Halloween has always been a favorite holiday of mine. When I was pregnant, I imagined all sorts of ideas for my baby. My oldest was only one month old on her first Halloween, and she had 2 costumes! Ever since I had my middle child, I have paired both of my girls’ Halloween costumes. We haven’t always done the whole family, but most of the costumes have been matching for the kids.

Our first pair of costumes was a witch and her black cat in 2011. My middle child was only 2 months old for her first Halloween, so we found a little black cat onesie for her and then my oldest was the witch.

The next year, they loved everything Disney Princess, therefore they both picked out different princesses to be and we had an Ariel and Jasmine.

Then in 2013, my oldest really wanted to be one of the monsters from Monster High, as a result, we found her an Abbey Bominable costume, and unfortunately we couldn’t find costumes small enough for my other daughter, so we found a cute skeleton costume with a tutu and turned hers into our own version of a Monster High girl.

The first year we had our youngest, a son, his first Halloween was when he was 2 months old. I

was trying to come up with a cute little costume for him and our girls were obsessed with the movie Frozen at the time, which made me think, what better costume idea than to make all five of us characters from the movie? For my son, I found him a white little sleep sack without arms and then found a brown long sleeved onesie, and he was Olaf! My oldest was Elsa of course, in her signature blue dress. My middle daughter was Anna, and she chose the coronation dress costume. For all of them, instead of doing wigs, I had a friend crochet hats for them, so we had an Elsa hat with a side braid, and an Olaf face hat, and we kept the signature Anna braids. Then since my husband is bald, I got him a blond wig, and just put him in a flannel to be Kristoff. I then found a brown shirt and some antlers and drew a face on myself to be Sven.

In 2015, since my husband and I have always been huge fans of The Nightmare Before Christmas, Jack and Sally are very special to the both of us. Appropriately, our next family costume made perfect sense for us! My husband and I were of course Jack and Sally, and then our kids were Lock, Shock and Barrel. For all of their costumes, I bought normal witch, devil and skeleton costumes, but then I made their masks!  For our older two, I cut their masks from cardboard and then painted them. For my son, since he was still so small, I just used a paper plate and attached a popsicle stick to the bottom so he just had to hold it, or if he didn’t want to, we could. We had a lot of fun making our little Nightmare family come to life.

The last time we did a family costume, we let the kids pick what we were going to be, and they REALLY wanted to be superheros. Specifically, we decided to be the Avengers. My husband has never really been huge on dressing up, so he really wanted something a little less maintenance. I found him an Iron Man t-shirt that looked like the suit, and then got him a mask. I chose to go as Black Widow, and our kids were Captain America, She-Hulk and Spider-Girl. Even though it was a little more simple, we had a lot of fun trick or treating as the Avengers.

Last year all of our kids wanted to pick different costumes, and not do a family costume. They want to do the same thing this year too, but they do still talk about when we did family costumes and how much fun it was. They always talk about what other costumes we could do if we did another family costume, so I’ve included their ideas below just in case you’re in need of more costume ideas!

Family Costume Ideas

– The Incredibles

– The Justice League

– Super Mario

– Harry Potter

– Circus Performers

Hopefully, my experiences with family costumes can help you come up with your own great family costume! I definitely recommend going with a costume idea that is meaningful to you as a family, or that your kids love at the time. From my experience, making the kids a part of the process really made it more fun for them. Comment below with any other family costume ideas you have or that you have done.