by Penny S. Vincent

Created on: November 01, 2007   Last Updated: July 08, 2008

Halloween has always been a favorite holiday for many members of my family. I don't know why Halloween feels so special to us. Maybe it's because we get the chance to dress up and pretend we are someone else, without anyone thinking we're crazy for doing it. Perhaps it is getting to see all the excitement in the children's faces as they trick or treat throughout the neighborhood. Who knows? It could be because it makes us feel so young at heart, or because there's always a sense of mystery and magic in the air.

Throughout the years, I have tried out many Halloween costumes. Some were store-bought, while others were homemade. Some were meant to be scary, but were not very scary at all. Others were designed to be cute, and actually were. Then there were the ones that were meant to be original creations. These were the best costumes of all!

My favorite costume changed, as I grew older. When I was very young, I enjoyed being a ghost or skeleton. As a little older, but still young child, I started liking the witch costumes more. Then as youths, my sister and I started making our costumes compliment each other. Everyone used to think we were twins, even though we weren't. Therefore, it was fun to dress in look-alike costumes, and confuse people. We dressed as a pair of dice one year, and as a pair of aces once. I think we even dressed as robots on one Halloween. We had gotten the idea for the dice and ace costumes from my brother's high school band using cardboard boxes to dress as presents under the Christmas tree during a Christmas parade.

As we got older, we started getting more into the adult costumes, which were the scarier ones. You know the type; I'm sure: the creepy werewolves, and ax murderers, and bloody doctors. These types of costumes involved wearing hot masks and were meant to scare the little kids (and their parents too!). They were good for haunted houses and Halloween parties. However, I still preferred the witch costumes or alien costumes to the creepy, scary ones.

For one Halloween fund-raiser carnival at my sons' elementary school, I decided to combine my two favorite types of costumes. I designed a costume that made me into a witch queen from Mars. It must have been a great costume, because other people enjoyed seeing it as much as I did. The kids loved it too! I was operating the cotton candy booth, and I made up a story about using human hairs to make the cotton candy, since many of the kids wanted to know how cotton candy was made. I would come

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