Halloweeeeeeen - Circus family costume

Big big BIG Halloween family over here. We always dress up in a family themed costume.. and usually multiple times. These are some of our family costumes from last year (2019).

First up: The family circus!

Our circus costume had: the strongesttt man in the worlddddd, the popcorn concession man, the Ringmaster with her ringof fire, the lion who jumps through the flames, the redhead clown, and the fortune teller!

My little clown did not want to keep her wig on, and the strongest man broke his weights… family photos are hard

already dipping into their snacks :-)

This costume was really fun to make! I DIY’d pretty much all of it, with the exception of the lion costume and the muscles on my strong man (I am NOT a sewer).

For the clown, I used my oldest daughter’s dress up clothes-> a red tutu dress from iloveplum, that she still wears, an old yellow tulle skirt and polka dot tights (that you can’t really see) but it gets coldddd around here on Halloween. #newenglandproblems. Speaking of cold- I had to make sure the clown would be warm enough to trick or treat all night, so I made sure she had multiple layers. I used an old white onesie that I painted bright colored polka dots with puffy paint and found a pair of hot pink gloves we had on hand.

For the Ringmaster: I bought a cheap red coat off amazon and added the long coattails with red fabric I found at Joann’s fabric. I added gold ribbon trim to the coat to give it some extra circus pizazz, threw on a apair of my black leggings (I have about 5 billion pairs) and topped it off with a cheapy hat I found at party city. My ring of fire was just orange and yellow felt peices hot glued to a hoola hoop.

The lion was a costume I found off amazon, but I did make her a little fluffy headband with ears out of an extra peice of faux fur fabric we had lying around.

Popcorn concession man: I used an old amazon box, wrapped in white paper and glued, paper pocorn boxes to the inside so they would stay up right while we trick or treated. The strap around his neck and waist is just a yellow ribbon I attched to the box. His red flat brim hat is also homemade from an old amazon box. Gotta do something with all those extra boxers we have lying around. I found a tutorial here: and spray painted it red to go with the theme. His outfit was navy blue dress pants and a striped button down that he already owned.

For the strongest man: I bought his muscle shirt off amazon. My daughter had a red and white striped tank top that I thought was the right look, but was very girly. I cut off the ruffles around the neck and made a deeeep circle neck, so his “muscles” could pop out. Red pants, and old newsboy hat were items already in his closet. His 250 pound dumb bells were another DIY. I got a dowel and 2 foam circles from a craft store, spray painted them black and glued them togerher. I wrote the weight on the balls with a white sharpie.

The fortune teller was a completely last minute addition, since my mom was in town during Halloween. It was made completely of items out of my closet, a flowy maxi skirt, a boho sweater, a scarf tied around her head and one around her wasit, tonssss of necklaces and a red bouncy ball from our yard.

The whole costume was one of my favorites!!!

NEXT UP:

Toy Story!!

Halloweeeen Toy Story 4 family costume

Avery losing her hat…

To infinity andddd.. my foot!

#iykyk

October 2019 is right around the time my kids became obsessed with Toy Story 4, probably because we had just got disney plus and thats allllll we watched for days on end, so it seemed only natural to make a Toy Story 4 themed family costume when we were told at the last minute Quinn (my oldest) needed a costume for her cheerleading practice.

impossible to get a family picture with everyone looking

Like I said above, this was a last minute DIY for my daughter’s sports practice. For Mr. & Mrs. Potatohead I used old amazon boxes (again, lol! I swear they come in handy) and used construction paper we had on hand to make the faces. I had to google their pictures to get a good idea of what they actually looked like in the movies. I glued some ribbon on the top and voila! done!

For Jessie: we already had her awesome cowgirl hat as a dressup accessory which made pulling that costume together pretty easy. I used sharpie marker to draw cow print on white frabic and glued the fabric onto an old pair of jeans right at the knee to make them look like chaps. For her yellow bib, I cut a neckhole out of a sqaure peice of fabric and draped it over her shoulders, then colored the red swirl pattern on in red sharpie. The white shirt, jeans, and boots are all just clothing items we already owned.

Bo: I thought this costume was gonna be a little tougher but luckily my daughter had a romper from Easter that worked great for her bloomers and corset; I just glued ribbon to the top in a criss cross pattern to make it look like a corset. For her cape we had an old mismtached pink polka dot pillow case laying around so I hot glued that to the inside of a dark blue peice of fabric, attached a string at the top to make it a cape and glued a pink flower. I glued bright pink ribbon to a headband and added a bow to the side. Her little sheep (Billy, Goat, and Gruff) are actually an old pair of sheep slippers that I sewed together.

The Alien: My little man had a bright blue track suit (given to him) and it was sooo close to not fitting at all anymore that I was fine with gluing some fabric/stickers/decals/etc on it. I used lime green foam board bought at a craft store to make his alien eyes and antenna. Easy peasy. I googled the details of the alien and recreated the “pizza planet” logo on his chest.

For making this whole family cosutme in about 2 hours I think it came out pretty great!!