Homemade Halloween Costumes for Kids

Unless you’re Charlie Brown, it’s pretty easy to take a sheet, cut a few holes in it and call it a ghost, but you might find yourself with a pretty unhappy trick-or-treater if that’s as far as your creativity will take you this year.

While there is always the option of going to the store and buying a premade costume, often these can be poorly made, expensive and unimaginative. That’s why we are hoping that you genius parents out there are willing to give and take a few Halloween tips, and tell us not only the most exciting Halloween costume you ever made, but how you did it!

We explored the Internet and found a ton of adorable, easy and sometimes even earth-friendly options:

• Martha Stewart’s Spring Chicken Costume is extremely cute and cuddly and will fit in well around these parts. It’s super simple – just some loose wool batting, a couple feather boas and a little red felt. (Appropriate for children ages 3 and older)

• Likewise, the Reader's Digest Do-It-Yourself Skunk costume for babies is beyond adorable and can be put together with a feather boa, some fake fur and a black t-shirt and leggings.

• TheDailyGreen.com has a great listing of recycled Halloween costumes including a great crocodile made out of a cardboard box, some butcher and tissue paper and a little tape. 

For Redondo Beach residents Penny Richards and Nell Turley—runners-up in the national the 2011 Little Pumpkin Challenge—making their own Halloween costumes is a tradition. The local award-winning snail costume was made from brown clothing, leftover foam and silver duct tape. Richards made the antennae with leftover yarn and pipe-cleaners.

Please share your ideas and creative successes (or even failures, we've all been there) in the comments.

Patch editor Nicole Mooradian contributed to this report.