Halloween--Thrift Store Style

So today I will be doing my first guest post, who happens to be one of my favorite people in the world, my sister! Every year my sister comes up with the most creative costumes for her cute family of four. So this year I asked her to share her secrets on how to make the perfect Halloween costume on a budget.  Enjoy!

Hello all!

Many thanks to my awesomely-stylish-wonderfully-talented sister for letting me encroach upon her blog to share our DIY thrift-redo costumes. While not as brilliantly beautiful as her usual blog posts, hopefully this guest post will fill you with some Halloween spirit and give you some inspiration for next year's costumes on a tight budget.  Or this year's, if you're the last-minute type.  But if you still don't have a costume, you might want to forgo reading this and spend time finding your Halloween attire instead! J

So my handsome hubby and I have been watching Doctor Who, which if you haven't seen it (check it out on Netflix streaming), you're truly missing out on some good, clean fun.  It's a campy British sci-fi show about a time-traveling alien (that looks human but happens to be 900-years-old and have two hearts) who never dies, but just regenerates into a new body, meaning new actors all the time.  We decided this year we had to go as the 10th Doctor and Rose Tyler, one of his human companions.

As Mackenzie would say, here's the inspiration:

So, I went armed with these ideas to our local thrift store (LOVE Thrift Town).  I ended up with these lovely items for Ben:

 The coat--$3.50

Brown suit jacket--$3

While the suit coat worked with his brown dress pants, the Women's (yes, women's) Trench needed some help.  First, I let down the sleeves, then removed all embellishments.  Then, it was on to my favorite part.

THE DYE!!!   

For an authentic-looking David Tennant's Doctor coat, I used Cocoa Brown Rit dye.  You need a LOT of boiling water for Rit dye.

Like every pan and microwave safe dish full.

Here are my girls while I'm neglecting them to work on costumes.  Yes, they're still in their PJs at 11:30am.  And yes, the older one is eating Neccos candy for breakfast.  I'm an awesome mom.

I'll reveal the final coat at the end, but let's just say, Cocoa Brown is very reddish and WAY too dark.  But here's a little trick.  If you dye something too dark, you can use hydrogen peroxide to lighten it.  Just mix a bottle of peroxide with hot water and soak your item.  I used a large bottle of peroxide and about 4 gallons of water in a bucket.  I did that 4 times, and I got the shade I wanted!  Hooray!

For my Rose costume, I found these beauties at Thrift Town:

Can you say early '90s?

Overalls--$1.50  Hoodie shirt--$1

With some work, here's the final look!

The Doctor

Coat: $3.50

Suit Coat: $3

Dye: $2

Bottles of Hydrogen Peroxide (my bad!): $3

Pants, tie, shirt: Free! Closet Shopping

Converse: Okay, so he technically didn't have these before, but I convinced him that a man in Chucks is extremely attractive, and he actually did need new shoes...he caved. $25 at Ross

Total cost (minus the shoes): $11.50

Rose Tyler

Overalls: $1.50

Hoodie Shirt: $1

Ridiculously Large Hoop Earrings (that you can't even see!): $1.50 at Forever 21

Leggings and Boots: Free from my closet

Total Cost: $4

Happy Halloween everyone!