Happy Halloween!

What’s Halloween without a black cat?

When I was a kid, a store bought Halloween costume meant a plastic jump suit thing and a plastic mask with a rubber band to hold it in place. The jump suit was the same no matter what you were supposed to look like, it was just painted with something different. The mask might be a different shape, but it still had the eyes cut out, nose holes and a mouth hole too small to really help breathing. If you had a costume cooler than that, someone made it for you, usually by hand. Or it was cobbled together from stuff in the house. When my grandmother’s were living with us, I often went as a little old lady.

Nowadays, though, you can go to the store and easily pick up a great costume for your kids at the store. My friends’ kids got to go as a princess in a full ball gown with sparklies on the skirt, and a skunk in a plush suit complete with tail (cutest thing ever to have the two year old skunk looking up at you and grinning as she says, “I stinky.”). Last year they got a pegacorn or a unisus. It was a combo unicorn Pegasus and was purple, so was way cool for the four year old.

Either way, these costumes are awesome. I would have killed for something like this back when I was little. It’s like reverse nostalgia. Usually we’re lamenting about how things were so much better when we were kids. Well, maybe Halloween as a whole was a bit grander and more exciting (with more homemade haunted garages in the neighborhood), but nowadays it’s so much easier to get an awesome costume.

( Click for costume cuteness. )