Family Game Night | Family Costume Theme - Jessica N. Turner

Without question, this is my favorite family Halloween costume theme we have ever done – family game night! We had an absolute ball with this family Halloween costume theme, and it was a huge hit with everyone who saw it.

Of course, many games could be mixed and matched for this theme, but we chose classics that are also family favorites – Operation, Candy Land, Uno, Monopoly and Hungry Hungry Hippos. Here’s a bit about each costume and how to make your own family game night costumes. As an Amazon affiliate I earn from qualifying purchases at no cost to you.

Operation Costume

Matthew was the operation man. To make his costume I dyed a white sweatshirt and sweatpants flesh color. I then cut all the body part pieces out of felt – red first, then white. I had Matthew put on the sweats and pinned the pieces in place to make sure everything would look right when on his body. Then, I hot glued the pieces to the sweats.

A couple key accessories were also important for the Operation costume:

A red light up nose
Brown bowl cut wig (I did have to trim it a bit to get the right effect)
Tweezers made out of grill tongs, some red electrical tape and red electrical wire, which I bought by the foot from home depot).

Uno Costume

You might remember when we did family Alice in Wonderland costumes, and Elias was a card from the Queen’s court. I used the same basic design to make my Wild Uno Card costume.

The Uno card costume base is a large white piece of felt folded in half, with a hole cut for my head. (I love using felt for costumes because it doesn’t fray and no sewing is involved.) Then, I layered on the felt pieces to build the card – first a large black rectangle, then the red, blue, yellow and green smaller pieces. I made templates out of paper first so I wouldn’t mess up cutting the felt. I bought the felt in large pieces at JoAnn fabrics.

If I were to make this Uno card costume again, I would make a stencil to cut out the word WILD. I did mine free hand and it wasn’t as perfect as I would have liked. Outlining the details in puffy paint helped tie everything together.

Mr. Moneybags from Monopoly Costume

Elias’s Mr. Moneybags Monopoly costume was the only one mostly bought. I found a kids tux (with shirt and bow tie) on ebay, then bought gray dress pants, a top hat, and white mustache.

Using an old canvas grocery bag, I covered a plastic pumpkin treat bucket to make it look like a money bag. I then added a black puffy paint dollar sign.

A friend loaned us an old cane to use, which was definitely the way to go since it was great for photos, but not needed/wanted during trick-or-treat. Of course, some Monopoly money to pass out added to the Monopoly costume’s authenticity.

Princess Lollipop from Candyland Costume

Adeline’s Princess Lollipop Candyland costume was totally spectacular and blew my vision out of the water (excuse the crummy photo of Princess Lolli to compare her to!). I bought this yellow pageant dress and gently removed the lace off the front. I cut and hemmed the bottom to make it the right length. (If you don’t sew, you could easily do this with Stitch Witchery).

Then I cut big and small felt circles and rectangles to make the lollipops for the Candyland dress, adhering them with Stitch Witchery.

I bought this purple wig and made a crown using colored foam and lollipop sticks. (I bought a foam crown from the craft store and mounted the orange foam for stability. Using foam made the crown a lot lighter than if we would have used real lollipops.

At the last minute I made a large felt lollipop out of felt and glued it to a kabob skewer. It added an extra amount of whimsy to the Princess Lollipop costume and delighted Adeline.

Orange Hippo from Hungry Hippos Costume

When we first decided on this theme, I thought it might be a hard sell to Ezra, but he LOVED the idea of being a Hungry Hippo. He said he wanted to be an orange hippo, so I dyed a sweatshirt and sweatpants orange (find kids white sweats here).

I made the hat using this tutorial, modifying it to be a bit smaller for a toddler. The only modification I made was that I built a foam visor in it, which made it comfortable and easy for Ezra to wear. Even with the modified sizing + foam visor, it was still a bit long for Ezra. I would recommend making it ½ the size outlined in the tutorial.

I took a Styrofoam ball and strung fishing line through it to look like he was catching a ball in the game.

Our family game night Halloween costumes were a joy to make and wear. It was a Halloween to remember.