Halloween costumes Archives

Dogs Like Halloween Treats Too! #PurinaHalloweenWM #ad

October 16, 2014 by Momstart Leave a Comment

This post is sponsored by Lunchbox. All opinions are my own.

As a pet owner what wouldn’t you do for your dog. I love having a dog. They are so loyal and loving and just plain adorable and make your heart melt. They just make life an adventure as they are all so full of personality.

Do you ever celebrate Halloween with your dogs? We did. We’ve dressed our pups and we like to get them Halloween sweaters too. It gets cold up here and my black lab was always cold. One year my husband dressed up our puppy like a construction worker and he got himself a matching costume. My sister dresses her pups up too. And she lets her dog hand out treats to the trick or treaters that come to her house. Did you know that Walmart is a great place to get puppy costumes and Halloween Dog Treats. They have that everyday low price and a very large selection of dog costumes, dog sweaters and Purina dog treats.

If you want to celebrate Halloween with your dog then be sure to celebrate this year with Beggin’ – The Official Dog Treat of Halloween™! Our dogs love Beggin’ – The Official Dog Treat of Halloween™! Want some free dog treats?

Head to the Purina Pet Park, it’s a portal on Walmart.com where you can play the Treat Seeker game for a chance to win one of 25,000 treat samples for your pet! The website is even more fun on a mobile phone so be sure to check it out with your cell phone and see the tilt capabilities, it’s pretty cool.

Don’t forget your pup this year while you are out trick or treating or handing out candy. They like to have special treats to, so head on over to Walmart and pick some up. While your there get to know the full array of Beggin’ and Purina Pet Treats! They’re the perfect way to “treat” your dog or cat this Halloween season.

Beggin’, the Official Dog Treat of Halloween™

Enter to Win:

Walmart gift card and Purina dog treats. Click here for ways to enter Purina Halloween 2014.

Unveiling My Haunted House: Get Ready To Spook With Kmart!

October 28, 2013 by Beeb 15 Comments

Gift cards provided by Kmart to create a howling good Halloween display!

Over the course of this month, I’ve been showing you the step-by-step process of creating my perfect Haunted House with goodies found at Kmart. Are you ready to see the frightful finished product and hear about my grand unveiling party?

Check out my video tour of our haunted house:

Haunted House Overview

Lights

We knew that to make our yard pop, we’d need a lot of lights. We strung a strand of 200 white dome LEDs over the driveway, with a charming skull as an accent! These LED lights are great because since they’re a neutral color, they can easily be reused for Christmas – or put in an upstairs room for track lighting, if you’re us!

I also set this grim reaper flaming head outside for the public unveiling. He’s actually not an outdoor decoration – something clearly marked on the package that I failed to read – however, he works as long as he’s set on a flat surface. I thought he’d be OK outside just for an hour to welcome guests to the party, and it worked like a charm.

We also had Marcus the Carcass, who sits in the grass by the driveway and gives a great illusion of being buried in the leaves.

For the front porch, we put up a black light strip under the eve and swapped out our regular porch light for a black light bulb to add a little florescent glow. We then hung up strands of red globe lights to give a creepy red atmosphere. (These, too, would be great to reuse at Christmas! Think ahead!)

We also ran a 12 foot purple rope light along the grass to illuminate the walkway up to the front door.

In the porch window, I hung up this garland of black fabric and purple lights which I love. This framed my spiderweb nicely!

We also had a pair of eerie eyes watching all those who came and went!

Accents

This “Creepy fabric” made a nice accent for our front door, along with a large Grim Reaper hanging ominously by the door and the giant spiderweb in the window!

Effects

Pepper’s Ghost was set up in our window to provide a 3-D illusion to haunt our guests – for the full explanation and how-to, click here. This got a lot of notice from our guests, who had never heard of this illusion and seemed pretty impressed by it.

Our scary flying ghostie is motion-activated and skulks along a braided cord, with optional haunted groans. We hung him up in the living room to give the appearance of floating by the window, and it also tied in (literally) to Pepper’s Ghost and gave a fun conversation piece for our guests, who congregated in the living room. My aunt in particular commented on how much she loved the ghost and thought it was so cute; it was also a hit with the one year old who kept running around the room!

Costumes

Jai picked out the pirate captain costume, and I thought he looked very dashing. The costume looked more elaborate than I expected!

I picked the witch costume and broke out the black lipgloss, drawing a spiderweb on my face with an eyeliner pencil. This whole look doesn’t even seem like a costume to me because I dressed just like this in my most heavily goth days (makeup and all). That was actually my inspiration for this costume – I wanted a dress I could wear again! 😀

Interactive Fun

Our little DIY photobooth consisted of a Halloween backdrop and black curtains, with an LED light strip hung overhead. I brought out the camera and tripod and snapped some fun pics of the guests who mugged for the camera!

I'll get you, my pretties! Mwuahahahahaha!

Candy

I served these Crazy Bones suckers, and let me tell you, the little one went nuts for these (and us adults liked them too!) I was totally sold by the skeleton handles, which I totally saved and ran through the dishwasher to use as cupcake toppers later because that’s just the kind of frugal goth I am.

Now I know what you’re thinking: “Beeb, didn’t you buy some “Good” candy too?” Yes, yes I did…and Jai and I ate it all before the party. Whoooooops. 😉 I will need to restock before Halloween so I have something for any little ghosts and goblins that come trick-or-treating – we pretty much never get trick or treaters because we live down a dark rural road with no sidewalks, but I’m hoping that since we’ve done up the yard so much, maybe some parents will park the cars so their kids can get out and stop by for tricks and treats. I practically have a neon sign in my yard saying “I have candy!” with all these decorations, so here’s hoping kids come so we don’t eat a second bag of candy by ourselves. 😉

We had 8 guests over for our little haunted house unveiling, and it was a great way to kick off the spooky season! Halloween is coming up fast, but there’s still time to pick up fun items at Kmart that you can put up with a minimal of fuss. Since my partygoers knew this endeavor was sponsored by Kmart, they kept asking, “But did THIS come from Kmart? But what about this?” And they were impressed/surprised to learn that every single piece came from there. Kmart truly had a spook-tacular variety of Halloween items, so go pick up some fun decorations for the yard and some bags of candy for the kiddos! (Or, um, yourself! ;))

Beeb's Spooktacular Halloween Party Catalog

If you’d like some simple last-minute inspiration to prepare for Halloween on Thursday, check out my ShopYourWay Catalog for details and pricing information on the ghoulish goods I picked up to created this display!

Have you decorated for Halloween yet?

Getting Ready For Halloween With Kmart: $500 Gift Card Giveaway

October 13, 2013 by Beeb 287 Comments

Gift cards were provided so I could put together a boo-tiful Halloween display!

Halloween is a really big deal to me – I’ve always loved it! I’ve been hosting Halloween parties for most of adult life, and they seem to get more involved every year. It started with some spooky treats set out on a platter for a few friends when I was 20 and just went from there. Now, I’m famous for my elaborate parties and decorations! I get really excited when I find see Halloween stuff in stores and usually can’t resist picking up something new to add to the collection. So when Kmart challenged me to deck out my whole home in fiendish finds from their store, I knew this was the kind of project I could really sink my (vampire) teeth into!

Since we don’t have a Kmart in my small town (Sniff), Jai and I paid a visit to a location in Portland on Friday, which was conveniently nearby to an event we were going to that day. Even the tree outside the store was setting the mood for Fall fun with its bright orange leaves!

Now, anyone who knows me is aware that I’ve been a huge Maroon 5 fan for almost as long as I’ve been throwing these Halloween parties. Well, when I walked into Kmart the first thing I laid eyes on was a big display for Adam Levine’s new 222 clothing line. Between the giant poster of Adam and the huge Halloween store, they may as well have put a sign up reading, “Welcome to your favorite store, Beeb!” 😉

After I finished being distracted by the Adam Levine display, I got down to the business at hand of picking up everything I would need for tricks and treats! Decorations? Check. Candy? Check. Costumes? Check. Discounted Grim Reaper? Check!

Grim Reaper chilling in my shopping cart

Here’s Jai deciding if he should be a piece of bacon for Halloween.

Should I be a slice of bacon for Halloween?

And here’s me shopping for a costume. I’m noticing that the tights in the display behind me are almost identical to what I am wearing – every day is Halloween for me! 😉

By the end of my shopping trip, my cart was overflowing with Halloween goodies!

I think I’m ready to check out!

Here’s all my spooktacular swag! I got so many ghastly goodies that, when I was going through the checkout, the cashier said – completely unprompted by me – “I want to come to YOUR house for Halloween!!”

I got two bags of candy for trick-or-treats to hand out to my Halloween guests, plus two large Tupperware containers to use as candy bowls. This makes it simple, because you can slap the lid on to store any leftover candy after the party!

Jai decided to be a pirate for Halloween, while I picked out a witch costume. I bought this one because I will probably wear the dress again – with my goth tastes, half the Halloween costumes look like “Regular” dresses to me! 😉

We got a ton of lights to decorate our yard with, from spooky garlands and creepy light-up eyes to black lights. We also got some long strands of lights to hang over the porch, driveway, and side of the house, along with extension cords, since I always seem to forget these when I get ready to do outdoor decorations. 😉 We really wanted to do a spooky window display, so we also picked up a 24″ flat screen TV that Kmart had on sale. These flat screens can also be hooked up to a computer and used as a giant monitor, to create a ghastly DIY “Pepper’s Ghost” floating head effect. (You can see an example of what I’m talking about here.)

There were so many ghastly goodies to choose from! I bought a light-up, color-changing skull, a giant cobweb, a large grim reaper to hang by the front door, a flying ghost, “Creepy fabric”, a flaming skull, and “Marcus the carcass”, a light up dude that looks like he’s sinking into the ground. Since I live on the wetlands, this is not too far-fetched. 😉

I really wanted to make my haunted house pop with something interactive, so I decided to create a Halloween photobooth on the porch. A photobooth rental in the Portland area seems to range in the $650+ price range for a booth that does digital copies only. I spent $528.84 on supplies to create my own DIY photo booth – that includes a DSLR camera with lens, a tripod, a camera case, LED light, and a curtain rod, curtains and Halloween tablecloth to create the booth itself. A homespun photo booth may not be quite as slick as hiring a photo booth, but instead of spending all that money for just a few hours, you could create your own and have a professional camera to use long after your event is through. Now that we’re in the thick of holiday season, there will be family photos to capture during Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas and New Year’s – so if you’ve been wanting to take better photos but been intimidated by the cost, you might be surprised to see how relatively inexpensive this setup was that I picked up at Kmart.

I also bought a black plastic tub to store all my new decorations in!

Before my shopping trip, I printed out my ShopYourWay Rewards Card to use in the store. This is Kmart’s loyalty card and savings program which I’ve been a member of for a few years. I honestly never did too much with it because I found the website to be confusing and never really figured it out; but it was actually a lot easier to use in the brick-and-mortar store. I ended up being really glad I had my card with me, because it saved me quite a bit of cash. Members receive lower prices on certain items, so it knocked off $44.50 total from the standard price on two of my items; and I also received points that I was able to redeem for money off my purchase. In a bit of serendipity, I got an email the night before my shopping trip letting me know I had 8,000 in points in my account expiring on October 16th – this equaled $8 off my purchase. I bought the camera first, and since it was in the electronics department, I paid for it separately and redeemed my $8 in points to bring the price down. I also received 4,420 in points back for buying the camera, which is equivalent to $4.42. The points are available to use immediately, so when I picked out the rest of my Halloween goodies and headed to the checkout, I was able to knock another $4.42 off my total! I had added up all my purchases before checking out and expected to max out my gift cards and spend a few bucks out of pocket, but was pleasantly surprised when it ended up being $46 less than I expected – so Jai and I actually hit up a second Kmart in Beaverton on our way home from the event we were at, so that we could use up the rest of the gift card! And, since I had also received points for my second transaction, I had an extra $5.11 to spend as well. All said, I received an extra $17.53 to spend because of ShopYourWay Rewards, so I have warmed to the program a bit since this shopping trip – anything that equals free cash is good in my book!

If you’d like to check out more details on my Halloween haul, click here to view my ShopYourWay Catalog for this shopping trip – it includes product details, prices, and can be used to add products to your online cart in one click if you’re feeling inspired!

Enter to Win:

And now, for the moment you’ve all been waiting for! TWO MomStart readers will each win (1) $500 Kmart gift card so they can have their own frightfully fun shopping spree!

To Enter:

Use the Rafflecopter form below to enter this giveaway, which ends on October 20th, 2013 at 11:00 PM PST. Giveaway is open to residents of the United States, 18 years of age or older. Prizes will be shipped via Priority Mail upon receipt of winners’ information – we are making every effort to get gift cards to the winners in time for Halloween, but please be aware that there can sometimes be unexpected delays with the Post Office. Please click here to read our giveaway rules.

a Rafflecopter giveaway

Halloween Costumes Inspired By Disney’s Frozen For Girls #Frozen

October 11, 2013 by Momstart 4 Comments

Fist I want to show you the Actual Elsa Deluxe Costume by Disney.

Rule over the wintry city of Arendelle as the Snow Queen in our Elsa Costume! From Disney’s animated feature Frozen, Elsa Costume for girls features an icy blue dress with elegant sheer sleeves, a satiny blue skirt and sheer blue overlay printed with white snowflakes and icicles. A gold-toned tiara with a faux sapphire crowns you the ruler of the eternally ice-covered kingdom.

Since the story is based on The Snow queen ( Fearless optimist Anna (voice of Kristen Bell) sets off on an epic journey—teaming up with rugged mountain man Kristoff (voice of Jonathan Groff) and his loyal reindeer Sven—to find her sister Elsa (voice of Idina Menzel), whose icy powers have trapped the kingdom of Arendelle in eternal winter. ) I wanted to start off sharing some snow queen costumes. This Snow Queen costume is found at HalloweenCostumes.net

This Snow Queen costume is found at Alleycatscratch.com

This snow Queen costume is found at CostumerCraze.com

Now I want to talk about Anna. Here is Anna’s Deluxe Costume by Disney

Break the Snow Queen’s hold over the frozen city of Arendelle in our Anna Costume! From Disney’s animated feature Frozen, this Deluxe Anna Costume for girls features a dress with sheer blue sleeves and a dark blue satin skirt printed with pretty blossoms—just the thing for ushering in spring. A petticoat keeps the skirt fluffed out, and a black vest trimmed with gold sequins and printed with green vines tops off this sweet ensemble.

Finding other costumes that could work for Anna was much more difficult than finding Snow Queen costumes. I do like this costume from Getkooky.com

And then I found this one at miriammilgram.com

I thought this dress might work as well and I found it at cosplay.com

Now I hope that if your princess is already interested in Frozen and wants to be a Frozen princess this might help you make her dream come true. Frozen comes to theaters November 27th.

Just Pretend Kids Children’s Fantasy Dress Up

October 20, 2012 by Momstart 14 Comments

We received two adorable costumes from Just Pretend Kids. Just Pretend Kids specializes in a children’s fantasy dress-up assortment. The 2 categories within our "Just Pretend™" collection include princess and costumes, all of which are high quality. The princess assortment features pretty dresses, tutus, bodysuits, wings, wands and hair accessories for toddlers and children.

Their costume assortment includes a variety of adorable "Just Pretend™" animal and other favorite characters in infant (0-6 month buntings and 6-12 month onesies) and toddler sizing (1T-4T)

We received the frog and the cheetah and they came ALIVE. As you can see my kids are just barely able to fit into the size 4T so we had to donate them after we tried them on, but I’m happy to give them to someone else. They quality is really very nice. They are soft and warm, which is perfect to wear on Halloween night anywhere. Seems like Halloween is always cold.

I’d love to let them sleep in them too on cold nights. I always loved one pieces to sleep in. They are so cute. I highly recommend Just Pretend Kids.

Like Just Pretend Kids | Facebook

Party City Halloween Costumes & Party Supplies

October 19, 2012 by Momstart 7 Comments

Party City is quickly becoming one of my favorite stores. I’m helping out a lot with the preschool kids at church and getting supplies at Party City is always fun. Party city put us to the test with their Halloween costumes. Of course they have a huge selection and making a choice out of that selection was almost overwhelming because my family and I love to dress up. So they narrowed it down and challenged us to share with them which costume we like the best. Not knowing exactly which one was which for the grim reaper costume I can say we like the one with the red eyes that light up.

So out of the two above we really like the one on the right. You can barely see a difference in the costumes, and you can barely see the red eyes but they are lighting up. The one on the left though I really like the size of the hood. It’s so big, so they both have pluses and minuses. Now that I look at the details they sent it looks like theirs is the one we didn’t choose. But like I said, it’s still cook because of the hood!

Zoe loved the Disney mermaid costume and I did too out of the ones she and I received. I couldn’t even fit into the competitors mermaid costume. It didn’t have a zipper I was just supposed to slip into it. Ahh, not this body! LOL, The Disney themed costume won hands down. The most positive about the other mermaid costume was the accessories it came with. Zoe on the left above has the other costume on. It’s cute, she has a long sleeved shirt on too. I think that the Disney one on the right and Zoe has on on the left bottom photo is more flattering and more colorful.

Miles had two really cute costumes to choose from and I’m writing this review before looking to see which one is the one you can find at Party city. The one on the left is a knight costume and it fit him really well. The cape attached to his head piece and his body piece fit over his head piece too. The shield was something he already owned. The king costume on the right was also very nice, it was soft and seemed to be a more expensive option just by looks but it didn’t quite fit his head. He’s got a big head. And I really think the details on the knight’s costume were better. He had gloves and boots built into the leg piece. And the knight wins.

We received samples from Party City.

Wordless Wednesday: The Stinger!

November 1, 2011 by Momstart 28 Comments

In case you can’t tell she’s a bumble bee and she’s using her stinger to sting her brother

Now she’s stinging YOU!

And yes my house is always a disaster.

Halloween Costumes $100 Costume

September 10, 2011 by Momstart 646 Comments

Halloween is one of my favorite times of year because I love to dress up. I seemed to have passed on this trait to my loving daughter. She loves to wear costumes and can be found wearing one four out of seven days a week. If you follow my blog you know this.

You’ve seen Zoe the Pirate Princess

And you’ve seen Miles the Storm Trooper

And you’ve seen Zoe the Storm Trooper

All of these costumes have been sent to us by HalloweenCostumes.com or one of their partner sites. HalloweenCostumes.com has a large collection of Halloween costumes and accessories for babies, toddlers, kids, teens, and adults. This Star Wars costume is one of many licensed movie costumes they offer. Their kids costumes are great for Halloween, but are just as fun for year-round creative play.

The kids have been having so much fun with their creative play lately. I love listening to their conversations. Miles has been doing it with all of his cars, and Zoe plays princess with all the girls in the neighborhood.

This giveaway has ended. Congratulations to the winner, Suzanne Denys.

All rules can be found under giveaway rules. We received free samples.

A Pirate Princess and Her Adventure

August 19, 2011 by Momstart 18 Comments

We seriously love costumes in our house. My daughter loves them more than my son, but he’s slowly getting into the role playing and I’m sure he’s going to come around. My daughter was born a princess. She just loves to dress up in pink and purple and now she even loves red with black and white stripes.

BuyPirateCostumes.com sent us a Pirate girl costume to review. It’s perfect for a princess at heart that needs to get some action on. We received the Pirate Tutu costume and it’s a huge hit. The skirt is awesome and just makes her want to run for hidden treasure. At Buy Pirate Costumes.com you can buy every type of pirate costume including Caribbean, classic, deluxe and discount pirate costumes. They have the beloved Captain Jack Sparrow and plenty of other classic pirates to choose from.

And you can complete any out fit from head

To Toes:

Complete your pirate costume this season with their collection of pirate costume accessories. From pirate pistols to pirate flags and more, BuyPirateCostumes.com has everything you need to get an authentic pirate look this Season. They also have pirate wigs, boots, and swords that are sure to set your pirate costume apart from the others this Season!

Our little pirate princess got tired of posing and had to run off to find some buried treasure.

Now she spends her time saying “Arrg” and Ahoy Matey!

We received samples for this review.

The Cutest Little Storm Trooper Ever Not So Wordless Wednesday

April 19, 2011 by Momstart 40 Comments

I hate doing this to you guys, but sometimes, I just have to……

It’s a not-so-wordless Wednesday this week. One I had to make sure you all could see just how adorable he is:

This costume came from HalloweenCostumes.com, and it’s perfect! I went to their website, picked out his size range and I’m so surprised at what a big hit it was. It’s actually a clone trooper, for those of you that are Star Wars buffs like we are. Miles LOVES stom stom’s as he used to call them. Now he almost always says Storm Troopers, and I was worried that he would know the difference, but he doesn’t care. Does this look like a child that cares?

HalloweenCostumes.com has a large collection of Halloween costumes and accessories for babies, toddlers, kids, teens, and adults. This Star Wars costume is one of many licensed movie costumes they offer. Their kids costumes are great for Halloween, but are just as fun for year-round creative play.

The kids have been having so much fun with their creative play lately. I love listening to their conversations. We were at Jump Planet the other day and they were pretending to be Rapunzel and Eugene together. It was So stinkin cute. Anyways, I know Zoe is dying to have the Princess Lea costume now, so she can match her brother and still be a princess. It’s all about the princess’ for her.

Of Course, She’d be happy being a storm trooper too!