My son took a blue t-shirt, glued some cotton balls to it, and carried a squirt gun. He was “partly cloudy with a chance of rain.” Quick, cheap, and I suppose rather clever if you’re in the right mood.
A dog is pretty easy. Take a sweatshirt/sweatpants and turn them inside out. Sew a few spots of felt on it in scattered places. Use that same felt material to make a tube and stuff it for a tail. Buy some dog ears or else make simple floppy ears out of the left over felt and sew or glue them onto a headband. Draw some whiskers on your face and a black dog nose… DOG!
Another cheap idea my brother and fiance are using is the gangster thing. They both own pinstripe suites and are borrowing my fedoras. Tote a cheap toy machine gun and you’ve got a 20s gangster!
You can do it even simpler. Take a pair of dark brown pantyhose and put them on your head. The legs form long floppy ears.
This just in: we’ve convinced my mother-in-law to go as “chopped liver”. The theory: cut up some foam into cubes, paint them brown or just wrap them in dark tinted pantyhose, and pin them to a shirt. Accentuate with a rubber meat cleaver.