We are having a costume contest at work this year. I’m waiting for inspiration to strike. I could go as Cinderella, in her raggedy phase. Then if these other ladies want to do a group costume at the last minute like usual, they could be Wicked Stepmother, Fairy Godmother, Cindy at the Ball, Ugly Stepsister…
I always enjoyed making costumes for my kids too. One year the boy went as Calvin, with yellow spiky hair and a stuffed tiger. Once he was a bat, with black umbrella wings. As for the girl, she once dressed as a little old lady, with a shawl and a ridiculous hat covered in flowers and birds. She had another good costume the year she was Cleopatra, and small enough to wear a toga made out of a pillowcase. We laugh about when she was a little girl wearing a ghost costume and got impatient with her grandma trying to pin her sheet in place. She said she just wanted “to go wooo awound!”
Candy? I’ll trade you for your chocolate! Hang on, I do want those Smarties too…
We do an outdoor movie night every Halloween and the movie this year is The House on Haunted Hill starring Vincent Price. I’m going to try to replicate the William Castle gimmick “Emergo” where a life-sized skeleton swoops over the audience at the appropriate point in the film.
A neighbor down the street put up a 12’ skeleton back in October of '23. The big boney guy was joined by a huge skeleton dog and they became a front yard fixture, changing outfits and accoutrements with the seasons and holidays.
Sadly, big skelly and his doggie disappeared last month, just short of their two-year anniversary. I haven’t been able to find out why they’ve been taken down, I’m guessing either neighbor complaints or maybe the owner is getting too old climb up on a ladder to change the skeleton’s outfit every couple of months. Oh well, it was fun while it lasted.
I was just in Coventry, CT, and a small lake cabin there has TWO 12’ skeletons in their yard. They are placed right next to each other, similar positioning, with no other clothes or decorations. For some strange reason, having two of them side-by-side makes them more than doubly creepy. The two dogs I was walking didn’t even notice them.
I need to get on building this year’s candy delivery device™.
Carpet comes in 10’ wide rolls with the middle being a heavy duty version of a TP / paper towel tube. My neighbor got new carpets & I swiped a tube with plans to make it into an alpine horn & I’ll be in the room over the garage/driveway in the window in my lederhosen costume shirt. Planning on putting a small BT speaker in it so I ‘play’ good music for the kiddies before sending candy down the horn.
Eew, that was an ugly mispost. I meant to go on that I prefer the un-lined/un-cupped versions most of all: Easter eggs, Christmas trees and, this time of year, bats!
I actually went to Walmart last night intending to buy my Trick or Treat supplies but couldn’t find the BIG $20 bags of Reese’s bats, the 37 cents/oz ones I’m certain were there a week ago.
My school has a major addition under construction right now, so the math department decided that we’d all go as construction workers. It looks like we probably already have enough hard hats and reflector vests to go around, and won’t need to buy anything.
When I was a kid, my extended circle of friends (about 20 of us) all converged on the house of the kid who lived in the best neighborhood, and went out in various combinations. But the best part of the night was always the Great Trade afterwards. We’d all sit in a big circle in the living room, and it’d be like those scenes of the New York Stock Exchange.
We even managed to re-invent money. None of us actually liked Good ‘n’ Plenty, but we would all trade for it, for the simple and sole reason that we all knew that we would all trade for it.
