Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. I love dragging out the decorations in mid-September and almost cried when my fogger didn’t work this year. I love making little bags of candy for the trick-or-treaters, this year they were calorie conscious. And I love, love, love dressing up!
2008: Juno (and yes, on roller skates)
2007: Kat Von D
Picking a costume is a notoriously hard for me. It’s something I put on the back burner around December (seriously!) and will change my mind relentlessly until the days before the big event. But I honestly can’t remember a year when I haven’t donned a costume (and I think we can say we’re well past the trick-or-treating days). I love costumes that are mainstream but not obvious, sort of a “why-didn’t-I-think-of-that”?
The Flanigan Family, 1988:
Skunk, Ninja Turtle, Cardinals Baseball Player & King Kong
In college Halloween somehow always coincided with Homecoming and it was always a week of costume parties. Living in a sorority house was a great resource…we’d all switch costumes and go as something different every night. Thank God those sluttty-leave-nothing-to-the-imagination costumes weren’t in fashion then! I actually remember someone getting into trouble because she tried to wrap her bikini top in foil and go as the Tin Man. She never made it out the door before someone on the Standards Committee saw her and sent her back in to change. Now days, a lot of costumes are a nip-slip waiting to happen. Although I will note that the female “sexy” costume choices I’ve seen up here in the North are a little more conservative than most I’ve seen in the South. My guess is that it’s too cold up here to show off more than you have too!
I read somewhere that there’s a great deal of psychology behind one’s costume selection. Apparently we all have unconscious, repressed personality traits that are often conveyed in our costume choices. I’m not sure what that says about me…but I really enjoy throwing on a wig! Halloween costumes allow us to be a little bit anonymous by filtering out our physical details and let us safely express our subliminal “personalities.”
2009: Swine Flu & “I’m a PC”
This year my husband and I expressed our subliminal personalities (?) as Chilean Miners. We hit the Vapor Night Club at the Saratoga Gaming and Raceway where I quickly learned it’s hard to see wearing sunglasses at night in a bar. How do those celebs do it?
2010: Chilean Miners
Although we weren’t picked to be in the top 5 in the couple’s contest, we were proud of our efforts. There were a lot of great and elaborate costumes there!
It’s already got me thinking about upping my game for next year…
