By Hannah Ellington, News Editor

We’ve all been there: After staying up late binge-watching horror movies on Netflix, getting together with friends to go to the local pumpkin patch, carving said pumpkins and preparing for your Halloween party, you forgot that you still need to get a costume.

Halloween is just days away, and with your procrastinating skills, you’ve somehow found a way to completely bypass the fact that, hey, Halloween is kind of all about dressing up.

“If I do anything it will be very last minute. I’ve been so busy with college and dance,” senior Mattie Huband said.

There are definitely ways to create a chillingly perfect Halloween costume out of seemingly thin air. It only takes a trip to the local supercenter, thrift shop or even your own closet.

“Normally, I leave my costume until the day before Halloween,” sophomore Peyton Hoggard said. “I went into Kmart to get a costume and I ended up trying to be a skeleton, but the outfit itself was too scandalous, especially considering I was in like third grade at the time. So, I got this ugly purple long-sleeve shirt from a thrift store and some thick leggings and threw it all together and it was just a look.”

However, many last-minute costumes can end up looking like a slew of bad choices.

“At the time, I wasn’t (embarrassed), but looking back at it, it was such a gross costume and I just looked kind of cringy,” Hoggard said.

Crafty? You can break out your DIY skills to create that great get-up with little money and little effort.

“A couple of years ago I didn’t have anything to be and I was going over to a friend’s house and we decided to be social media,” junior Carrietta Classen said. “I was Pinterest because I just wore red clothes and the logo.”

Classen DIY’d her costume and was subject to many jokes throughout the night. The conversations usually went like this:

“Everyone came up to me and was like, ‘What are you?’ “

“Pinterest!”

“Did you get it from Pinterest?”

“Yeah, I did.”

You could also draw inspiration straight from the clothes in your closet. Bonus: It takes no time at all!

“Me and my dad dressed up as pirates to trick-or-treat and give candy out to kids,” junior Courtney White said. “I wore this white blouse thing and I tucked it into my pants, and I don’t know if I wore boots or not, but I went full out. I was pretty confident, I felt pretty good. It took a good hot five minutes.”

White plans on doing something similar this year, even though it might take a trip outside of her closet.

“I’m going to dress up as Jughead Jones (from Netflix’s ‘Riverdale’), at least that is the plan. I might go to the thrift store or something to find other objects in the outfit,” White said.

If you still have no idea what you’re going to do, don’t let panic set in just yet. Even if you are not too crafty and you don’t feel like spending lots of money on something you’re going to wear only once, there are ways to create your spookily perfect costume on the fly.

Here are some last-minute, easy costume ideas:

• When life gives you lemons, make it into a Halloween get-up. By taking a white shirt, writing LIFE on it in huge black Sharpie and carrying around some lemons, you can be the sweetest person on the block (brownie points if you randomly start handing people lemons).
• If you’ve ever wanted to be a chick magnet, here’s your chance. Take another white shirt, apply some Velcro and stick some rubber duckies on it. Voila! Chick magnet (or duck magnet, whatever floats your boat — or tub).
• Good at makeup? Try your hand at a variety of different looks! You can dress yourself up for Halloween without actually having to buy anything to wear. Sugar skulls, Frankenstein, a zombie, a mermaid. All is possible.
• Remember in middle school when onesies were the rage? From a penguin to a tiger or even a Care Bear, if you own a onesie, flaunt it on Halloween night. Who knew onesies could be so versatile?
• You could even take on a classic: the cat. Each year, people dress up as cats as a last-ditch effort to do something. But what if you put a spin on a classic? By taking a paper grocery bag, cutting some holes in it and adorning some adorable cat ears, you could be a cat out of the bag.
• And if you’re really, really behind (as in you’re heading to a Halloween party at this very moment) just throw on a white sheet! Oooooo…

Still lost about what you want to be? Look around the Internet, go to Pinterest or ask the people around you. People have all kinds of creepily good ideas.

Junior Hannah Ellington can be reached at ellingtonha1214@daretolearn.org.