I'm Australian, so we don't celebrate Halloween, but my favourite ever costume that I have dressed in was as Carmen Sandiego. - Red coat, boots, big red hat and carrying an inflatable globe.

A two headed, three-legged monster with my friend when we were kids - with a giant t-shirt we both fit into, and three legged pants her mom made us, then painted our faces different colours.

You don't celebreat Halloween in Australia? Wow. Poor Australian kids.

I've had some great costumes. In highschool, I dated a basketball player who was 6'11". Now, I'm not short but next to him... We went out as the Jolly Green Giant and the Little Sprout.

Lucifer, prince of darkness.

Best impromptu: age 15, at a debate tournament in another part of Houston. Well, me, my partner, and two others got eliminated early, so we went trick or treating in the local neighborhood, catalog cases in hand, as lawyers. Damned self-fulfilling costume prophecy.

My mom made me a Belle costume when I was five. It looked EXACTLY like the gold dress in the movie. It was great.

Two years ago I dressed up as Regan from the Exorcist. It was awesome!

Definitely my purple unicorn costume--my mom made it 3 sizes too big so that it could fit over my snow suit (trick or treating in Alaska is cold!) so I could fit in the costume for years. :)
Little hood with a sparkly horn on it...eventually it was sold in a garage sale.

Vampire beauty queen! I had a nice party dress that I'd bought for a semi-formal dinner that I wasn't ever going to be able to wear again...except for Halloween. So I bought a tiara and some opera gloves, made a red sash that said "Miss Transylvania" and, of course, had really pale make up and vampire teeth. I was only going to the school's Halloween dance that year, not trick-or-treating, and I think I was the only girl who didn't dress slutty at the school...

My favorite was this year - we actually celebrated Saturday because it's not cool to get shit-faced on weekdays. I was a clapping monkey, complete with the red vest and the little red hat! Because I also had the cymbals, I couldn't drink, so I had people feeding me various beers and liquors all night!

I also almost won a costume contest, but lost out to a girl who was dressed like ...naked. ;{

I went all existential at the age of about 12 or 13, and went as 'Nothingness'. I was all in black, with a veil and gloves, and didn't speak-my sisters had to explain who I was. Best part-in that year's picture of us, you actually can't see me! I was there, I swear, but didn't show up in the picture.

This year I am going as Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter! Complete with radish earrings, butter beer cork necklace, and Hogwarts jumper!

A palm tree my mother made for me when I was about 9. It was mostly crepe paper and staples but I was still the coolest kid in school. Even if I could barely walk in it

This year I am going as Luna Lovegood from Harry Potter! Complete with radish earrings, butter beer cork necklace, and Hogwarts jumper!

My mom sewed, so she made all my costumes for years. Best was the Bugs Bunny head that was SO DAMN BIG other people in my family wore it for years until it was tragically lost.

This year my daughter is a princess. She's well-covered at least!

My senior year of college, my roommates and I dressed up as Blossom, Bubbles, and Buttercup... the Powerpuff Girls. I was Bubbles. We took a trip to the fabric store, made our dresses, completed the look with dress-matching eye makeup, and white long johns and ran around town ready to fight evil monkeys and the like. It was awesome.

None of my peers ever got my halloween costumes.

As a kid I dressed up as a clown and claimed I was the President (Reagan). As a college kid, I dressed in my usual way and claimed I was Glen Gould. Although once I dressed up in some of my older clothes and claimed I was a grad student (parodying my future self).

age 4: Cyndi Lauper, complete with spray-in orange hair

More recently, in college I went one year as a Freudian slip and one year as GoGo from Kill Bill (I had a group of friends that did a Kill Bill theme, which was totally sweet).

Oooh. I want to play, too! I love Halloween. I love making costumes. I'm a large gal (size 20, yikes!) so I learned early that store bought stuff just was not going to fit.

I have 2 costumes that stand out for me as favorites. One year I went as a chicken. I took a pair of shorts and a long sleeve tshirt and hot glued yellow feathers over the entire thing. Add red tights (with little felt shoe covers), a red feather boa scrunched up for a tail, and a really disturbing rubber chicken mask and I was perfect. I ended up coming in 2nd at a local costume contest - lost to some girl in a latex sexy nun costume.

My other favorite was a few a couple of years ago I went as a Valkyrie. The costume was easy foil pans cut up to form armour and gold spray paint. A friend helped me make a winged helmet out of plaster. The costume was sweet, but a bit uncomfortable. And a clanged when I walked. I wish I could post a picture, as it's really hard to imagine from a description, but it totally kicked ass.

On another note, one year a friend waited until the day of Halloween to say he didn't have a costume. He was just going to buy something this late in the game, but all the stores were sold out and what wasa left was mostly junk. But all the stores had their Christmas decorations out, so a green sweat suit later we dressed him up like a Christmas tree!

Right now I'm dressed as my cat, but my favorite costume is when I dressed up as Link, the video game character from the Legend of Zelda. My husband dressed up as Princess Zelda, and we went to a video game tournament that had a costume contest. We won (for the costumes, though he did get 3rd in the tourney as well). :)

I've got a tie, I think. I was Princess Leia when I was 11: my mom sewed the white robe and did my hair with the buns. It was awesome. But a few years ago, six friends and I went as the seven deadly sins. Being Wrath on Halloween is pretty awesome. :D

The last time I dressed up for Halloween, I was filling in on bass for a friend's band at a show, so I dressed up like Happy Tom from Turbonegro. Me, and he.

My senior year of high school I went Goth, and by Goth I mean ALL OUT: black hair, fake nose ring, black lipstick, heavy black eyeliner, crazy black outfit and fake black tattoos and black boots and fishnets and everything. I'm really pale so the contrast was intense (my hair is normally light brown). I wore it to school and people I knew would look right at me in the hall, not recognize me, and then freak out when they did. It was awesome...

I was a table one year. My folks made like a sandwich board, and we covered it with table cloth. Then we cut out pictures of food from magazines and glued them on.

I used tacky glue, red glitter, and red gemstones to make ruby slippers for a Dorothy costume sophomore year of college. Even though the replica of the gingham smock was a little shoddy, I more than made up for it by nailing every other detail including the basket containing toto.

Weirdly enough, my favourite costume was being a ghost. Because no one seems to do it anymore! I covered myself in an almost-white sheet, cut out purposely mismatched eyeholes, and wrapped a string around my neck. It was really nice to regress.

My mom made me so many amazing costumes over the years. I've been a pink sparkly unicorn, a pumpkin, a cat, a clown, a princess, but the best costume she ever made me was probably when I was too little to pick it out for myself I was Bo Peep and my little brother was my sheep.

The pictures are so cute, although we both look rather unsure as to what the hell is going on.

I went as an iPod commercial a couple years ago - dressed all in black, wore my iPod and danced like a maniac. It was good times. I was totally out of place at the sluttified house parties, though...

This year the beau and I took our cue from Mean Girls (no, not like THAT). We went as Mathletes. Awww yeah.

All of my past Halloween costumes were ugly as hell, so I am not going to get into any of them.

My best was in high school, when I dressed as a parrot (with a funny nose, colorful make-up, and feathers sewn all over my clothes) and told everyone I was Papagena from The Magic Flute.

It now occurs to me that my Papagena was not nearly sexy enough.

My best costume must be the one for this year - American McGee's Alice! She was a character in a cult computer game. Alice goes insane after a tragic accident which destroys her home and family, and ends up in an asylum. She gets called back inside her mind to Wonderland which has become a bit.... diseased. The game involves a lot of running around hacking card cards to pieces with weapons such as the Vorpal Blade.
I didn't think everyone would get my geeky reference, though, so I added a (fake!) dead rabbit to my costume. I was then either a) evil Alice or b) a bunny-boiler, for those who didn't even notice the rest of my costume (blue dress, bloody apron, black boots, knife).
My second-best costume would be the ladybird one, though. My mother made it when I was little, and then we resized it recently for a charity event where I wandered about in costume waving a bucket in peoples' faces. If had a mask made of tights and tea-strainers, and a really lovely cape.

My two favorite have been dressing up as Debbie Gibson, from Out of the Blue and as Alfalfa from Our Gang. In college I slutted it up a bit. Took me awhile to realize that fun costumes are far far better than sexy devil outfits and well, fun.

2 years ago I bought a padded envelope as big as my torso, decorated it, wore it, and went as a love letter. Complete with a lacey shirt and tights.

N is for Neville who died of ennui. My friend went as C is for Clara who wasted away. I love Edward Gorey.

My dad put together an awesome gypsy costume for me in junior high. He even macromayed (sp?) me a belt. I won best costume in the entire school!

Mwezzi, American McGee's Alice is ultracool!

I did up an excellent Wicked Witch of the West costume three or four years ago for a costume party. It was great. I made my own witch's hat out of cardboard, I already have loads of black clothing to layer. I used cardboard to make a nice old-fashioned broom out of my baseball bat (which also made me feel pretty secure walking down the street alone at night), and got green facepaint and everything. And everyone knew who I was straightaway!

The year I officially moved out of my parent's house, my roommate and I had a huge Halloween party. I was Mia Wallace (Uma Thurman)from Pulp Fiction. I had the wig, the outfit, and an awesome syringe sticking out of my chest. I had a little blood coming out of my nose, too. It rocked.

I am a whale. But not just a whale, the great white whale Moby Dick. My spouse is Ahab, so we just chase each other around issuing death threats. It's really hard to wear at work today, though.

Come to think of it, all the dumb "sexy" costumes are store-bought, whereas all the awesome ones are home-made. There's a connection here with food...

My favorite group costume was definitely Teen Girl Squad a couple of years ago. I was Whats-Her-Face.

This year my boyfriend is a robot and I'm a shark (our love is forbidden).

Halloween is the best, y'all.

my father made me a witches custome with white flannel on one side, black on the other, and for many years I alternated between being a good witch and a bad witch. When I was 10 I took my mum's academic robes and a flower wreath and went as Morgan La Fey from "The Mists of Avalon". I was kind of an intense little kid.
My favourite though was when I was maybe 11- putting on a white tennis skirt and shirt, tennis shoes. I grabbed my tennis racket and then, I put a bloody knife in my back- viola! Monica Seles.

When I was still a Brownie Girl Scout, I dressed up as Beetlejuice for Halloween. Awesome homemade costume.

My favourite was the mermaid costume my mom made for me when I was 10... the tail was so shiny and pretty!

My friend and I were a s'more our junior year of college. We wore brown foam on our backs for graham crackers, and white/dark brown foam on our chests (I was the marshmellow half, she was the chocolate half). So whenever we hugged, we were a s'more, and we sandwiched a lot of people that night. I loved it; best costume ever.

My two best friends and I made our own banana split costume when we were in the fifth grade. We made a three person bowl and banana sandwich board, used sheets and chicken wire to make the ice cream scoops, stuffed white tights with basting to make whipped cream (except for my best friend, who wore a red cherry hat) glued sponge bits to the whipped cream hat for nuts, and made chocolate fudge out of garbage bags.

It was AWESOME.

My mom dressed me as a "gypsy" one year, employing a few peasant skirts, a dark vest, and lots of lace, sashes and chunky, jingly jewelry. In spite of being under about a mile of lacy skirt and an umbrella, though, I ended up drenched and freezing that year. =(

This year I'm a Brownie Girl Scout, complete with the vest that I wore from the 1st to the 3rd grade.

Last year I decided to make fun of the slutty girls. I wore a slightly revealing dress, fishnets, my "stripper shoes", gaudy makeup, with an unlit cigarette in one hand and a martini glass in the other. And then I had a name tag that said "Hi! I'm... YOUR MOM." And I felt really good about myself. :)

i've had many good costumes but my favorite was "Victim of the Santa Fe style".

i wore a cowboy hat, a chambray duster from a thrift store that someone before me had painted with a chubby native carrying a pot, a denim skirt that i fringed, a chambray shirt, a blue bandanna that i fringed and beaded, two strings of 'indian corn' around my neck, an orange 'cowboy belt around my waist;, fake tin conchas around my hip, huge fake tin concha earrings, cheesy plastic cowboy boots with three inch heels and a shawl tucked in somewhere or another. I was living in albq at the time, so most people 'got' it, but i did have a couple of older ladies (from santa fe) tell me how pretty i looked - and there was no snark. they genuinely liked my look as everyday apparel.

My secnior year of college, I went as "Doctor Girlfriend". This is a character on a cartoon called Venture Brothers. What made it so good is that the character is just a regular looking woman, but has a man's voice. That morning I woke up with a very hoarse throat, and I also sounded like a man. Hence the "costume".
(Yeah, pretty lame, but the drunk college students found it hilarious.)

My best ever Halloween costume was a homemade flapper costume my last year of high school. Low-waisted dress, turban with feathers, long string of pearls, and long gloves. What really made my night was that completely unrelated to my costume, one of the guys at the party had dressed up as a dead 20's gangster. We went around posing for pictures the entire night.

(The next year was boring in comparison - just a hippie. But my boyfriend rocked - dressed up in a storebought black robe and devoid of hair because he had had cancer treatment a month prior, he looked like Ingvar Bergman's Death. At least the cancer was good for something!)

I have two favorite costumes. The first one was the Statue of Liberty. I used that for at least two years when I was a munchkin. My mom had this old, shimmery blue dress, so she pinned it and sewed it so it was more my size, and we made the crown, torch and book out of cardboard and tinfoil. It rocked!

My current favorite is the costume I wore last year. I went as a peacock. I bought the costume online and it was worth every penny I spent. I was more than appropriately covered in all aspects, so I wasn't *too* over-sexualized, and there certainly weren't any racial messages at all. The only "people" I may have offended were real peacocks, but I was hoping I could emanate some of their majesty and do them proper justice ;)

Where I went to university, there was a large recreation center called Ping, and when I work out, I turn beet red and sweat and smell and curse (like most people). It always amazed me that everytime I went, about half of the women there would be wearing full make-up, big hoop earrings, and short shorts with something written across the tuchus. And they never break a sweat. How is that possible?
But anyway, I went as a Ping Girl. I wore gaudy makeup, bought big dangly earrings, a t-shirt, shorts, a thick headband in my hair, socks, and high heels.
Almost everyone knew what I was with me telling them. :)

The One Hour Martian. Some of you might remember the dry cleaning stores called "One Hour Martinizing". Well, I got this creepy scary funky mask and wore black tights and a black sweatshirt. I wrapped myself in dry cleaning bags and hung dry cleaning hangars all over.

I was the "One Hour Martian". Oh well.

Best Halloween costume I ever had was Abraham Lincoln with a big gory gross fake bullet wound in the side of my head, and my friend as John Wilkes Booth, carrying around a play program and brandishing an antique gun, and yelling incoherently.

Before that I was a good evil Alice in Wonderland, my apron covered in blood!

I enjoyed the links you provided here and your commentary on Halloween! Great post.

When I was four my mom made me a Big Bird costume. It was amazing-- feathers on the head, shoe coverings that looked like his feet, gloves that looked like his hands-- the works! I played dress up in it a lot and wore the head for years. One year it won me "Best Hat" contest at school.

My best costume was this year : Princess Peach and my boyfriend as Luigi. As annoying as the whole princess culture can be, Peach is a badass and I made the costume myself, which was so rewarding. Not to mention, we walked around all night saying, "Oh no, Bowser time!"

Frida Kahlo. I used an eyebrow pencil to turn my eyebrows into bird's wings, with the body of the bird drawn between them, and glued tiny clear beads under my eyes with liquid latex for tears, because she's always crying in her self-portraits. For the clothes I just wore a lot of flowy, vaguely Mexican looking skirts from a thrift store and a shawl. Sadly, I couldn't do anything crazy with my hair because it was short at the time. I regret every year that I didn't think to have someone take a photo, but this was before digital cameras and cell phone cameras became ubiquitous.

My favorite costume was in kindergarten. I loved dinosaurs, so my mother sewed myself and my sister dinosaur costumes. I was green with light blue spikes and spots and my sister was green with dark green spikes and spots. We were awesome dinosaurs.

I was the Old Food Pyramid for Halloween a couple of years ago. It was fun, and cheap (only the cost of a snickers bar!) http://www.flickr.com/photos/moomoobloo/54939377/

I think the ones here are the best:
http://picasaweb.google.com/anna.faherty/Halloween
The Hershey Kiss, the purple crayon . . . and of course the pumpkin costume that got repurposed this morning on my little brother's head!
PS I carved a pumpkin with a picture of Stephen Colbert, and no one thinks it looks like him! Any thoughts? (The picture of that is also there)

When I was in college, everyone always dressed up as a group. After four years of conforming to the group will to dress as herds of slutty jungle girls, slutty doctors, slutty summer campers, and the like, I've spent every year since in the costumes no one else would ever do with me due to their non-sluttyness. I love sports, especially football, so this year my "work" costume (yes my office dresses up) is our injured hometown QB, Matt Leinart , who is out for the season - in a kids Leinart jersey with eye black, and a sling on my arm. Tonight I'll be a referee - complete with home-made penalty flags to throw at people dressed like I used to in college!

Question: How does one dress as a 'Freudian Slip'?

last year my fiance and i went as republicans. it was fantastic.

this year him, my best friend, and myself all got gray t-shirts and spray painted them together to say "Berlin" and drew grafitti on them and were the Berlin wall. when we were together we were pre-tear down, and when we were apart we were pieces.

My favorite costume is definitely this year's.
I was standing outside of my school's student union, talking on my cell phone. A group of Japanese tourists walked by and they all got their cameras out and took pictures of me.

I am Bunny Lennox.

I was a gypsy for Halloween one, too. I think I was in kindergarten, and we came back from vacation, and my folks said, "Oh crap it's Halloween! What do we have here some flowing material and scarves? Oh a tambourine! You're a gypsy."
The next year they spent a whole lot of effort into making a custom She-Ra costume for me, cause the store bought versions were lame.
I've had some good ones and flops, like one year I tried to go as a Living Dead Doll, and everyone was like, "Why are you a bloody child?!"

When I was just over a year old, my mom took a pillow case and painted the Pillsbury flour package on it. She cut holes out for my head and arms and put baby powder in my hair. I was a "sack of flour." It was a really neat idea (and free!)and one of my favorite costumes ever.

SingOut, I've seen it done a couple of different ways. A combo of the two would be especially awesome: The first was someone else's costume here; they were going to wear a slip with Freudian phrases on it (I guess, like "penis envy" and "Oedipus complex"). At the party I went to Saturday night, the person wore a slip and a giant beard, I guess to look like Freud. I think if you went with both a beard AND phrases, it could be super-awesome.

I love retro TV characters as Halloween costumes. A few years ago, my husband went as the Greatest American Hero when I went as Punky Brewster. Then we went as Charles Nelson Reilly and Brett Somers from the Match Game. We were invited to a superhero-themed party the next year, so he re-used his GAH costume and my best friend and I went as Electra Woman and Dyna Girl, respectively (from the old Kroftt superstars show). My costumes are definitely oriented towards the quality reaction over quantity -- most people won't know who we are, but the ones who do go kee-razy once they put things together.

I was Cap'n Carl this year from Pee Wee's Playhouse.

I think I wrote about this on one of the other Halloween-related threads, but: when I was four years old, I was a Holiday Inn. My mom decorated a box to look like a hotel (lots of windows) made the lettering to look like that of a real Holiday Inn hotel, and then gave me a little hat with the flower decal on it. Why was I a Holiday Inn? Because we had stayed in one in North Carolina that year, and for some reason I had liked it...and I was a very odd child.

Roadkill. Skunk, specifically.

Roadkill. Skunk, specifically.

Audrey Hepburn in Breakfast at Tiffany, and Lady Liberty with No on 85 bumper stickers on my dress. I wore it again on election day.

a home made captain picard outfit (I didn't wear a bald cap or anything, just went as a girl Picard). I loved that thing...still have it around here somewhere...

I was Prince one year. I had a purple velvet suit, a velvet hat, velvet boots and painted the word "slave" on my cheek, as he did at the time.

My mom made me a costume to go with this nursrey rhyme:
Ride a cock horse to Banbury Cross
To see a fine lady upon a white horse
With rings on her fingers and bells on her toes
She shall have music wherever she goes

She sewed me a horse and a princess hat and glued bells to my shoes. It was a pretty cool costume, and extremely unique. I think I was five or six at the time, although I might actually have been younger.

My favorite costume I made was Bjorn Borg, member if an evil alien race of cyborg tennis pros. I was all in white, with hoses and wires crawling everywhere, blinking lights on my chest, and had one arm clad in dryer hose ending in a mechanical-looking tennis racket. I also had a headband holding my one mechanical eye (which had a prescription lens in it, so I could see).

Last year I was Velma from Scooby Doo.

three years ago, my girlfriends and i went as superheroes. no superheroes in particular, just brightly colored tights with boxers on top, a t-shirt and bright spandex sheets we tied into capes. we all had different colors and patterns, but a similar style, and ran around "saving people" so everyone knew who we were. so much fun.

my latest costume was a giraffe. at 5'5", i figure there is only one day a year i can get away with pretending to be a giraffe...

I dressed up as American McGee's Alice a few years ago! It was a really cool costume. I even found little skulls to attach to the bow at the back of my apron. It took me forever to find just the right looking apron and quite a while to pick out the right symbols for the pockets.

I considered pulling it out this year but I was going to be spending 5 hours sitting in lectures and then 5 hours in labs. And to top it off I woke up with a big headache this morning but couldn't skip school.

I put a picture up if anyone is curious.

I was obsessed with that Alice game, but I'd forgotten all about it!

I was Cloudy With a Chance of Showers this year. I wore gray and taped polyfil all over myself and carried a squirt bottle. I'm 28, and just as he did my whole life, my Dad helped me make this one too. Mom can sew, but for some reason my Dad was always the Halloween Costume parent.

When i was in kindergarten my mom made this awesome hobo clown costume complete with a giant homemade bow tie, face paint, a stick with a handkerchief to hold my stuff. i looked so pissed in all of my pictures because my friends were wearing cool shit like poodle skirts and ninja costumes but the pictures are hilarious now.

This year I was dressed up as a strawfeminist! I dressed up as a scarecrow and walked around saying, "I hate men! Down with penises!" It took some explaining, though. :D

i am not sure what to think about this. Bulgaria hotels