Seriously easy Halloween costumes that won't break the bank

I love Halloween. It's my second favorite holiday behind Christmas. Free candy tops my list of favorite things with dressing up a close second.

It's easy to drop hundreds of dollars on the perfect costume but I'm here to show you how you can shop smart for costumes and not break the bank!

I spent a few years of early motherhood thinking that I would make my kids Halloween costumes. Talk about time-consuming!

I would spend hours at the store after store hunting for the right materials. It felt like I was looking for a needle in a haystack sometimes. It seemed like I could always find what I was looking for when I wasn't looking for it!

Through the years my husband has convinced me that my time is worth something. I can't spend days and hours searching for the perfect color t-shirt or taking hours to craft the perfect hat for a costume. It's just not worth it.

I'm a big fan of using what you have, so I took inventory of the dress up and regular clothing items that we had. I hit the Halloween store, and I put together a few outfits using inexpensive accessories that I had found there.

This survival bow and arrow created several outfits and has the possibility of many more! My daughter dressed up in clothing we had in the closet and used the bow and arrow as her accessory to become Katniss Everdeen from The Hunger Games. I could easily replicate this outfit for myself and you could too! The skirt that I made my daughter for Valentine's day years ago, when paired with a pink top and a bow and arrow, turned her into the cutest cupid I have seen! My son had a skeleton costume that he's worn for years in his dress-up box. Add the bow and arrow and now he's a Minecraft skeleton.

Probably my favorite costume of the day was this lumberjack {or is he a hipster?} beard. We had the plaid shirt in his closet and the black beanie in our winter clothes. Another shirt from the closet, some aviator glasses and a mustache made for super 70's guy. The same mustache could be used for so many different costume ideas.

One thing my daughter loved was the face decals. When paired with a purple wig, she could be Mal from The Descendants. Or she could put a pointy hat on and be a witch. These spider decals and a black cape made for a pretty ~~cute~~ scary vampire.

While we are talking about capes, I bought this inexpensive adult size cape and it works for so many different costumes. A child or an adult could wear it so it will get a lot of use at our house. One year, I had a friend pay me to make a cape for her son. The fabric costs more than this cape. Trust me, just buy one! It's far cheaper and less time-consuming!

A candy corn hat {we've had it for years} with the cape, makes for a cute candy corn witch. A purple wig, some decals and the cape could pass for a vampire or a witch. Of course, we can't forget about Batman!

Batman is wearing his long johns {see...using what we have!} underneath the cape. He paired it with a batman mask, gloves and a belt. And finally, those face decals again with the cape are a Halloween standard!

Aviator glasses are super hot this year, but they also make for some really cool costumes. This SWAT team costume is a bit more expensive but easy and fun to complete, and you probably remember the glasses with the mustache from above. A leather jacket or a navy suit jacket paired with the aviator glasses could make a pretty cool pilot costume.

While my son had his long johns to wear under many of the costumes above, my daughter needed a black dress as a staple item. This long black dress was fairly inexpensive and had the flexibility of being used in lots of different ways. You've seen most of them before, but I also added the same Batman accessories that my son had with the dress and suddenly we had batgirl. How cute is that?!

While we are talking about accessories, really, that's all you need sometimes to create the perfect outfit. I created a Minion costume using glasses and a yellow beanie from Amazon. I had the yellow shirt and suspenders in my closet, though I could have bought both at a craft or Haloween store. For more flexibility if you had overalls or a denim jumper, you could wear those with the hat and beanie for the same look but a totally different costume.

Harry Potter is holding a stick {yep, it looks like a wand...came straight from the yard!} and has glasses and a tie. The white shirt, grey sweater, and grey pants were all in his closet. In fact, he loved the look so much that I had to pry it off of him later that day for family pictures!

I put together a ton of fun costumes that didn't cost a lot of money. The key is using what you have and shopping for those WOW accessories that make the outfit. Don't waste your time going from store to store looking for the perfect accessory or outfit. I've done that and wasted hours of my time.

Seriously easy Halloween costumes that won't break the bank