I don't like Halloween, never have..

But when the kids were little I loved making costumes.

This year will find me hiding out..My city location gets 350 or so trick or treaters in 2 hours...Not something I find fun anymore...

Still, the creative outlet is not lost..I did love to figure it all out. Here is Tiger Woods and the Headless Horsemen...I would love to do this for other kids, just skip the candy bit..
You?

Just as I was posting this, Shorty aka Tiger, was sending me this..

Turns out homemade costumes caught on! Come on down!

quote:

Originally posted by BeeLady:
Just as I was posting this, Shorty aka Tiger, was sending me this..

Turns out homemade costumes caught on! Come on down!

I love this!

I loved making costumes for Liam when he was little! I actually love making grown up costumes, too, but we aren’t party people so we never do. We turn our lights off and hide in the basement because Heathrow loses his mind if we have Trick or Treaters come to the door. We used to sit at the end of the driveway but even that was a nightmare for Heathrow so we gave up.

When I was a kid I loved Halloween. My parents never had candy around the house, so it was the one time a year I got Smarties and other favorite treats. None of our Moms were the creative types so costumes came from Woolworth's. Remember the molded plastic masks with a piece of elastic that went around the back of your head? That plus a flimsy tunic you pulled over your clothes.

We've been in this house for more than 40 years. Halloween has been boom or bust as far as how many kids showed up at our door, mostly bust. A really busy year was maybe 60 kids total; most years it's fewer than ten. Sometimes we get none. Part of it is where our house is located. We'll see a lot of kids across the street but they don't come over to the half dozen houses on our street. We know it's not our candy, because we often give out full size candy bars and we always got squeals of delight from the kiddos...

The last few years we've turned off the lights, closed the blinds, and stayed out of sight. We'll be doing the same today.

Halloween was a big deal at our house when my kids were growing up, because it was my son's birthday. His birthday parties were costume affairs, and that's always fun. I made a lot of their costumes, finally giving up and buying them when they got older.

I don't think I ever had a costume bought especially for Halloween when I was a kid. My parents would have seen that as a waste of money. We would wear an old dance costume or something out of the box of dress-up clothes that we played with. My mother was very creative, and the dress-up box had things like our cousin's old prom dress, so with a mask from the dime store or some makeup, we were probably pretty cute, but then I think all children are pretty cute.

We lived on a country road with houses spaced out every four acres or so, and people drove really fast on the curvy road, so it wasn't suitable for trick-or-treating. We would go into town and trick-or-treat with a cousin some years. Most years, Mama would drive us to friends' and relatives' houses. My parents really didn't like the idea of us knocking on strangers' doors.

Here's the zenith of my costume-making career: Halloween 1988, when Muffin's Sister and Muffin's Brother were Peter Pan and Tinker Bell.

Oh, heck. Now I'm feeling nostalgic. Here are a few more Halloween pics. That's the old Tinkerbell costume on Muffin. Either the tutu had gone astray in the intervening years or she made me take it off her. You can see that I'd given up on making costumes by then, because Muffin's Sister is wearing a storebought one and Muffin's Brother had made his own.

I finally got the hang of storebought costumes a few years ago when I sent him the Obi-Wan bathrobe. When he posted that photo, his cousins were all over it, wanting me to tell them were I found it.

Beelady, I love Tiger Woods and the Headless Horseman!

And hat's off to him for figuring out a great bartender's costume!

Have not had a trick or treater since I moved here in 2006. However I buy candy just in case.
The candy is always something I like. Coincidence? I don't think so.

When I lived in Missouri my wife and I dressed as Popeye and spinach.

Hate.

The kids will have to get through a gate (they can't) or climb it (they won't).

I don't think there's anything I like about Halloween.

I like it. It's my daughter's favorite holiday. We haven't gone to a party since college days. But man, what parties those were! Halloween on State Street in Madison used to be a pretty crazy time. Ah, memories. Or lack thereof. lol

I wanted to give out wasabi peas as treats this Halloween but other household members talked me out of it. :Shrug:

Halloween was always my favorite holiday as both kid and mom of kids. Even now as witch neighbor making a fuss over the hoard of local kids....

Between candy (Hershey's permutations, Snickers, Reese's peanut butter cups, a few lesser favorites), fantasy costumes when any kid could turn into whatever they please to scare or exude premature glamour, what's not to like? (Thank heaven, they aren't into twerking - at least, not in my neighborhood. Primary school and adolescents acting sexy are bad enough in Real-life. )

My sons loved it too - one won Firsts in our local Halloween parade for his age group, two years in a row.

And all for Lillian Vernon purchases that must have struck the judges as hand-made. (Once as a Giant Hershey Kiss - he tossed little Hershey kisses to his fans as he marched. The next winning costume was as a parrot. The sewn tousled tail feathers were fabulous.)

I still have both costumes and numerous others - who will inherit them? Sons haven't reproduced yet and so they're in the De-Clutter line of fire...

Reminds me it's time to adorn front porch with the usual (Joanne Fabric's has THE greatest decorations and theatrical dood-dads). Strongly recommend visiting right after the holiday when everything is on sale at ridiculous discounts. (At least, if you have grand-kids to justify it.)

My Joanne Fabrics favorites have been: iridescent fairy wings that tie around a little one's torso - one $ apiece. Sparkly witch's hat, many over-head ghoul's capes in various designs, set of were-wolf hands/paws, velcro joining around the neck as if strangling. They always make the kids laugh (also handy to relieve sore-throats), and so many more. (Caution against stopping by there for sale items ye who are decluttering! China's whimsy is endangering American impulse shoppers!).

Soon my front door will display a witch in flight above a plastic doorbell, playing a very spooky voice laughing maliciously at creaky door sound, "Come in....if you dare," a stuffed life-sized amputated hand and fore-arm (realistic as a Med School cadaver borrowing), a magic mirror that turns one's reflection into a grinning skull, and a giant hairy spider near the candy pot (a soft sewn pumpkin). Scares the littlies too much some times ...

Guess I'll never grow up. Last year I had to wrestle myself internally out of buying a post-holiday glow-in-dark dog skeleton - life/death sized, with hinged limbs. It was SO cool, and selling for only a few bucks. (I succeeded but just barely, too aware of my deClutter battle.)

The only change these days is I've finally reconciled myself to only purchasing candy I loathe and detest to avoid the dangers of left-overs. KETO has penetrated my shopping habits (MOSTLY, anyhow).

Hope I have time to carve one of my pumpkins!

The neigborhood tonight is busy but quieter than in the chaos times pre COVID. I just took a night time walk to scope it out. There seems to be a cluster of houses that went all out, my part of the block, both sides of the street, is dark so I don't feel so bad.

This afternoon was prep time and this neighbor outdid themselves. When I chatted with them, she said "I think we might have gone overboard!"

I just went by now and it is all lit up with a crowd of kids at the bottom awaiting their delivery. The wife is upstairs in the window shooting down the required loot. The shoots are lit up in orange and white...And they don't have any kids themselves!

Things were very active in our area. We weren't passing out candy but from what we could tell we probably had 35 or 40 kids who came to the door. I was very surprised; I have no idea who these kids are. It was a beautiful weekend day and apparently a lot of people decided that a fun outdoor family activity was a good thing to participate in today...

We were a bit bummed that we had nothing to give the little urchins. They looked like they were having lots of fun.