Fifty years ago or more, store-bought Halloween costumes were a much less common thing.  Many mothers made their children’s Halloween costumes every year, which made for more variety in the costumes.  Even when certain costumes were popular, every mother made them differently.

Today it seems no one has time for that, so most kids’ Halloween costumes are bought ready-made from the store.  Same goes for the men’s and women’s costumes adults pick out to wear to Halloween parties.  However, this way there is a much higher likelihood of seeing duplicate costumes at school, at a party, or on the streets while trick-or-treating.

If you like the idea of the uniqueness of a homemade Halloween costume, but you lack the time or creativity to put one together, you can still avoid being just like everyone else by modifying a store-bought costume.

One of the best ways to modify a store-bought Halloween costume is to provide your own homemade prop.  Costumes often don’t come with props, or if they do the props are cheap and kind of lame, so try making your own!  You can make an easy sword or scythe with stiff cardboard and spray paint, for instance.  Or you can add realistic toys to your costumes, such as a light saber with lights and sound effects for a Star Wars costume.

Another way to modify costumes is to add Halloween wigs.  Witch costumes usually include wigs, but you can also add wigs to princess costumes, Renaissance costumes, and many other costumes.

Finally, consider a costume that includes your pet.  For instance, I’ve seen pictures of a kid dressed up as Harry Potter — and their dog dressed up as the three-headed dog that is guarding the Sorcerer’s Stone (see the video below for that one!).  There are plenty of other fun pet costumes that you could incorporate into your own costume: For instance, if you dress your dog up as a spider, you could be Miss Muffet — or Spiderman, depending on which way you’d prefer to take that theme.

There are lots of fun things you can do with your Halloween costumes, even store-bought ones, so feel free to have fun with it!

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