Everybody Loves a Pumpkin….

Being the infantile that I am, Halloween is one of my most favourite times of year.

Autumn is here. Crunchy (on bad days, soggy) leaves carpeting the ground, a bitter chill in the air, excitement of fun activities to come: Bonfire Night, the important event that was my birth, festive frolics galore…. It’s an incredibly exciting time in general!

I like to think of Halloween as the opening party for all the fun winter games that are to come. I guess everyone does. Right…? The evenings draw nigh as the dark nights set in. But we can take comfort in the fact, what we lose in real daylight will soon be injected with dazzling, artificial brightness, as those twinkly festive lights grace our streets once more! Makes me giddy just thinking about it (genuinely).

And best of all? We kick things off with a pumpkin.

What could be better than befriending a giant vegetable? (Innuendo lovers, control yourselves). Some jolly, others ghoulish; all beautiful in their gloriously orange way. You know what they say? Everybody loves a pumpkin…

I have many a fond memory of ‘Trick or Treat’ times as a child. Don’t think I fully grasped the trick concept, but I embraced the fancy dress side of things with great delight. One of my earliest Halloween memories is getting ready after school one year to go trick or treating with my mum and friend, Leanne. Pumpkin carving was a big event (/Turnip carving if there were none of the orange chaps left in the Co-op…‘other supermarkets are available’, just not in our village…). This particular year, we donned the giant black bin bag garment. Adopting the ‘smock’ look shall we say. Very chic, very 90s. (There’s photographic evidence lurking somewhere). It was all the rage back then. Facially, I think we went for something a little more unorthodox. If I remember rightly, The Tiger was our face paint look of choice. Ah face paint – what a wonderful thing you are. Jack- o’- lanterns at the ready, off we went!

Halloween became an arguably bigger part of my life during my student years. You tend to spend most of your university years in fancy dress, planning fancy dress or witnessing others in fancy dress, so it would be rude not to embrace the one day of the year when the rest of society dresses up too…

I guess we’ll never quite match our American friends when it comes to All Hallows Eve. They take it to a whole other level. I can’t imagine Downing Street decorating the place with Pumpkins and David Cameron handing out candy treats. Obama was always my favourite… but still, Halloween seems to have become more popular (/commercial) than ever, with kids and adults alike ‘getting their scary on’.

‘Scary’ is not always the adopted look. Some go for the cute look. The pumpkins or the felines for instance. Others embrace the Mean Girls approach:

‘In the regular world, Halloween is when children dress up in costumes and beg for candy. In Girl World, Halloween is the one night a year when a girl can dress like a total slut and no other girls can say anything about it’. (Cady, Mean Girls).

Though recently I did feel like I’d walked into a Mean Girls-esque moment when I turned up to a 90s house party dressed as a Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle, only to discover that hardly anyone else was dressed up. The females especially. Though Britney Spears was there! She looked cooler. It may not have been quite as awkward if I’d known more people at the party. But I didn’t. So I just looked weird. Though my turtle shell was a good ice breaker and incidentally, a real hit with the ladies. I attracted a lot of pretty girls to introduce to my single male friends. And my boyfriend (I seem to remember him pushing me into one of them at one point? Weird). Turns out I’m not that good a wing-man though… it’s on my list of things to work on.

In the meantime, here are some of my favourite Halloween fancy dress costumes over the past few years…

Halloween 2010: Zombie Cheerleaders. The Zombie costume has become a favourite amongst Halloween enthusiasts. Mainly because it’s very simple and super versatile. Zombie Nurse, Zombie Doctor, Zombie Footballer, Zombie School Girl, Zombie Harry Potter…. Zombie Cheerleader. TA DA!

Some Zombie’s were more focused on their next drink rather than playing dead…

The Zombie Hotdog? No, he looks alive and well…

Not quite sure what happened to these zombies…

Halloween 2012: The Year of the Bat…

The Zombie Doctor turned up as well…

Bats, Vampires, Zombie Scientists even Cruella Deville. We all unite on Halloween!

Halloween 2013: Dead (Zombie) Sailors ‘On the Town’…

Halloween 2014: Quite devastatingly, I didn’t make it out this Halloween and spent it watching/not watching a scary film instead. But two of my houemates worked their Halloween magic with these epic fancy dress efforts…