Sweatsuit Costumes are the easiest and fastest way to make a costume for your child. With a basic hooded sweatshirt or jacket, matching sweatpants, felt and hot glue gun, you can make just about any animal you can think of and you have the added benefit of dressing your little one warmly. Here are some instructions on how to create a few different animals, once you have the idea
you’ll see you can do anything with this basic beginning:

Lion: Glue yellow felt ears (semi-circles with the flatedgeglued down) to a yellow sweatshirt hood. Glue several brown felt strips around the hood to form a mane. Cut a length & glue to the back of the pants for a tail, using some yarn for the furry tip. Black eyeliner for nose, whiskers.

Puppy: Glue long dark brown felt ears to the sides of a tan sweatshirt hood. Glue dark brown felt spots all over the rest of the hooded sweatshirt and matching tan pants. Black eyeliner for nose & whiskers.

Kitten: Glue folded black felt triangles to the sides of a black sweatshirt hood. Glue a length of felt to the back of a pair of black sweatpants for the tail. Black eyeliner for nose & whiskers.

Skunk: Glue folded black felt triangles to the sides of a black sweatshirt hood. Glue a length of white felt down the back of the sweatshirt. Cut a strip of black felt and after glueing a white stripe of felt down it’s center, glue it to the back of black sweatpants. Black eyeliner for nose & whiskers.

Some other ideas can be made up almost entirely from items you have already have. How about a Princess? Any fancy dress your little one already owns, a chop stick with ribbon glued around it & several more to it’s tip, a headband wrapped in ribbon with any additional flair you’d like to add. Or how about a Cowboy? Jeans, a plaid or demin shirt, bandana and/or cowboy hat. Voila!

For additional ideas, take a look at FAMILYEDUCATION.COM, they have links to dozens of great ideas! (http://fun.familyeducation.com/halloween-costume/halloween/33247.html?detoured=1)

Related articles

• Top 5 Do-It-Yourself Kids Costumes (hellobeautiful.com)
• Greening the Kids’ Halloween Costumes (1800recycling.com)
• DIY Hallowe’en: Swedish Chef (boingboing.net)
• 5 DIY Halloween Costumes Made from Materials You Already Own (treehugger.com)

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This idea from Parenting.com is a fabulous way to be super creative yet simple and easy.

Just stick on some differently cut out shapes such as circiles, squares, triangles or anything else you can think of. Imagination is your  limit.

Then simply paint spray the entire pumpkin with black or any other color acrylic paint, and carefully remove the stickers once dry.

And VOILA! You have yourself a masterpiece with no carving involved.

Think of the possibilities. You can create an entire Halloween landscape full of imaginary characters such as witches, bats, skeletons and whatever else you can think of. Tape them on the pumpkin and you are all set.

And the best part? You can do this with your little ones!

Now go decorate!

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Check out this adorable creation by Parenting.com.

You don’t even have to sew anything. So when you are trying to figure out at 11PM on October 29th what costume to put together for your daughter’s pre-school Halloween costume party, this will be super handy! Cause you know, all the other SUPERmoms will have sewn together cinderalla dresses with every embelishment under the earth which probably took a month to make for THEIR daughters. With this adorable costume, you’ll not only pull it off, but we bet they’ll be jealous at your UBER creative side.

We won’t tell anyone you didn’t need to sew and threw it together an hour before school.

Click here to read the instructions on how to make your masterpiece.

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Can you get more adorable??

Sweet Pea is probably the most popular baby theme out there and now you can make it work as an adorable Halloween costume for an infant.

Who can get enough of these adorable veggies!

Click here to see the instructions on how to make this awesome costume.

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With so many options out there, it’s hard to find the time to carve the pumpkins,  get the templates, make the cookies, decorate the house, decorate the yard, get the right costume…should we go on?

With all the busy moms out there, we decided to map out the best way to light up your pumpkins this Halloween.

The obvious, best and SAFEST way to light up your next pumpkin masterpiece, especially if you have small children or would not want to burn your house down, is to use a candle-free option.

Check hardware stores or online stores for color-changing strobe lights (these we found on Amazon.com for about $8.50 each),  battery-operated tea lights (we found these on save-on-crafts.com – 6 for $6 ) which are great to use even after Halloween for a safer candle burning effect or rainbow LEDs that are made just for pumpkins and are safe for use in fresh or foam pumpkins.

In our opinion, battery-operated tea lights are a great option for a small pumpkins or gourd. If you have larger pumpkins to illuminate, you can use several  tea lights in the same pumpkin.

For indoor decorations, Christmas lights specifically designed for pumpkins (found these at christmaslightsetc.com for $7.95 per set of 50) are an awesome way to light up your pumpkins. This would also let you make a colorful tabletop displays or window sill decoration! Imagine the possibilities!

And of course, finally, candles are an obvious choice. Votive or pillar candles, placed on a plate which is large enough to catch any drips, are the best option.

A good tip when illuminating a pumpkin with a candle is to cut a small hole in the top of the pumpkin, like a chimney, allowing the heat and smoke to escape.

But needless to say, you should ONLY use this as a last option and NEVER if you have children. Let’s not make Halloween truly scary!

Happy Trick or Treating People!

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Then paste onto wall or window to create a scary landscape effect.

If you are feeling creative and/or ambition, you can even take a picture yourself  with your own digital camera and convert it to black-and-white, then take the image to a blueprint service to have it enlarged.

Use double-sided tape to attach the image to the window from the outside if it’s protected from the elements or simply tape from the inside.

If the window is unprotected, tape the photo to the inside — cutting it into individual panes if you have to deal with muntins (as seen here).

This is an awesome Halloween project to do with your children and involved no mess and almost no clean-up.

How’s that for easy breezy?

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Well you won’t have a problem serving something good to eat with this adorable Pumpkin Pudding dessert.

Imagine the squealing laughter these clever pumpkin puddings will bring out from your Halloween dinner party guests.

Whether you are inviting adults only or having a few kids over, these imaginative pumpkins by Martha Stewart (click here for the recipe) not only look good but taste awesome.

I would imagine these would go well as Thanksgiving dessert as well as a Halloween treat.

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These puckish pumpkins with their paint-blackened rinds and orange-gold interiors, thumb their carved noses at traditional jack-o’-lanterns.

Martha Stewart’s Black Magic Pumpkins are the perfect alternative for the rebel inside you.

Just use a regular pumpkin, spray paint in black and carve away!

Click here to view the full instructions.

This idea would work great with our Gothic Bath article and is also an awesome and creative kids’ project.

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From the theme to the costumes to the decorations, there is no better way to show your unique style and sense of danger!

Warning: this party idea may not be suitable for smaller children. I would strongly suggest you do this as an adult only party!

Don’t want to freak out all the kids with your spider webs, skulls and ghosts! Or maybe you do… you evil things… I know what you are all thinking!     bbbooooo!

Spoookkiie Favor Boxes from BHG.com are easy to make and can also work as a unique tabletop decoration. You can fill them with all kinds of scary candy or other treats!

Imagination in your limit. This also a good arts and crafts project to do with your children for other parties as well. Just change the colors and decorations and this would be perfect for any type of favor box.

You can even throw in some creepy crawly things to make your guests jump with fear even after they leave your spooktacular goth bash.

I loved this idea immediately when I saw it! yyuuummmm! Think of the possibilities!

What a delicious and fun way to spook your guests (and some of your older kids).

Click here to read the instructions on how to make them. Of course as with anything, I am sure you can think of 100 different variations to this.

Another awesome and inexpensive way to decorate your tabletop is with this BHG.com Rest-in-Peace Napkin Ring.

All you need are:

• Lightweight cardboard
• Black-and-white houndstooth fabric
• Hot-glue gun
• Stretchable skeleton

I can see where to get all the items except for the Stretchable skeleton. Where would you find that?

Click here to read the instructions on this napkin ring holder.

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