So what were some cute costumes you saw?

[dianeschlicht]

We don't get many trick or treaters here, but one family came with totally professional costumes done that were ala Pirates of the Carribean. Looked marvelous and VERY expensive.

[PoohsPal]

I didn't see anyone. Dh was happy when somone recognized his runner's costume. lol.

jnrrt reported tha tshe went with a VW Bug. That sounds adorable!

[dianeschlicht]

I also saw an adult with Smarties candy stuck all over their jeans.....Smarty pants! :)

[jiggerj]

We didnt have any at our house. We never do but I always buy tons of candy just in case. I would have been mortified if some kids showed up and I didn't have any! Took my little guy out for a little while and saw a Power Ranger, army guy, princesses and my ds was the Dash. I must really live in the sticks...most people didn't even know who he was! Didn't EVERYONE see the Incredibles? Geesshhh! :)

[cobbler]

We saw a lot of Chef's this year. A couple of really cute ones were an oven mit. There was a whole in the mit so the face could be seen, and the one arm was put in the thumb of a mit. I think the mother made it for them but it was really original and cute.

We also saw a stove. I don't know how they managed to move in that thing.

Funny thing is most people didn't know what my kids were. My youngest was Prince Phillip and my oldest was Shang. Guess these people don't know much about Disney :Pokepoke:

[lllovell]

I saw a bunch of kids this weekend and not many really stuck out as original although they were all cute.

I did get blasted by a mother at the Halloween Carnival on Friday at the boy's school for saying that a Jango Fett outfit was Boba Fett (I looked quickly when Charlie pointed it out....didn't notice the color - oh the shame lol). I suspect this parent had paid a TON for that outfit because it was nice, but all I could do was giggle as we walked away because she was so quick to JUMP and correct me when her son didn't even hear the comment.

What shocked me most this Halloween was the lack of costumes. I can't tell you how many older kids showed up in just street clothes with a grocery sack collecting candy. Or those collecting for babies - ummm yeah right...my 4 week old needs candy bars too. I didn't let it bother me too much, but I was surprised at the numbers without even a stitch of "costume" on.

[dianeschlicht]

I always like to hear about some of the inventive costumes folks come up with.

[PoohsPal]

Laura -That is such a shame. I've been hearing that more and more homeless and low income people are doing that. Sad and also so bad to use that to supplement your diet.

[PoohsPal]

I always like to hear about some of the inventive costumes folks come up with.
I was a pencil once. My poor mom had to figure out how to make it. Cardboard hexagon on shoulders covered with yellow fabic. Black witch-type hat with borwn material nangin down to meet yellow. Cut out in borwn for face. Pin material sewn to yellow at bottom. Duct tape in between fo rmetal ring. Big ol' No.2 writeen on teh front. I was a geek even then. People still asked if I was a witch. :rolleyes:

[jiggerj]

Laura -That is such a shame. I've been hearing that more and more homeless and low income people are doing that. Sad and also so bad to use that to supplement your diet.

That is sad...I never thought of that... :(

[dianeschlicht]

What shocked me most this Halloween was the lack of costumes. I can't tell you how many older kids showed up in just street clothes with a grocery sack collecting candy.
Hmmmm, I might just take my chances with a trick from those. As for those who collect money at Halloween for this or that charity....Most are scams. Unicef stopped doing that in our area years ago. Most that collect money on Halloween aren't legitimate. I would probably say "I gave at work or Church", which we do. It's sad to say, but we have to be very careful anymore with which charities are real and which ones are only funding their exectives.

[gopherit]

Hmmmm, I might just take my chances with a trick from those. As for those who collect money at Halloween for this or that charity....Most are scams. Unicef stopped doing that in our area years ago. Most that collect money on Halloween aren't legitimate. I would probably say "I gave at work or Church", which we do. It's sad to say, but we have to be very careful anymore with which charities are real and which ones are only funding their exectives.

We had one girl , a teen on our street trick-or-treating for her Kiwanis club / Key Club through her high school... Trouble is, in our neighborhood, everybody grabs a comfy chair and plops it at the end of their driveway, so that the kids don't trip going up / down stairs, excite your dog to bark, lose your house heat, etc (and so we neighbors can all chat between doling out the goods, LOL!) Well, none of us came with our wallets - so she was tough outta luck. I don't think T-N-T night is a good night, in general, to try to muster up a contribution.

Does anyone else's town determine "when" Halloween will be? Ours does. And how long too, LOL. This year it actually landed "on" Halloween (last night) but often, it's as many as 3 or 4 days in advance of Oct 31st. And it lasts from 6 pm to 8 pm - the town bells ring to signal the start / stop. Weird, huh! We had corporate visitors this week from Korea; one of my colleagues invited them to her house last night so they could observe this whole "American Ritual"... I can't wait to hear what they thought!

I too saw lots of teens-in-jeans with sacks collecting last night. One pre-teen kid joined my DH as he made the rounds with our three younger kids. He was "too cool" to wear a costume... but not above taking plenty of candy handouts, according to DH! The kid then left his candy wrappers in our kids' wagon....Well, ds didn't think it was fair that he had to clean up after this kid, so he marched down there to ring the doorbell of the kid's house... when the kid answered, ds said, "Trick or Trash!" and dumped the wrappers at his feet and ran!

I'll post pics of my trio this evening. Tried to upload last night but computer not cooperating, house was a mess of candy, costumes and sticky hyped up kids, and to top it off, I still had 3 All Saints' Day costumes to put together for today! Aye yi yi.... it was a long night! :faint:

[jnrrt]

My husband was manning the door, and he said that it wasn't so much all the people who didn't have costumes on as the fact that all the parents came up and took candy too. That's a new one, and I think that's pretty weird.

As PoohsPal said, one of our party was Herbie the Love Bug, and that was an awesome costume. She wore all black clothes, and her head stuck out of the top and her arms out the windows. It was made out of copier boxes, and her dad had gone to town. My kids were Peter Pan (dd7 "I know it's a boy costume, but the character has been played by a girl in every stage show, you know mom."), Tinkerbelle (dd4), and Kermit the Frog (ds1), although it did look more like my son had been eaten by Kermit than that he was Kermit. Something about the hood.

My favorite costumes were one I mentioned already somewhere: someone had dressed their weiner dog with a tube around his body - it had a bun on each side, and mustard and ketchup running down his back. Pretty funny.

Also on the condiment topic, my neice (Laura Ingalls) was Trick or Treating with 3 girls, one a huge box of French Fries, one a bottle of ketchup, and the other a bottle of mustard. That was pretty cute.

And not one I saw, but one in my paper that I would actually consider wearing just to see who got it - A man with an end table on whose body was the lamp, lampshade on his head, alarm clock, glasses, etc. Get it, get it, huh?

[jnrrt]

:hehehehe: He was "one nightstand". :hahahaha:

[PoohsPal]

:ROTFL: Thanks for not leaving me hanging. I had the nightstand, but what's funny about that? That's funny!!!

[dianeschlicht]

So if they aren't wearing costumes, is it trick or treating or pan handling???? I guess that's why we have a bit of an age limit on these kinds of things. I usually turn the light off between 7 and 7:30, because that is when most of the little kids are done. When our kids were kids, we had a rule that they didn't trick or treat after 5th grade. In fact, neither of ours did that year either, because both had braces by then. They always thought it was more fun to pass out candy to the goblins at Grandma's house than to actually go out themselves anyway!

[gopherit]

I recall guidelines with the age of 12 being the magic number... (once you were a teen, you were officially too cool to TorT...)

I did have more than a few kids hold out their bags, take what I gave them (which is usually pretty generous!) and THEN reach back into my bowl for MORE! These were young kids (about age 6) and their parents were right there, and heard me nicely saying, "That's for the other kids, you have yours, have a good night" but these kids just stared at me like I was half simple and took 3 or 4 extra pieces! I'd say I had 3 different little family herds that did this and the parents said nothing or just laughed...

I always have something for the very "young" TorTers that come around. One year a family came with a 6 mos old baby. LOL, I was prepared... gave 'em a small jar of Gerber plums (hey, that was always my babies' fave fruit!) The look on their face was priceless, as I sat there with a big ol' honkin basket of butterfingers and Baby Ruths and there they were with a jar of processed plums!! I usually have something else on hand for toddlers too, like little boxes of cereal (Fruit Loops or Honey Nut Cheerios, etc.)... so parents thinking they can score at our house by bringing "baby" will have to develop a toddler's taste buds!

The nightstand costume reminds me of some friends of ours... she was wearing a big rectangular board painted up as a electric recepticle, and he was wearing a lampshade on his head and around his waist, a huge electric standard 2-prong "plug". And yes, his "plug" fit her "recepticle"... and when it did - his head lit up. What folks won't think of.... My ds' teacher wore a costume this year with little boxes of Cornflakes and cheerios and such all stuck to her sweatshirt, with cereal and red "blood" paint scattered all over it...she also carried a fake cleaver covered much the same.

She was a "Cereal Killer".

[gopherit]

My kids were Peter Pan (dd7), Tinkerbelle (dd4), and Kermit the Frog (ds1), although it did look more like my son had been eaten by Kermit than that he was Kermit. Something about the hood.


ITA! I cannot understand why they make the outfits that way, with big eyes on top! My dd wanted to be Piglet one year, so I made her outift ... the ones at the Disney Store that year (Pooh, Piglet, etc) all looked as if the child had been eaten by the costume, with their faces peeking out of the gaping mouth! I noticed some of the costumes had moved away from that, but some still use the "eyes on top of your head" approach. They probably did it to get away from using masks (which are horrible for their discomfort and poor visibility). Nonetheless, me no like it.

(Now hmmmm, that could be a cool costume, as i'm thinking about it... a costume that looks as if something has gobbled you up and you're trying hard to cause a reflux! Hmmmmm.....)

[dianeschlicht]

she was wearing a big rectangular board painted up as a electric recepticle, and he was wearing a lampshade on his head and around his waist, a huge electric standard 2-prong "plug". And yes, his "plug" fit her "recepticle"... and when it did - his head lit up.
Now THAT is unique!

[jnrrt]

Now hmmmm, that could be a cool costume, as i'm thinking about it... a costume that looks as if something has gobbled you up and you're trying hard to cause a reflux! Hmmmmm.....

I saw another costume in the paper like this - it was sort of a body sleeve of a shark, his mouth was at about armpit level on one side, and came up over your shoulder on the other, so your head would stick out of the top, and you'd look like you were being eaten. Also pretty amusing.

[PoohsPal]

Got an e-mail with a bunch of these yesterday.

http://i23.photobucket.com/albums/b352/PoohsPal/hallopets.jpg

[dianeschlicht]

LOL, cute doggie costumes!

[gopherit]

OK, FINALLY got the computer to behave (or at least, we called a temporary truce between us!)

Here's my trio... (I need to QUIT taking these shots at night 'til I get a better camera - too fuzzy.)

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v218/ck26181/happyhalloweensmall.jpg

In case you can't tell, the oldest kid is the Hokie Bird (Virginia Tech's mascot), and his 5 yr old sister is a VT cheerleader.

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v218/ck26181/evanhokiebirdsmall.jpg

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v218/ck26181/happyhalloweencheer.jpg

And the middle son, age 9 and determined to march to his own beat (refused to be anything associated with sports - Virginia Tech or otherwise!) is his mother in the making, haha....

http://img.photobucket.com/albums/v218/ck26181/madscience.jpg

I really had hoped all the kids would do the Virginia Tech thing - I had visions of using a good shot of them for our xmas card, with the words, "Ho! Ho! Hokie!" I am such an alumni-dork.

[PoohsPal]

Very cute gopherit!!!! Don't be too hard on the child that just wants to be like his mommy! ;)

[withdisneyspirit]

What did you put on your mad scientist's hair to make it look grey; did you spray it on??

They look great, Gopherit!!

[gopherit]

What did you put on your mad scientist's hair to make it look grey; did you spray it on??

They look great, Gopherit!!

I used spray-on (water washable) "white" hair spray (which, with his light brown hair, made a good "gray"!) I also added some glow-in-the-dark spray to it as well, though you can't tell it from this photo...

Just running my fingers though his hair in an upward fashion as I sprayed made it stand on end stiffly like that - it worked out easily and quite well, and washed out in a jiffy!

[withdisneyspirit]

I used spray-on (water washable) "white" hair spray (which, with his light brown hair, made a good "gray"!) I also added some glow-in-the-dark spray to it as well, though you can't tell it from this photo...

Just running my fingers though his hair in an upward fashion as I sprayed made it stand on end stiffly like that - it worked out easily and quite well, and washed out in a jiffy!

Very cool, Gopherit :highfive: