When I was 8 years old, I borrowed my cousin Tina’s She-Ra costume from the year before. She was Jem.
I one “Best Costume” in both my Girl Scout Troop and my classroom.
Pranks? Well, I came up with the idea to pass out tampons instead of candy, but I’d never do it. Except to those teenagers who come around and don’t wear costumes.
Absorb THIS!
I went to a party as a flashing Santa Claus one year. I had a red Santa Coat and Hat and white beard and hair. Underneath it I wore a flesh colored body suit. I would flash and people’s mouths would drop.
Last year I wore my Cat-in-the-Suessical hat, a white gown with a Madonna bullet bra on top, and carried my Mamma Mia! beach ball. I love looking cultured.
My favorite costume idea was one year when they made Donny & Marie costumes. Donny wore a Marie costume. “Scared everyone half to death.”
Not a prank, but I always get comments on my pumpkins. What I do is save the guts, and then have one pumpkin with a wide open mouth and I set him up with the guts coming out of his mouth, i.e. “puking his guts out”. Then I take some of the guts and dye them red. I have another pumpkin with a big knife stuck in the side of his head, with bloody guts liberally applied all around the knife wound and on the ground next to it.
I love Halloween. It can be a drain on the budget here, because we need somewhere in the neighborhood of thirteen big bags of candy to satisfy the hordes.
My favorite costume is the headless horseman (minus the horse). I pick out a huge pumpkin and meticulously scrape out as much of the inside as I can. I then use a blow dryer to dry the inside. I cut an opening for my head and carve the face. From there I just cover my face in black grease paint and attach glow sticks out of sight. I just wear all black with a billowy black overcoat.
The effect is great. It is hard to see my face but the pumpkin glows from the inside. Not quite the classic headless horseman, but a good scary costume none the less.
Last year’s costume was pretty good. I went as my usual fallback-bellydancer. I’ve already got all the gear. Here’s a pic from the club we went to.
http://www.savagegarden.ca/Events/Haloween_2002/pages/IM001464_JPG.htm
This year I’m thinking phoenix. Or maybe I’ll just wear my 18th red silk ballgown, it means not making wings. Hmm. I should decide. Hallowe’een is less than two months away!
I went as a statue one year. I got two squares of foam and cut them to fit one under my arms and one about my ankles (cut this one out alot). I joined them together with a long tube of cloth painted like a carved column. Finally I covered all my exposed areas with baby powder and some plastic vines. Very cool.
DH was a judge with a long black robe and a bunch of old toilet paper rolls painted white and glued to enough cloth to make a wig.
One year our male friend went as a black woman. He is incredibly tall and thin- like Rick Ocasik (sp?). Some drunk lady got into a fight with him about who had the larger breasts. Too funny.
I saw one cool costume where a guy had built a whole back end of a horse out of paper mache and attached it to his rear end to like a satyr. It even “clip-clopped” when he walked. He won a contest with that costume.
I think I’ve posted this pic before, but last year for work I was a butch fairy princess. I got screams from cow-orkers, but I lost the “most original coustume” prize to a damn CLOWN. I’m still bitter. I’m thinking of recycling this to wear out this year. For work a cow-orker and I are dressing as a professional wrestler and his sexy manager. I’ll let you figure out which one I’ll be.
I once went to a Halloween party made up as a ghoul, got an awared for the scariest costume. I went to scare a friend (who is now my SO) on my way home but it didn’t work out too well. I did scare a group of kids though, they ended up following me home for some candy.
Was a friend, now an SO? Sounds like it worked out very well to me.
I went to a party for the morgue folks, thrown by one of the forensic anthropologists. I thought long and hard about what would scare this crowd. Finally I attached little pieces of paper all over my regular clothes. Each one read, “Report Overdue.”
My most creative costume was also my least flattering. I was 6 months pregnant and my options were limited. I knew the other females at the party would be sexy, so the most I could hope for was cute as hell. I got a pink sweatshirt and pants, some pink yarn, and pink felt. I crocheted several nipples and sewed them onto the shirt. Made some felt ears attached to a headband, made a nose attached to an elastic band, and crocheted a little corkscrew tail. 
I’m sure one of us has mentioned it before, but last Halloween Mudshark, a couple other friends of ours and myself went as a box of Tampons.
We dressed all in white, attached string from our heads, and crammed into a refridgerator box painted up to say Tampax.
I once dressed in all white with a little sign that read “Costume -No Frills Net Wt 5lbs.” It had the blue and red stripe and everything.
I also once put on a big red fro wig, grabbed a painter’s pallete and played Bob Ross the “let’s paint a happy little squirrel over here” guy from PBS.
