Family-Themed Halloween Costumes…

Now that we are into Octo­ber, Hal­loween plan­ning is def­i­nitely on my mind.  For us, part of that means putting together our family-themed cos­tumes.  
I was lucky and grew up with a mom and grand­mas that are all pretty good seam­stresses (one of my next endeav­ors).  Along with that, came home­made or at least semi-homemade costumes–from witches, to fairies, and even a bag of jelly bel­lies! I don’t ever remem­ber going to the store to pick out entire costumes–instead it was decid­ing what I wanted to be and then fig­ur­ing out how we could put the cos­tume together.  Even if a main part was store-bought new, we would then add details & embell­ish­ments!
So, since hav­ing my own kids, we’ve been try­ing to extend that tra­di­tion as much as pos­si­ble, but took it one step farther–family themed cos­tumes!!
This started when Big Brother was first a tod­dler. I had a great span­ish dancer cos­tume turned “Moulin Rouge” cos­tume that I thought would eas­ily make a great pirate wench. With a few touches & sup­plies, I fig­ured we could eas­ily cre­ate a pirate cos­tume for my hus­band.  And, what does every pirate cou­ple need?  A par­rot of course!!
So, two years ago, my mom and I made my son this par­rot cos­tume (get direc­tions here):

And, every par­rot must have par­rot food!

It was a huge hit and so much fun to all be dressed up together.  While we were out, every­one LOVED that we were dressed up too.  Maybe it’s just my drama back­ground from high school, but I think it just adds a whole fun ele­ment to have the fam­ily dressed up together.  

Then, last year, we decided to stick with an ani­mal once again (no sur­prise with two biol­ogy nerds in the house)–Big Brother was a bee­tle, I was a but­ter­fly, and my hus­band was a bug catcher!

  

Once again, my mom and I made the bee­tle cos­tume inspired from this lit­tle guy:

source: http://www.dirtdoctor.com/pics/content_img.1726.img.jpg

While it was nowhere near as elab­o­rate as the year before(I was com­ing out of the first trimester with lit­tle brother and not feel­ing great), we still really enjoyed being all dressed up together–we even won “fun­ni­est” cos­tume for his age group at a Hal­loween festival.

Now, we are gear­ing up and mak­ing deci­sions about this year.  We’ve got another lit­tle guy in the mix now, so will be decid­ing around that. Not divulging any­thing here until we final­ize things a bit more. 

Have YOU done family-themed cos­tumes?  What are some of your favorites?

Linked to:  Cor­ner House, My Insan­ity, Wickedly Cre­ative Hal­loween party, Craft-O-Maniac