Halloween On A Budget

Halloween has to be one of my absolute favorite holidays. I love decorating my condo for the holiday, the pumpkin carving, the treats, the smells, the themed parties, costumes, Trick-or-Treaters, Starbucks Pumpkin Spice Latte’s…just EVERYTHING! All this can add up quickly though and everybody knows about the economic depression going on so there isn’t a lot of money to be spent on things that aren’t necessary. However, all this can be done on a budget and do-it yourself costumes.

Some of this really isn’t out of the ordinary for me though because when I was young mom and dad and we kids would always make our costumes. We have five kids in our family and imagine spending just $20 bucks on a store bought costume for each kid would add up to a quick $100. Plus, store bought costumes were never as creative as we were. In fact, my worst Halloween costume came from one bought at Wal-Mart...Hold your breath for this one…I was Barney!!! Yes that singing purple dinosaur. I think back and when I even look at pictures I ask myself how on earth could my parents let me do that to myself. Good Grief! Anyways, back to the homemade costumes. I was Pocahontas, a vampire, a mummy, a blind ref (haha), a camouflaged hunter one year when it was freezing cold, Goldilocks, a Flapper girl, Cruella DeVille, and many more I am sure I can’t recall. Here is a costume contest that my boyfriend Micah actually entered for his costume of Aladdin. He always has the best costumes but go figure he is an engineering student so he should. He was ‘flying’ the magic carpet but the feet you see aren’t actually his because he is standing on 6’ painters stilts. His friend Caleb was the Genie and he actually shaved his head and glued a fake ponytail on the top of his head to really look the part. He as well was standing on painters stilts. He didn’t make the cut with his but you can see how creative some of the other contestants got.

Halloween parties have to be one of my next favorite events for the holiday. I love to decorate for them and also being able to see everyone else’s costumes is so much fun. Here you can get pointers on how to make very cool, creepy, and inexpensive Halloween decorations for your party. Who doesn’t love a bleeding candle or a coffin as your coffee table or even bats flying out of your fireplace. A place that I found to have some of the best decorations for inexpensive down here in Baton Rouge was the Dollar Tree. Sometimes dollar stores are a hit or a miss with the quality of items you are buying but for $1 each I got some really cool skeleton mugs and fall garland and some other miscellaneous items that will look great all put together. This segment from Good Morning America was very helpful if you want some ideas to make your Halloween party still the best even if the economy is a bust your party doesn’t have to be.