Homemade Halloween Costumes - Your Kids Will Love Them

When I was a kid, the best thing in the world to have for Halloween (besides tons and tons of candy) was a store-bought Halloween costume. The cool kids had store-bought costumes. The losers like me had a sheet draped over her head - usually a crappy, stained sheet that only needed to have one hole cut out for the eyes because the other hole was already there - and called herself a ghost. I hated my homemade costumes - if you can even call a crappy old sheet a costume - and would have given my little sister's right arm to have a store-bought costume.

Times change, and somehow today's generation of kids loves homemade costumes. When my first daughter got old enough to know what was going on, I proudly took her to Kmart to purchase her very first Halloween costume. There was no way on earth that my daughter was going to suffer through the Halloween-humiliation that I had had to suffer through as a child. No siree. Only the best that Kmart had to offer for my child!

For a brief minute she looked through the various costumes that I held out for her inspection, shaking her head at each one. Finally she asked, "Mommy? Why won't you make me a costume? Is it too hard? All I need is a sheet."

Yup. All she wanted was a sheet so that she could be a 'scary ghost'. The store-bought ghost costumes were ... well, even I had to admit that they were kind of crummy. But why settle for being a ghost? She could have been a princess, or Belle from 'Beauty and the Beast', or Minnie Mouse ... Nope. She wanted to be a ghost. So I became determined to make her into the very best ghost that she could be - and that started with buying a brand new white sheet. Then I tried to trick her into going for something a little more elaborate than a plain old sheet-ghost. I thought that perhaps we could purchase a little plastic tiara and transform her into a princess-ghost! Or maybe a cowboy hat and holster to make her into a cowboy ghost! No. Just a plain old ghost.

The years passed, and not one of my three daughters ever wanted a store-bought Halloween costume. The ghost costume soon grew old, but after that I sewed pumpkin costumes, and Power Rangers Costumes, and yes - even princess costumes. The key to a good costume was that Mom made it.

In later years I was to learn why the homemade costumes were the best, according to my children. First of all, they didn't fall apart. They pitied the kids who had to wear store-bought costumes to the Halloween parties at school, because they knew that those costumes would fall apart before the end of the school day, never mind lasting until Halloween. And store-bought Halloween costumes were boring. They had no personal touches, like when I decorated my middle daughters eyeglasses with feathers so that her eyes matched the rest of her canary costume. Why did she want to be a canary for Halloween? Beats me. My kids are weird.

So give yourself a few weeks before Halloween to start making costumes. It is not only a fun project that your kids will enjoy helping with, but it is also entirely possible that that homemade costume will make your kid the 'cool kid'. But remember - no stained, crappy sheets.