Halloween

When I was a kid, my mom made Halloween costumes for me and my younger brother. We'd decide what we wanted to be a few months beforehand, and my mom would start planning and sewing. She made some awesome costumes. I have been a China Girl, a pumpkin, a witch, and Glinda the good witch from the Wizard of Oz. We always had much better costumes than the neighbor kids!

Here we are as pumpkins.

This is my Snow White costume. There is a little blue bird on my shoulder. There was an apple, too...I must have put it down for the picture.


Witch...


I love this costume...so pretty! This is the China Girl costume.

We  would go trick or treating in our neighborhood. We'd go to every house...there were kids all over the place, giant groups of them. Things were safe back then..I think my parents stopped coming with us when we were 8 or 9. We'd take a pumpkin shaped trick or treat container, a pillowcase when we were older. Then when we were done, we'd have the neighbor kids come over and we'd compare and exchange candy. Our candy got dumped into the big silver bowl in the kitchen after dad checked it for needles and drugs or whatever was possibly in there. Then we'd get to take a baggie of candy to school every day until it was gone.

It makes me sad that Halloween these days is on a lesser scale for kids than it used to be. It seems like trick or treating has all but disappeared, doesn't it?? These days kids go to the mall instead and trick or treat at the stores. Last year my parents got about 30 kids. When I was growing up they got more than 100 every year. I haven't had a trick or treater at my house for 5 years!

We'll have to tell our kids tales about how it used to be.

Happy Halloween, everyone! Don't forget to hit up the stores for Halloween candy on clearance on Monday morning!