My children love to dress up on Halloween. I think it’s a wonderful thing, but given that there are 5 of them, I need to be as creative and frugal as possible when creating costumes.

Last year was our son’s first Halloween. I admit, I went to the “big party” store in town and looked at all of the professionally done costumes and I thought–I want our son to have one of these! After all, it was his first Halloween… The price tag of the costume I picked was around $50. $50 for an infant’s costume! I decided at that moment that I needed to check out other options.

Ebay is a good place to find costumes for your children. The costumes are gently used and the prices are more affordable. I did end up buying my son’s Halloween costume there last year. My son went as Robin, and the dog went as Batman. It was too cute!

This year, we are creating a costume for my son. The dog will go as his horse, and he will be a knight. I got a pair of black pants and a black shirt for him. The Dollar Store has helmets and shields and we can make a sword from cardboard and tin foil. I have “borrowed” a pair of my husband’s socks and I am going to paint them silver with fabric paint I have in my craft box.

You may have guessed that I am not a seamstress! I might be frugal, and I am creative, but I just don’t sew very well. The truth is that there are plenty of costumes that you can create without sewing at all, or with a minimal amount of sewing.

For many costumes, you can begin with a simple sweatshirt with a hood and sweatpants. By painting black spots on a white outfit, and adding a felt tail and some felt ears, you have made a dalmatian. Use a green outfit and add some warts and felt eyes on the top of the hood and you have a frog. A black cat costume can be made from a black outfit. I am sure that you can think of other costumes to create using this basic formula.

The best part is that you can “re-use” your costume after Halloween is over because most children can always use and extra sweat shirt or pair or sweat pants! Now that’s a smart way to celebrate the season!