Don't buy Halloween outfits - making them is far more fun

The days when we would cut out two eye holes, pull the sheet over our heads and run around the garden trying to scare each other. Have we left those days behind?

Those home-made ghost outfits were truly awful, of course. The eye holes constantly slipped to the left or right so most of the time you couldn’t see anything, and the sheet flapped about, regularly causing trips and falls. But it was fun, and us kids growing up in the 1960sand 70s, remember it well.

Again making use of old sheets, some kids would cut them into strips and mummify themselves, wrapping their bodies in the material, or even using toilet roll.

In those days we created costumes from whatever we had to hand: sheets, sacks, old clothes.

Sometimes we would dribble tomato sauce on to our costumes to add a bit of horror.

I don’t know what happens to old sheets nowadays but it certainly isn’t that.

Go to any Halloween party nowadays, or out trick or treating - something we thankfully didn’t do as kids - and half those attending will probably have the same ghost or witch costume from Asda.

Supermarkets are full of Halloween costumes All the supermarkets are full of them, from vampires to ghouls, skeletons and pumpkins. They are cheap enough that many parents will see it as an easier option than faffing about to make your own.

It’s a shame. Making costumes - whether for Halloween, Christmas or World Book Day - fuels creativity in children. I used to love digging around in the backs of drawers, rummaging around in the shed and in my mum’s sewing box to find odds and sods with which to make outfits.

I remember making dozens of chickens from cotton wool balls - painting them yellow and sticking them on an Easter bonnet I had made from cereal boxes. Nowadays you can buy ready-made bonnets and all the bits and pieces with which to embellish them. It’s such a shame - making something from scratch fires the imagination and, most importantly, it’s great fun.

We didn’t have World Book Day when I was a child, but if it had been around I’d have almost certainly gone as Anne from Anne of Green Gables, a character I loved. I’ve got the hair and, with Mum’s help, would have been able to rustle up an outfit.

World Book Day has become such an event that clothing worn by the main characters from children’s books are now reproduced by major supermarkets. Parents can buy ready-made Alice in Wonderland or Harry Potter outfits. I know it’s harder nowadays to find time to sit down and make stuff with your children, but youngsters could be encouraged to have a go themselves.

In my day we would raid the dressing-up box, which contained old clothes, hats, and other bits and pieces including my mum’s wedding dress, which she kindly donated to us kids.

Thankfully, all is not lost. Some people must still make their own outfits on occasions such as Halloween - there are plenty of websites with DIY examples making use of materials such as cardboard boxes and tubes, kitchen foil, egg cartons, cereal boxes, scarves, socks, zips, cushions, bin liners, marker pens and, yes, old bed sheets.

For anyone looking to dress up at this Halloween I’d recommend you look around you, raid your cardboard recycling bins, dig out some old clothes and get stuck in. I’d like to bet your outfit will draw more interesting comments from family and friends than any shop-bought affair.