Countdown to Halloween: 3 days

My Costume History - Part 4

Yesterday, I showed pictures of myself as Cyndi Lauper. Even though people often dress up as their favorite musicians and movie stars, I wouldn't consider Cyndi Lauper a typical Halloween costume. So, today, I will be showing a couple traditional costumes I've worn. It seems that every few years I felt the need to dress up in the more well-known kind of costume. It is always interesting on Halloween to see different people's interpretations of the classic Halloween characters. Some prefer to go all out scary, while others prefer to stay "pretty" or more appealing. I usually chose to make my costumes somewhere in the middle...not too extreme either way.

Example 1:
Erin as the Devil, Me as the Witch - This particular Halloween, we both went the traditional route. This is us standing by our old light-up Haunted House. We still have it in our attic somewhere. I remember pretending there were real people living in that little house...yes, I had quite an imagination!



Example 2:
Me as a princess, Mom as a Man, Erin as GI Joe (she was always a tomboy!) - I wore my Mom's old prom dress, which we had to pin up and fold at the waist to make it fit. My Mom wore one of my Dad's suits. Looks like Erin had the boxed plastic costume with mask! Oh, and standing between Mom and me is our old Black Lab, Pappi (I think she was wearing one of my dad's t-shirts). If you asked anyone in my family, they'd tell you that this princess costume was typical of me (I never wanted to be ugly on Halloween!).


In case you are wondering, my Dad never wanted to be in the pictures. His costumes always consisted of some horrifically scary mask that he would find at the store. I can't tell you how many times he would be lurking around dark corners waiting to scare us on Halloween night. Also, he used to set up elaborate decorations in the house to make it scary -- including fake spiderwebs, skeletons, black lights & black light posters, weird lighting set-ups...you name it--he's done it.

This is a little digression from the costume thing for a minute...I remember one Halloween when we were in either high school or the very beginning of college. Erin and I had a sleepover at our house that night...we invited a few of our girlfriends and rented scary movies. After Kelli (our little sis) was done trick-or-treating, my parents took her to visit the Grandparents for awhile. So, we stayed at the house and continued our party. Well...somehow we decided to start dancing...(Susie or Dee, if you are reading this, surely you'll remember this night!). We turned off the lights in our den (except for the black light) and blasted the music. Where we were dancing, we have a big bay window that looks out over the backyard. Unbeknownst to us, my parents and sister had returned while we were having our little dance party. My dad parked the car out front and walked up the driveway to the backyard. Of course, he had his scary skeleton mask with him, so he slipped it on and stood staring in the bay window until one of us saw him...Sure enough, one of us caught sight of the skeleton face and screamed...which led to everyone screaming and diving down to the floor. It was extra freaky because, when standing outside the bay window, only his head was high enough to be seen. Once we realized it was him, we started laughing hysterically and yelling at him. I still haven't forgiven my Mom and Kelli for being part of his scheme.

I think it's stories like this one that has made me love Halloween so much...my parents always made it fun for us, which makes me want to keep that going every year.

Tomorrow...Part 5...More costume fun!