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My son decides and we build characters around it but sometimes we don’t dress up because time runs out. We procrastinate and scoop up everything last minute. This year I almost bought his Super Mario costume early but then he said he wasn’t sure if he wanted to be that character so we waited. Big mistake. Halfway through October, all Mario costumes were sold out everywhere and no one knew when or if it would restock in time because of supply chain delays. I thought “that’s an easy costume to put together with regular clothes” so I went to find a red shirt and blue overalls. Overalls aren’t in the little boys section, only in toddlers. Then I saw it- like it had a glowing halo of light around it- a Mario pajama outfit that looked like the overalls on the top and the pants were blue. Perfect! I bought a size up. It was $10 at Walmart and I thought it was a steal because the costume is $25. Now I had to get together the accessories. I actually found the accessories at Halloween City 2 weeks ago but I just didn’t want to buy cheaply made $16 accessories. I thought- I CAN DO THIS. I found a red baseball hat we had, bought white magician gloves, bought felt with adhesive on one side in red and white to make the M for the hat and brown to cut out a mustache which I stuck on his mask so he could wear this in his Halloween parade at school today. It came out so well. I was so proud of myself and he was humming the Mario theme the whole way to school. By 1pm when I saw him for the parade, the M had fallen off and was lost. He has 2 more days of Halloween stuff so I will be making another M… and maybe I will try the fabric glue. :)

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Putting together costumes, even visualizing how you could put something together, is just not my strong suit. So, my kids wear costumes from Costco, Target or Amazon. We ordered early and my 8yo got a Ghostbuster jumpsuit, my 5yo got a ninja costume from Costco (I know he only wanted the sword), and my 10yo is going as a zombie. She picked out a top from Goodwill to cut, blood splatter etc and has practiced her zombie makeup on her own. I bought a satin-lined velvet, hooded cape from Goodwill and a set of vampire teeth. My daughter will do my vampire makeup.

I will say that Goodwill has a lot of good costume stuff. I don't know if they all do, but our local store puts together costume racks with headings like "decades", "nautical", "pirate", etc. It's really cool. They also have racks of used store-bought costumes.

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For weeks leading up to the first day of school, I kept asking my 3 yo what he wanted to be when he grew up, for his first day of school board. His answer never once changed; a piece of cheese. So that’s what went on the board. For Months leading up to Halloween, I kept asking my 3 yo what he wanted to dress up as, and again his answer never once changed; a piece of cheese. Needless to say, I put some stuff together, and he will be making his grand debut as a piece of cheese this Halloween!

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My 10 year old wanted to do a family costume theme - but the dog and I declined… she wanted us to all be Loki variants. She will be alligator Loki (partially handmade), my husband will be Loki in his variant shirt (also homemade). I decided to be Lola Bunny for space jam (mainly so I could wear sweatpants to work) and the dog decided to be a taco.

She always tries to pick something that she likes, but there won’t be 50 other kids in the same costume. When she was a baby/toddler I made her costumes, and then she had a few years of ready made. Now we usually do some sort of hybrid where we buy a costume and I customize it for her.

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I made a Mrs Potato Head costume for my one year old (yay young enough to not have an opinion!). I wasn't going to dress up but the party were going to tomorrow encourages it so I found a red stripped shirt and plan to put together a where's waldo costume. My husband was taken by surprise so I'm pretty sure that means he has to wear the clown costume the previous homeowners left in our basement lol.

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We are going a Daniel tiger/Mr Rodgers theme. The parents will be king Friday and Queen Sara. The little one is Daniel gift obviously lol but the impressive part is the conversion of his red wagon to the trolley! Now to finish sewing on the tiger stripes lol

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You are a very dedicated mom. I mean, you truly go out of your way for your children. No way, would my mom have run around San Francisco trying to find me parts and pieces for a Halloween costume. But I could go on and on in other ways how my mom was also very dedicated to us. I appreciate mothers like you and my mom.

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You are such an amazing, talented, and patient Mom. My parents never dressed up or even took me trick or treating. I went with my friends who were sisters, and their Dad took us. He didn’t dress up either. I wore the same witch costume every yr, black & a black pointed hat, (she might have made it herself since she made a lot of my clothes, but I don’t remember.) and Mom’s special face wort that she dipped in the ashes from the fire place before putting on my face. Now that I think about it, I can’t remember one Halloween decoration ever in our house, and there were no pumpkin patches to go to when I was a kid. I don’t know why I never thought to ask my Mom why there weren’t, but my guess is it really wasn’t my Mom’s cup of tea as she would say. Who knows, maybe religious people didn’t think Halloween was as appropriate as Christmas. I was adopted, and my parents were older, (Mom 38, Dad 45) but today people are purposely having children older. I had a good childhood, but was an only child, and when I see families like yours, it makes me feel sad that mine wasn’t more fun like that. Mine was more like they were the parents, and I was just the child doing what I was told. We didn’t do fun family trips together or vacations. Just went to the island in Maine (Monhegan) every summer where my Dad grew up, he was building a deck around the house and fixing it up. So it was all about work for them, not fun. These days I’m into going all out on decor, especially at Christmas, with 3 big real trees, decorated in different color ornaments every yr, and a big Christmas Eve family dinner. I started making my own traditions. I’m an older fan of your instagram, my son will be 35 tomorrow! Time sure flies!

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We’ve never done family costumes just because my husband is NOT into dressing up. This year, though, is the first year that my mom has lived closer than four plane rides away since my kids were born so she did a whole Halloween party thing for all her grandkids. My kiddos were Buzz Lightyear and Captain Underpants. I went as Claire Fraser from Outlander and I really wanted my husband to be Jaimie. But he put on a Utah Jazz hat and went as a Jazz fan, haha.

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Love it! We do a family costume every year, and I too always make or partially make the costumes. A few years ago we went as Coco and you chose us as “most likely to see Dead people,” Still a parenting highlight for me! 😂

This year, we’re going as the Halloween episode of WandaVision!

Can’t wait to see Mike’s horns on Instagram!

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I'm going to be Nadja from What We Do in the Shadows and my daughter's Medusa. So...powerful female protagonist theme? IDK.

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This was my youngest this year. We went through like 4 different costumes before finding something that worked for her. And it was me putting two random other things together that made it happen. Normally the kids have it figured out by Labor Day. Sigh.

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My son's birthday is on Halloween, so we've never really had the energy between party planning and gift planning to make costumes. We always just buy them to make our lives easier! The party planning has definitely dialed down during the pandemic (the weather in Oct is just too unpredictable to really plan an outdoor event), but we still bought them. The only thing we've done differently is to be more lax about accommodating the ever-changing mind of our (soon-to-be) 9yo. Right now, we have a Minecraft costume that needs to be returned to Target and a Ninja costume that ended up being the clear winner for the year!

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We were supposed to go as characters from Trolls world Tour. My oldest as Poppy, my youngest as Queen Barb, dad as cloud Guy, and me as Troll X, well the youngest decided she wanted to be Elsa/Anna and there was no changing her mind. So I decided to be queen barb and set out to make my husband and I’s costume. I loved every second of it. Costco had great poppy and Anna costumes, and of course we already had Elsa! No matter how far in advance I started making our costumes, I still was running around last minute yesterday collecting the final details for our party last night!

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My youngest son claims I scarred him for life because I refused to buy the plastic costumes that ripped immediately. I was great at the "Family circle" costumes to make from a pair of sweats and a t. They went as star wars Jedi, Batman and Robin, etc. And hated it. But I thought it was more creative and fun. We went to a community trick or treat (Halloween on the square") and about 50% of the kids had a costume matching at least 10 other people. (We live in a rural area and Wal-Mart has a limited selection lol)

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My boys are going I with a more elaborate version of last year’s costume. Last year, they were the Wild Kratts (characters from a PBS Kids show), but in the simplest form. Just store bought “Creature Power Vest” and khaki shorts, shirt and hiking boots they already owned.

This year, they are going a step further. My older son (6) will be Martin Kratt as a wolf, which involves the same vest. But I cobbled together a light blue sweatsuit (Martin is the blue brother), hotglued some faux rabbit fur around the bottom of the legs and added some felt accoutrements. I was going to add more fur to the sweatshirt, but he decided he likes it so much he wants to wear it after Halloween. I got a blue wolf mask from Etsy, so he’s done.

My younger son (4) will be Chris Kratt as a bat. So I bought some dark green felt (Chris is the green bro), cut bat wings and made big bat ears for him. Pair with dark green pants and sweatshirt he already owns, and he’s done.

My favorite costume every was the one my older son wanted when he was four - a Cookie Monster ice cream cone. I found ice cream cone fabric on spoonflower, cobbled together a cone skirt for each of them, then added felt We made look like chocolate chip and Oreo cookies to a blue shirt and colorful felt folded over like sprinkles to a white shirt for a “vanilla with sprinkles” look for my then 2-year-old. Stuffed them with stuffing and we were done!

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