For Halloween this year, baby Ada, who’s becoming more of a toddler and less of a baby (wah!! I don’t want to talk about it!!) needed a costume.

I adoooore homemade Halloween costumes and hope that my kids always want me to make their’s but that probably will be short-lived once they hit grade school.

But until then I’m enjoying the idea phase and creation process.

I decided on a spider costume for Ada because since she was a newborn she always did this funny thing with her arms that reminded me of a jumping spider. And since jumping spiders are the only type of spider that I will consider cute, it only seemed fitting.

I started with an old black shirt that was a size too big for her, therefore slightly roomy.

I bought three pairs of women’s stockings/pantyhose from the Dollar Tree.

I had mint green felt, yarn, and craft eyeballs on hand.

I cut up scraps of an old black t shirt of my husband’s and stuffed into each pantyhose. I tried not to stuff too much sine I wanted to keep the spider’s arms kind of small so they wouldn’t bug Ada too much.

Then I pinned and sewed on the arms. You could also glue them on with hot glue.

*Note: Decide how long you want the arms and cut off the excess. I had to go back and do this later since the arms were too long. Save yourself the extra step and decide if you want the arms shortened before you sew/glue.

Using thread or yarn, poke a small hole through the end of each arm to with one long piece of yarn, tying a knot through each arm as you go. This way there is a continuous piece so when the baby lifts her arm, all of the spider arms will lift too. You could also leave the bottom one or two arms out and let them dangle. It just depends on how much you think it will bug your kid!

Finally, cut out some felt eyes and glue them on with the eyeballs! It would also be really cute to glue the eyes on a headband but my baby does not put up with headbands!