Halloween hates to see me coming…

At some point over the last few years Halloween family costumes became our thing. Our first official family costume was in 2020. Halloween looked a lot different that year - with no one planning to trick-or-treat. But we made the most of it with an outdoor Halloween party with a few close friends. As was the case with most things that year, I felt a need to overcompensate for the fact that my kids wouldn’t get to experience Halloween and all the festivities in the traditional way - and thought we could really amp it up with the costumes. Thus - our family costume tradition was birthed.

That year my son had already said he wanted to be a football player and I thought it would be cute for his siblings to have something in the same “theme” since this was their first “real” Halloween (they were only a couple weeks old the year prior)… naturally my daughter would be a cheerleader, and my youngest son would be a football. ADORABLE. I was planning to stop there, but… my husband is a diehard Falcons fan, and that year the team had an interim coach who just so happened to have our last name -it was just too easy NOT to loop him into the football theme as well. As for me - I was a referee. Easy peasy and oh-so-cute.

I loved it and loved having the whole family join in… but at no point did I think it would continue for years to come. Low and behold - we are now five years into the family costume fun. This past Halloween we went with an Olympic theme, but in years past we have been mummy’s, bikers, and “family game night.” People ask me all the time how early I decide on the themes, where I find the costumes, etc. etc. so I figured I would share to help anyone else that might be interested in giving it a go! :)

When I tell people I really don’t start thinking about our costumes until mid-October they never believe me. But sadly - it’s the truth. Lol. My twins birthday is in October and I have to focus on one thing at a time. Soooo, it’s usually around mid-October when I shift my attention to Halloween. This is also one of the reasons I end up DIY’ing as much as I do because everyone seems to get Halloween costumes in August around here and pickings are pretty slim come this time.

Anyhow - our Olympic theme really came to mind because I thought it would be hilarious to dress up as Raygun - the infamous Australian “breakdancer” that everyone probably knows by now. I sat with this for a couple days - trying to figure out which one of us would be her. And if one of us was her - who would everyone else be. In the end I just wasn’t feeling it. She was a funny 15 mins but… meh.

Then I thought back to one of the reasons why the Olympics felt so magical to me this year and it was because of all the representation my children got to see. Not only did minorities show up to the Olympics - but they showed OUT and represented in big ways. A few solidified their spots in the history books and will forever hold the title of “Olympic gold medalists,” and I wanted to show homage to that in some way. I pretty quickly decided on Simone Biles for my daughter, Noah Lyles for my oldest son, and Quincy Wilson for my youngest son. Who hold the titles of “most decorated,” “fastest,” and “youngest” Olympians - respectively. This was the first year I was planning to have my kids dress up as other people, which is something I typically don’t do, but it felt right to do it in this way (for my kids at least - more on that later lol). Once I had the kids’ costumes all figured out, it took me a little while to figure out what my husband and I could be. After a bunch of back and forth, I landed on the Olympic torch, and the Olympic Rings because, well… I thought it would be funny AF and I also didn’t want to dress up as any other Olympians (the idea of dressing up as someone younger than me just didn’t sit right… so that was a NO! LOL!). That said, here is a quick breakdown of how each costume came to life:

• Noah Lyles

  • For my oldest son’s costume, I bought a plain red dry-fit shirt. I added blue and white acrylic paint to the top half using a couple different techniques - including splatter painting, spraying with a mix of water and paint, and using a bristle brush.

  • I used a Cricut for the U.S.A. letters, and the Nike check, and found a flag iron-on patch at our local Hobby Lobby.

  • I bough plain blue biker shorts and added a Nike check to those as well.

  • Last but not least, I added some beads to my son’s hair, and a chain to complete the “Noah Lyles” look.

• Simone Biles

  • My daughter’s costume was by far the easiest. I ordered her leotard from Amazon, and some cute sweatpants. She is in dance, so she had cute little shoes that looked “gymnastic-y” enough for me. :)

  • I tied a red, white, and blue ribbon in her hair and gave her some sparkly eye shadow for the gymnast look and she was set. She was rather excited about the fact she had four medals and was sure to remind her brothers she had more than them. Haha!

• Quincy Wilson

  • I ordered my son a plain blue tank, and blue biker shorts. And used my Cricut to add the U.S.A. letters and Nike checks. I added the same iron-on patch that my oldest had. DONE and DONE.

• Torch

  • My torch idea was a PIA. I really didn’t have a “vision” for it for a while. And even when I finished what it was supposed to be - which was some flames hot glued to a visor. It wasn’t IT. I made a last minute trip to Hobby Lobby (I’m talking Halloween day) and figured I would peruse the vase aisle and see what I could find but I wasn’t going to stress about it. To my surprise I found something lightweight that looked pretty torch-like to me. I had no idea how I would actually get it to stay on my head, but I rolled with it.

  • When I got home, I saw a hair tie on the counter and thought I could make that work somehow by wrapping the tie around the base and then putting a fishing line through it to tie under my chin (follow me here), but that felt like it would be uncomfortable.

  • So - I went with some gold string I had from another craft and it sat perfectly on my head. I stuffed the flames (attached to the visor) into the vase, and then added some orange tissue for extra dimension.

  • I put an ungodly amount of gold eyeshadow all over my face, arms, and lips using some vaseline. I have no idea why but felt like it would really set the look off if I was also gold. Granted you can’t really tell from the pictures but I promise I was shiny as a tin man.

• Olympic Rings

  • When I said the torch costume was a PIA, it honestly had nothing on the rings. Everyone thought they were the easiest, but in actuality they were the reason I was about to give up on the family idea and just leave it to the kids this year. SMH.

  • I ordered red hula hoops on Amazon which I planned to spray paint and somehow get them to stay together. I wasn’t sure how I would do that - or how they would actually stay on my husband. But I figured it couldn’t be that hard… ha!

  • 73 spray paint coats and 31 yards of fishing line later - we had ourselves some Olympic Rings. The secret here is that the hula hoops were separate pieces, so I was able to interlock them. That was a pro and a con considering they kept separating when we “tested” it out a few hours before trick-or-treating - fortunately some hot glue came to the rescue.

• MISC.

  • I created the Lyles and Wilson name plates which actually took longer than I thought because I’m a bit of a perfectionist when it comes to details and had to find the correct font. *insert eye roll*

  • I ordered gold medals from Amazon and then spray painted a few silver and bronze for Simone and Noah - because - again I’m a perfectionist.

  • Both of my sons also had Olympic ring tattoos for swag ya know.
    

  In the end I can’t say whether it’s more cost effective to go this route or not. In fact - I’m pretty positive it isn’t, BUT - I will say I love seeing a vision or a theme come together AND I so appreciate the fact that my oldest - now 9 - still ask to do a family costume every year and that the whole family has fun with it! Whether or not we will carry the tradition on next year is TBD, but we have some awesome years to look back on and I will forever be grateful for that - even if it did mean a few more gray hairs. Let me know in the comments below if you are a Halloween DIY-er or if it’s store bought for the WIN! Would love to know!