If you’re looking for a last minute Thanksgiving DIY, craft for the kids, or table place cards, we’ve got an idea for you to gobble up. You can put these DIY turkey pumpkins together with limited materials (you probably already have them in the art cart, or outside), and in less than 15 minutes. Get all the details here.
DIY Pumpkin Turkey: Thanksgiving Craft For The Whole Family
If you’re looking for a last minute Thanksgiving DIY, craft for the kids, or table place cards, we’ve got an idea for you to gobble up. You can put these DIY turkey pumpkins together with limited materials (you probably already have them in the art cart, or outside), and in less than 15 minutes.
Fall In The Kitchen: Baked Pumpkin Donuts
It’s officially pumpkin season! I don’t know whether to rejoice because of all the cozy feels, or cry, because when falls arrives, winter is just around the corner. My daughter has been wanting to make donuts, so we spent some time in the kitchen, and used pumpkin as the main ingredient.
This recipe is really easy because it involves a box of cake mix. You donut want to miss this one – get the kids involved, too!
Recipe and directions for these Baked Pumpkin Donuts are at Momtastic.
Halloween Crafts and Decor For Kids & Adults
It’s October, which means the leaves begin to fall, pumpkins adorn our porches, and the witches, ghosts, goblins and googly eye everything come out to play. We have a somewhat hard time in fall…it’s a bittersweet season for us. We are sad to say goodbye to summer, the pool and warm weather, yet we enjoy the vibrant colors on the trees, sipping hot tea (or coffee) and cooler days. But, we know fall is short-lived, and soon Colorado will be covered in white with cold temps. While we enjoy the stillness and beauty of the cold days with falling snow, it’s a long, cold and dark winter ahead. The changing seasons bring so many emotions, but as we get older, I think we see what season we would like to spend 90% of our time in. And, for us, it’s not the winter. 🙂
For now, we will embrace the fall season. We’ve created a few scary, but mostly sweet, fall and Halloween DIY’s over the years. We’re sharing some of our favorite fall DIY’s below, and there’s truly something for every age. Plus, they all are totally doable Halloween crafts, for those of us who have DIY in us, and those who don’t!
1. Halloween Candle with DIY Googly Eyes: This is a new Halloween DIY, and we are obsessed. The DIY wax eyeballs create such a chic Halloween touch to any party or table setting. Find all the details here. We’ll give you a clue, you can break into your kids crayon box for this one.
2. Pumpkin Wine Dispenser: This is one of our all-time favorites. It’s a pumpkin wine dispenser!! Best part is the wine, of course, but also the fact that you can use it year and after! The wine will flow for all who desire. This is just too good (and easy) not to make!
3. Chocolate Cupcake Toppers: We love our chocolate. This fun cupcake topper looks super fancy, and like your an expert pastry chef, but the only skill set you truly need is the ability to trace. You just need to swap a pencil in for melted chocolate. See how to do it here.
4. Faux Floral Arrangement: Fall doesn’t mean all leaves and branches. You can create a pretty floral masterpiece with just a few stems, and skeleton props. See how we did it here.
1. Sticker Halloween Jokes: We love a good laugh, and our kids love ALL the cheesy jokes, so we made a FREE Halloween jokes printable for you. All you need to do is print it on sticker paper (Astrobrights in our favorite), and attach it to any snack, treat or gift you want. Due to all the COVID restrictions this year, kids are only allowed to bring pre-packaged items to school, so you can dress them up with Halloween stickers to get the kids laughing! Download the free printable here.
2. Furry Monster Pillows: You don’t need a sewing machine for this one (and barely any sewing kids), and the kids will love the cuddle session with an adorable, cute monster.
3. Blow Art with a Straw: Your kids will love this one, and it will keep them entertained for hours on those cold days when you are reaching your sanity limits inside.
4. Fingerprint Monster Pumpkins: We created 7 no-carve pumpkin ideas for Real Simple a few years ago, and this was a favorite. Paint your kids fingertips with paint, press tips on the pumpkin, then transform them into adorable monsters. You can avoid the whole sticky, gooey mess of carving pumpkins! You can this tutorial, plus 20 awesome other ideas, here.
DIY Halloween Costume Ideas
We are still working on our Halloween costumes this year, so look out for that. They are on the villain-side of the character world, but the kids are excited! We have had some great past Halloween costumes, and unfortunately not enough time for full tutorials. Hopefully this helps give you some Halloween DIY costume inspiration. You don’t need to know how to sew, or own a sewing machine. You can do it!
Oh, and please excuse the poor quality of the photos – an old iphone, inexperience behind the camera and rushing from Halloween party to Halloween party to blame! Stay tuned all the way to the bottom of this post, because if none of our costumes meet your fancy, we’ve listed some other fantastic ideas!
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TROLLS HALLOWEEN COSTUME
You can get all the details about how to make our DIY Trolls costume on the blog post here. This was one of my favorites. We used a lot of regular clothes (that the kids wore all year-long) and felt. The second Trolls movie is coming to theaters this November, so it’s a great time to dress like our favorites; Branch, happy Poppy and all their colorful friends.
HARRY POTTER HALLOWEEN COSTUMES
Our kids are big Harry Potter fans. With two boys and a girl, Jessica’s had the perfect trio of Harry, Hermione and Ron Weasley. We pulled these costumes together easily, and the kids still play with the robes, wands and magic spell books. Details below…
- Buy the Harry Potter robe at Nordstrom Rack for less than $25, or here. To make the wands, find sticks in the backyard. Use hot glue to add layers, vines, and texture to the stick. Once dry, paint the sticks copper or brown. We used plaid paint for this.
- You can easily find ties for Harry Potter costumes, but we’re suckers for anything DIY, plus we didn’t want to spend anymore money on this costume. So, we used felt and cut it to look like a tie with stripes. We used hot glue to stick it to a hair clip, and then clipped it onto the white shirt.
- The spell book is a must because every wizard needs his/her spells. Again, I didn’t want to spend a lot of money on this, so I bought a journal with kraft color pages, painted the cover and binding a maroon color (with acrylic paint), and then used gold vinyl to add names, and a title of the spell book. I used my Silhouette for this, but you can buy a gold metallic sharpie to write the info on the cover of the book. I went the extra mile on this one, and wrote some of the famous Harry Potter spells in it. The kids LOVED it!
- As for the rest of the costume, we’re BIG, BIG fans of buying clothing items our kids can re-wear throughout the year. So, you can find some of the other pieces here: boy black jeans | grey sweaters | harry potter glasses | Hermione pleated skirt |
DEEP-SEA THEMED HALLOWEEN COSTUMES: JELLYFISH, DEADLIEST CATCH FISHERMAN & DEEP SEA DIVER
Our kids were really into all-things ocean one year, so we decided on a deep-sea theme. Jessica’s oldest was a fisherman from the show Deadliest Catch. Her daughter was a jellyfish with glowing lights, and her youngest was a deep-sea diver. All of them are no-sew, and fun to make! Looks at those cute smurfs, too! Details below…
- Deadliest Catch Crab Fisherman: This one is so easy! We cut out paper crabs to place in the bucket with the netting. Also, for the hat, we bought it online, and then added the name of a ship to it with a fabric pen, so we knew his “ship crew.” Other pieces bought here: orange bib or this one | net |
- Jellyfish: Buy an umbrella and tape and hot glue paper streamers, lights, mesh tubes and ribbon all along the inside and around the edge. Make sure the lights are battery operated and light enough to tape in the umbrella. For the outfit, you can find clothing here: metallic leggings | white or silver tulle or ruffled skirt | shite long sleeve shirt | clear umbrella | blue twinkle lights | mesh tubes |
- Deep Sea Diver: My little swimmer loved to dress up like a diver. We bought him tight black pants and a long sleeve shirt (like long underwear tight), used a ski mask to cover his head, and the DIY piece was with the oxygen tanks. First, spray paint two liter bottles. Once dry, tape them together with electrical tape, and glue them together in the back. You can add straps with rope so he/she can wear like a backpack. For a belt of supplies, use black electrical tape (make sure it’s double-sided so it doesn’t stick, and add velcro to the ends so it can be easily put on and removed as a belt), and snap sponge curlers through it. We used our swim goggles and snorkels for extra props. Also, I used black tubing from Home Depot, inserted it into one of the bottles (glued it to the bottom), and attached a water bottle top to the end of it, and it was his mouth-piece. Sorry I don’t have a close-up photo!
WITCHFUL THINKING
If Halloween really isn’t your thing, but you want to me festive, this is the perfect combo of easy and cute. Details here.
GIMME’ MORE!!
There are so many good and creative Halloween costumes to choose from! Make sure to check out all these amazing DIY Family Costumes:
Stranger Things | Hello Whimsy
Hot Dog, Ketchup & Mustard | Pretty Life Girls
15 Family Costume Ideas | Design Dazzle
Dr. Who | Simple Practical Beautiful
Circus Themed Costumes | Make It and Love It
Shabby Apple and Disco Ball | Among the Youngs
Crafting in the Rain
Bandits | Sugar Bee Crafts
Firefighter Themed| The Scrap Shoppe Blog
Troll Hair | Fleece Fun