A last-minute Halloween wishlist with costumes, decorations and treats

It is 27 October, the school has announced a Halloween parade for Friday, and the only costume in the house is a Spider-Man suit two sizes too small. This is where a shared wishlist earns its keep. Write down what is needed, send it round, and let the people who are going to the shops anyway pick things up.

Costume pieces that work for almost any character

Black clothes are the base for a witch, a vampire, a cat, a ninja and a burglar, so start with what is already in the wardrobe. Then add the parts that turn black clothes into a character: a face paint palette (Snazaroo is the usual one for children and washes off with soap and water), a wig, plastic fangs, a witch's hat. Comfortable shoes go on the list too. A child in new boots gives up on trick-or-treating after three houses.

For a group or family costume, agree the theme in one message and stop discussing it. Eighties neon, a set of characters from one film, or "everything from the fruit bowl" all work once someone decides. A group that is still voting on Thursday evening ends up going as "people in black".

Decorations that give a lot for little effort

Lighting does most of the work. A string of orange or purple lights, a handful of flickering LED candles and one coloured bulb in the hallway change a room in ten minutes without costing much. After that, add stretchy spider web with a bag of plastic spiders, two pumpkins to carve, window stickers and a small speaker for creaking-door sounds. Skip the fog machine unless the party is outside. Indoors it sets off the smoke alarm and leaves a film on the floor.

For the table, mini pumpkins, black candles and a handful of leaves from the garden do more than anything you could order. Outside, a skeleton hand in the flowerbed and a cheesecloth ghost in the tree are enough to make yours the house the kids talk about.

Treats for trick-or-treaters and the party

Get fun-size bars in a multipack for the door. Nobody has ever been disappointed by a small Mars bar. For the party, orange food colouring and white chocolate cover most "spooky" recipes, and a skull-shaped platter makes a bowl of jelly sweets look planned. Small pumpkin-shaped cutters turn ordinary biscuit dough into something the children will happily decorate for an hour.

For the toddlers at the door, and for parents who would rather not send their child home with a kilo of sugar, keep a second bowl with stickers, temporary tattoos and mini bubbles. The older kids ignore it, and the parents are grateful.

Shopping smart when time is short

Choose things you can use more than once. Black nail polish works for a goth, a witch and a vampire, and one dark makeup palette covers half the characters in the group. Look in the wardrobe, the charity shop and the toy box before buying anything new. A suit, a loosened tie and a bottle of fake blood make a zombie office worker for next to nothing.

Some of the list needs no delivery at all: a playlist, printable pumpkin stencils, a five-minute face paint tutorial. Put those in first, since you can sort them out the same evening.

Keeping the whole thing in one place

The list works best when it is shared with the people who are shopping anyway, like the grandmother who passes the craft shop or the partner who is at the supermarket on Thursday. When you create a wishlist and send the link, each person reserves what they will bring, so nobody comes home with a third bag of spider web while the pumpkins are still missing.

Ten minutes tonight, four days before the 31st, is enough. Create a wishlist with the costume parts, the lights and the treats on it, and the last-minute scramble becomes a short list of who brings what.