In Preperation for All Hallows Eve

So it's getting to be that time of year again. Halloween time. Personally, my third favorite holiday of the year, behind Christmas and St. Patrick's Day, and not without reason. I'm a big fan of random crap, and Halloween sure has its fair share of it. This year marks our first Halloween in a house, so I decided that the Houghs would 'spookify' their residency appropriately.

'Tis the season.

Down here in Orlando, as in all other civilized pockets of the known world, one tends to notice large, retail spaces suddenly pop up - seemingly overnight - distributing the usual Halloween goods. Costumes, decapitated latex corpses, fog machines, strobe lights, stretched out cotton balls with a cheap plastic spider attached that automatically turns it into 'spooky spider webs.' The usual. Within five miles of our house, about six of these stores opened, and Yours Truly - being the impulse buyer and purveyor of all things random - spent a sound majority of his free time (and disposable income) in these warehouses (...of horror!!).

Now, this is the first year that our kids can really get into the spirit of things. We're fairly excited about the whole thing, but we're nowhere near as pumped for Pumpkinfest '10 as our two year old is. I'm not sure if too many of you guys know our eldest daughter all that well or not, but there's a reason we call her 'Cannonball.'

You know those cutesy, button-nosed, two year old girls that wear pink and hearts and unicorns and what-else, and that are way too into the whole Disney princess thing?

We sure as hell don't have one of those.

Last year we dressed her up as a witch, and it was the most fitting costume we could've picked. If they had sold a costume that rhymed with 'witch,' we probably would've sprung for it. As such, we knew that this year, we'd have to find yet another costume equally fitting to her personality and demeanor... and when you're searching in Halloween stores for girl toddler costumes, you're left with the following choices: a princess (no), a fairy (no), or a fairy princess (hell no).

Left with aforementioned crap options, we decided to go the D.I.Y. route and make her a Punk Rocker.

(Oi.)

We found some bitchin' temporary tattoos so we can sleeve her arms, some fishnets, some hair-spray, and a pair of old school Converse shoes. I took a razor to a blue jean jacket and, after adhering some sequins and buttons and the like, she's got herself a costume. Rock and roll.

...Abby's first costume, alas, is going to be a flower. We had a flower costume lying around that Alayna never wore and said 'what the hell.'

What can I say - we're lazy parents.

House decorations and costumes aside, I've also begun to amass gigabytes upon gigabytes of the greatest Halloween music and TV specials known to man. Ultimate Halloween Party mixes, scary sound effects, haunted house crap - you name it, I probably have it now. Hours of work, but well worth it: now I've custom-designed numerous playlists, DVD specials (classics from back in the day, of course), and all other sorts of Halloween-ish crap that will hopefully last us through the next ten or so Halloweens.



....and in other news, and Kris and I decided to stay married for yet another year.

...that makes four!

- Brian