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       I was never one to spend a lot of money on some store bought costumes for my kids.  If there were clearance items or sales, I would occasionally purchase those, but usually we just tried to be creative with my fabric stash and by re-purposing past costumes. Every year we would pull out our Halloween box and think about what we could do with what we had and I would make a few new items to please the kids and their big ideas.  We came up with some fun ones over the years, so today we are going to give you a few more costume ideas as we talk about past faves  on our 38th Friday Faves! 

​What Was Your Favorite Halloween Costume?

     If you look at the photo above, you are looking at my 3 youngest children.  That is Maddy being a fairy, Little Jake in the pumpkin costume and 4th grader Alicia dressed as a gypsy! None of those costumes were picked as favorites, but Maddy said that she loved all of her costumes and could hardly choose.  She did look pretty cute, didn't she?

     Alicia says that her favorite costume was when I made her up to be Esmeralda from the Hunchback of Notre Dame.  She was in the 2nd grade.  I had sewn a bunch of little coin-like bangles on her skirt and she loved those jingly things.  She said that there were a couple of other girls in Esmeralda Costumes, but they were purchased from the store and their coins were printed on.  She liked her's better. 
​     You can still purchase that movie on DVD, here.

     One year, when Lindsey was very small, I made here a Tinkerbell costume! She looked adorable in it and I think she wore it 2 years in a row, she loved it that much.  

  The fun thing is that now my granddaughter just told me that she loves Amelia Bedelia books, so I will have to show her this picture of me acting the part.  

Here are a few other costumes our family has done:

• We used a box when one of  our sons was 3 and covered it in shiny paper and used stickers to put on lights and buttons and made him into a robot! 
• I made another son a padded shell with a belt around his waist and a piece of blue cloth around his forehead and he became a Ninja Turtle.
• Our oldest son came home with a bunch of black cloth and I made him a huge shroud with a hood.  It looked so awesome on him.
• His family (I think there were 3 kids at the time) all dressed up as pirates, except the baby who was dressed as a parrot and sat on my son's shoulder! 
• Alicia made her son into a spider last year, using black painted pool noodles as the 4 extra legs.  She used black sweat shirt and pants and put glow sticks on his arms and legs to help him be see. He was so cute! Mommy and Daddy were the spider web with white web painted on black t-shirts! 

     You will see a lot of posts about last minute costume ideas.  I feel like ours were always last minute, but they were pretty fun!  What do you remember about costumes you loved?  Share them with us in the comments!  
​     Have a Happy Halloween! 
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Hey Alicia here with some fun costume ideas for ya!

Every year I think about what my husband  and I should be for Halloween. I can come up with some pretty elaborate or expensive ideas. But most of the time money and life gets in the way of actually pulling these off. So we end up having to do something last minute. Most of these costumes were made within an hour before we had to leave and go to the party we were dressing up for.

So I’ve decided to share these ideas with you in case you end up in a similar situation this Halloween.

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Evil Puzzle

You may be giving this costume idea a skeptical side eye but we actually won “Scariest Costume” at a party with this one.  

To make this costume you will need:

• A foam core board
• Coloring materials
• Black sharpie
• X-acto knife (or scissors)
• Yarn
• Black eyeliner/eyeshadow

First draw your picture on the foam board. We did a haunted forest. It doesn’t have to be anything too involved. This picture took us about 15 minutes to finish this picture.

Then use your black sharpie to draw over your picture the outlines of puzzle pieces. We just did 12 pieces so they can be pretty big. Make sure to have a center line. It’s on this line you’ll use your exacto knife to cut along. You can see in our picture that our two halves fit together like a puzzle.

Use your knife or scissors to punch two holes in the top of each half of the “puzzle.” Tie your yarn through the holes measuring enough to have it hang comfortably around your neck.

Lastly, use the black eyeliner to draw puzzle pieces on your face. If you’re feeling up to it, fill in Black all around your eyes.  This is what my husband did, a la Alice Cooper.

Now you’re ready to freak people out as a haunted puzzle.  

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Literally the easiest costume and I have two options for you.

You will need:

• White sheets
• Black makeup
• White makeup
• Beanie (optional)

For option 1 use the white makeup to make your face pale. Use the black makeup to make your eyes look sunken in by basically just putting black all around your eyes. Wear all white clothes and drape the sheet around your shoulders and wear it like a huge shawl.

For option 2 just wear the sheet over your head making sure it hangs evenly around your body. Using the black makeup draw a face on the sheet where your face is under the sheet. As you can see from our picture a simple face works great. Additionally, wearing a beanie over the sheet adds to the comedic effect and helps your sheet stay on.  It is difficult to see with this costume so you may want to cut some eye holes.

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Knock-off Finding Nemo Characters

For our son’s first Halloween, I bought him this little clownfish costume. It wasn’t licensed by Disney so it was just a generic clownfish. So I decided we could go as a knock-off version of Finding Nemo. I called it Looking for Ahab.

I went as the off brand Darla, the crazy little girl that terrifies the fish in the tank at the dentist office.

To pull this off I wore a crazy sweater, and my hair in pigtails. On my face I drew dental headgear with eyeliner. I even drew dots on my teeth to look like braces.

My husband went as a shark. He wore his grey hoodie, which we taped cardboard triangles to as to look like teeth. We also taped some cardboard eyes to his hood. One addition we didn’t have was a fin on his back, which I think would make the costume.  

Everyone may not be able to tell what you are but at least you’ll have fun.  

So there you have it, 3 last minute couples costumes for Halloween! What do you think? Do you procrastinate as much as we do for Halloween?

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     I am just like a kid when it comes to sugar cookies.  I love the cute shapes and decorations, not to mention the taste!  Over the years I have collected a lot of cookie cutters to cover all of the different holidays and other days in between.  I still like to shop for new ones.  Look at this cute set that includes a squirrel and a deer!  Super cute! I also have a killer sugar cookie recipe that I shared on this post. The problem is that now that I don't have any little kids at home, I don't feel the motivation to do all of that decorating work like I used to do with my kids.  When my grandchildren come to visit, we have lots of fun with cookie making and decorating.  But, unfortunately, that doesn't happen often enough.
     The other day, there was a knock at the door and when we answered it we found a container of cookies with a note and a picture of a ghost that said, "You've been boo'ed!" There was a poem that explained that we were to hang the ghost in our window to show that we had been boo'ed and then we were to make copies of the poem and ghost and "Boo" two other families. I decided that Halloween sugar cookies were in order, but I still didn't want to spend tons of time on the decorating.  Luckily, I had a box of sugar cookie mix in my pantry that was perfect for Halloween! It was a Candy Corn Cookie Mix from Betty Crocker. I think it was a limited edition mix that I don't see on their site any more, but it is easy to just make your own favorite sugar cookie recipe and and knead color into the dough. Here is my recipe if you missed it. 

     Once you have your cookie dough made, all you have to do is divide it in half and mix in food coloring.  The mix already came colored.  But, later I made more from scratch and just kneaded in orange and yellow for Autumn leaves and turkeys! Here is how it looked from the mix. 

     I reused my scraps but I was careful not to let the colors blend too much.  So, the cookies always had swirls of color through them.  I thought that the effect was very cool.

     I used melted chocolate and green tinted almond bark to quickly pipe on a few details.  I didn't want to hide the swirling colors of the cookies themselves.  The chocolate tasted very good on these cookies and we didn't feel like we missed a thicker frosting.
     How do you think our friends will like our plates when we "Boo" them? 

I will show you show the autumn leaves and turkeys came out later on Facebook and Instagram, so be sure to check us out! 

 Meanwhile, here are some favorite cookie making tools: