Halloween -- by guest Micah Heiselt

In my humble opinion Halloween is by far the best non-denominational holiday that we have. It is the only day of the year when you can turn yourself into whatever you want and still be accepted by your friends, family and society. At least as much as you were before.

The downside to Halloween, though, is that almost all of the design that accompanies it is really bad and kitschy. Kids dress up in prefab, plastic costumes and march past yards full of prefab, plastic pumpkins, inflatable witches and orange Christmas lights. There must be a universal law correlating the quality of a holiday with the amount of depressing design that represents it.

This is why I believe in taking Halloween back to the good old days of homemade costumes, self-carved jack-o-lanterns and Sugar Daddies. In a good year I start my costume planning around June or July, mull it over for a month or two and then spend a leisurely month or so followed by an all-nighter on construction. Here are some of the fruits of my labors.




I believe this is the costume that Rachel was referring to in my introduction. I had lots of fun with this one and even won a cake!




My wife and I had a great time with these. We had broomsticks inside which allowed us to stretch up to 9 feet tall.



This was a costume that we had planned long before we even thought of having a kid. We saw a baby porcupine (a porcupette) at a nature preserve in Alaska and it was settled.

So, Happy Halloween to all! I really enjoyed guest blogging this week and I want to thank Rachel for inviting me. Also, thanks to all of the nice people who posted positive comments. It’s nice to get a good ego boost now and again.