Minute Halloween Fun - Party Food and Goodies!

Grandma's Halloween Party was FULL of fun Halloween ideas that I had to share with my readers.  I love that any of these can involve the kids in preparation and my girls had lots of fun helping get ready.  Here's just a sampling of the fun (Left to right)

1.Apple Juice with spiders in it for decoration

2. Decorate your Orange Soda bottles as jack-o-lanterns (My daughter decorated the one pictured!)

3. Ghost cups - hot glue googly eyes and use a sharpie to make mouths and ghosts

4. Mandarin Orange Pumpkins - Using snack sized mandarin oranges and a sharpie, you can decorate it to look like a jack-o-lantern

5. Mummy wrapped hotdogs - wrap hotdogs with a pillsbury crescent roll and cook at 375 for 13-17 minutes.  Add mustard or olives for the eyes.  See the recipe here.

6.  Pumpkin Stew - what a fun thing to have soup in a pumpkin.  You can check out our recipe here!

7.  Chocolate Pie with the whipped cream topping in the shape of a ghost

8. Caramel Apples kid style!  I loved these.  Rather than have the kids dip a whole caramel apple that they will only take a few bites out of.  Cut apples into slices and let the kids dip them in carmel and toppings.  Perfect size for the kids and still the same fun!

9.  Rice Krispie Pumpkins.  Shape your rice krispie treats in the size of a pumpkin and add a tootsie roll for the stem.  So cute :)

I hope some of these help you with your last minute Halloween plans.  See our Class Party Ideas for tons of Games, Crafts and Treats as well as our Halloween Costume Ideas!

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