That is me in the picture, the short one with the cheeks and big grin, painted and real. Mom made the costumes for us and took us to a Halloween costume party. I don’t remember a bit of it other than the costume, which we recycled for several years, but she got first place. I also remember her taking the makeup off with Noxzema, it stunk and stung and caused much screaming and carrying on.

As I tell my friends here in the south, she made the costumes large enough that they would go over our winter coats, because more than likely it would snow up north or at the very least be bitter cold. Winter coats over Halloween costumes can really mess up a tutu’s effect, not to mention winter boots are not a good replacement for ballet slippers. We aren’t fat in the photo, we are winter clothing stuffed. Mom had made matching blue and white goodie bags that went along with the outfits. It makes her crazy, to this day, the kids that carry pillow cases and plastic bags for candy collecting. She never made any other costumes for us and she probably lent these off to family members once we had out grown them.

Halloween decorating for us then was a carved pumpkin and a huge bowl of big candy bars. It is now second only to Christmas for decorating and I have jumped on that bandwagon happily. I get a kick out of the kids here in their costumes, sans winter coats, giggling, laughing and pushing their way up the stairs. My favorites are the little ones that are so busy staring at the flashing lights that they don’t realize I can’t open the door without pinching them into the wall.

The candy bars are smaller, the lights are brighter but the fun is still the same. Happy Halloween.