Our Halloween Costumes for 2005

For those of you new to the inner workings of the Harris household, let me offer you this insight: We hold Halloween sacred.  It's hands down our favorite holiday and we get way into all the carved jack-o-lantern (always scary, never nice), glow-in-the-dark skeletons, and fake spiderwebs there are too be found. I feel about day-after-Halloween shopping as most others feel about day-after-Thanksgiving shopping.  Great deals on dismembered hands and plastic baby spiders make me swoon with delight.

The great thing is that we live on a block were everyone is into Halloween.  Our next door neighbor has a karoke machine and plays clashing chains and spooky music so it can be heard up and down the street.  And every so often he grabs the mike and moans, "Fee Fi Fo Fum, I smell the blood of little childrun!" (Halloween on our street is not for the faint of heart).

We've had some great costumes in years past.  Last year, we did an ode to Peanuts and the Great Pumpkin. We made a pumpkin patch and Blair drew an incredible to-size rendition of Snoopy as the WWII Flying Ace.  Blair dressed up as Linus (including the blanket) and informed all the trick-or-treaters that the Great Pumpkin was sure to arrive any minute.

The year before that, we had a Pirates of the Caribbean theme.  Blair hauled in 100 lbs of sand and we created our own beach with cardboard palm trees, and we had a huge treasure chest we FILLED with candy.  Seeing the look on kids faces when we opened up that chest and they saw all that candy...that was so much fun!

We've done witches and warlocks and filled a black cauldron with candy and set dry ice off beneath it, so it looked like it was brewing.  "Pumpkin' Head Man," a creation of Blairs a few years back, was very popular as well.

So suffice to say, choosing a Halloween theme is a big deal.  We spent most of lunch discussing it on Saturday and finally settled for the classic Frankenstein / mad scientist / graveyard setup.

At 6'1", Blair has a good start on the height thing so he'll be Frankenstein.  In a stunning departure from reality, I'll be the mad scientist.  We'll create a graveyard out of cardboard (cardboard is our friend) and maybe bring in some dry ice to have wafting around my laboratory table.  We bought a glowing skull at Target and have some beakers we can set out and we'll figure out a way to make stuff bubble in them.  All we have to do is hunt down a white smock for my lab coat.  My job is to warn kids the monster will not give them candy unless they say the magic words: "Trick or Treat!"

We'll spend next weekend decorating the house.  I've got 3 bins full of goodies, although I think a lot is at the point of needing replaced. They just don't make werewolf cut outs like they used to.