Halloween is one of the favorite kid’s holidays, for obvious reasons. Not only do they get to dress up in their fantasy costume, but they have the added thrill of going out in the evening, checking out all the lights and Halloween decorations, knocking at every door to collect a treat. Most kids do like candy (!) and this is one day they get to indulge in those sweets.

Hosting a party this Halloween for kids is fun and certainly heightens their excitement, waiting for the sun to go down and get down to the serious business of trick or treating. Halloween party food can be simple. For a group of eight kids, a couple of pizzas will suffice to get some ‘real’ food into their stomachs. Broil a batch of hot dogs and lay out warm buns, along with sides of green relish, a bottle of mustard (which you’ve tinted bright orange with a couple of drops of red food coloring) and ketchup. You might also serve them a hearty bowl of chili, with grated cheddar, sour cream and sliced black olives on the side, for the kids to dress as they wish.

Once everyone has eaten, they’re good to go. There’s only one thing left – aside from collecting their treats – to complete the festivities – Halloween party favors!

Here we’ve got some ideas that make easy and inexpensive Halloween party favors. You can assemble these party favors the day before the party, or while the kids are out trick or treating. When the kids get home, flush with a big bag of treats, you can end the party with individual Halloween treat bags, handed out to each child as they head for home. Your Halloween party favors will surely be the icing on the cake, so to speak.

Pick up a package of white paper lunch bags and a set of markers. Draw a simple design, such as a Jack o’ Lantern, witch on a broomstick, or a creepy spider, on the lower two-thirds of the bag, to allow for folding the bag closed. Write each kid’s name below the design. Alternatively, you can also decorate the bags with Halloween stickers. Now, what to put in the bags?

A few rubbery creepy-crawlies never hurts. Girls will shriek and boys will put them on their sister’s pillow. Universally enjoyed.

Kids love stickers. A package of Haloween stickers is a good start. The dollar type stores are famous for their seasonal figurines, cheap and cute. Pumpkins, ghosts, witches and the like – these little figurines will earn a treasured spot on a bookshelf or dresser. Halloween coloring books, Halloween themed sunglasses and socks are other good choices. Halloween candles are great Halloween party favors stuffers. Wax lips and vampire teeth help round out your assortment.

If there’s still room in your Halloween party favors bags, a tiny, miniature pumpkin from the supermarket helps keep the spirit going. Use your markers to draw funny faces on each little pumpkin. Teen girls love some of the extreme Haloween cosmetics – black, orange and canary yellow nail polish, for example.

While you’re at the supermarket, check the candy section for Halloween lollipops. In fact, you can use a little ribbon to knot around the lollipop stick and then shut the bag with a bow tie of ribbon.

With a bag of these Halloween party favors, you’ll have a group of delighted kids!

Most owners of animals all want their furry friends to in some way reflect exactly what they themselves look and feel like, which is where cat Halloween costumes come into play. Like dogs and other furry little friends, such as ferrets, there’s a company somewhere, in some town, making costumes that will fit onto the body of the feline in your family to make them fit more in this Halloween.

Haloween is an ancient and revered celebration of the souls of the dead, which in itself has nothing to do with what we celebrate today as the feast. The main thing celebrated these days about Halloween is commercialism, and how companies can make a profit from it. There’s a great deal of cash being made, no doubt, and plumping your furry feline into a cat Halloween costumes is just one of the many ways that these companies continue to make money off the idea that everything most look just as the adverts and pitch men tell us it should look.

The idea of Haloween itself was originally a pagan ritual, which as mentioned celebrated the return of the souls of those passed in the previous year to the land of the living to make sure that they were being revered and celebrated by their kin left in the real world. It’s probably from this idea that the basis for witches and warlocks and demons and ghouls and all things evil happening on this night first came into the human psyche – and as cats are so ultimately associated with witches, it’s no stretch to see where associating cats with Halloween came about. But no one told those lovely men at the cat Halloween costumes’ company about this, and you can rest assured that this was the last thing on their minds when developing that bright red coat with a tail and forked ears for your feline.

So when you’re deciding what to put on your cat, make sure it’s not something itchy or rattly as that will drive them crazy. If possible, don’t use plastics as these cat Halloween costumes are so cheaply made their bound to be toxic. But the simplest and cheapest way there is to make a cat look and act scary on the night itself, especially when you have the Trick or Treater’s lined up outside is basic to say the least – open the door then pull its tail – now THAT will give them a scare!

The night before all souls day, the night when souls in the nether regions, when evil spirits, convene with humans souls to express their damnation, on Haloween night, whatever you do, don’t go into haunted houses looking for ghosts. If you live in a haunted house, don’t open it to the public that night. There’s a reason people light Jack lanterns on Halloween: the hideous pumpkins with their flaming eyes and contorted mouths frighten away the demons who are slouching towards your house to set up home. On Halloween, the ghostly spirits reveal themselves. In haunted houses, on Halloween night, spirits come out to cause you fright, for they hate Halloween, hate the crowds, hate that other spirits besides themselves are walking on the earth. Ghosts of haunted houses are simply unsociable.

In 1989, in Van Nuys, California, a paranormal investigation team photographed a ghost hanging a man in the attic, hanging him with a rope from a nail stuck in the rafters. In Hollywood, California, George Reeves, the original Superman, is seen often in his old home. People see him in his Superman uniform, holding a gun. Some say George killed himself, others say he was killed. In Benedict Canyon, California, Jean Harlow’s house has two ghosts, Paul Burn, Harlow’s husband, who shot himself, and a dead woman no one knows. Sharon Tate saw Paul’s ghost, and at the bottom of the stairs, a woman lying in her blood, her throat slit, just as, years later, she too would be found. Further north, in San Jose, California, people have seen figures in the windows of Winchester house, a house that the widow of the inventor or the Winchester rifle built according to the designs spirits were said to give to her, benevolent spirits intent on keeping the ghosts of the thousands who have died by the Winchester rifle from haunting her. California haunted houses are to be found everywhere along its coast.

All of the fifty states have haunted houses. In New Mexico, north of Santa Fe, at the foot of Black Mesa, is an old hacienda that housed the government of the Spanish governor, a merciless man who readily hanged criminals on the hacienda grounds. Ghosts have been seen there during Halloween, the ghosts of the governor’s wife, who died on the staircase. Some have seen ghosts walking on the grounds, undoubtedly the ghost of men hanged on the hacienda’s gallows in the 1840s, when the cruel governor ruled the land.

Among haunted houses, a naval station in Kansas is well known to house the ghost of a pilot who crashed on an airfield there. People saw the pilot get out of the crashed airplane, walk to a hanger there, yet when they got to the plane, they found his body dead. Since then, people see this pilot walking the hangar, others hear voices, others find things moved and changed. Doors open on their own. Cups flip over on their own. On Haloween, you’re sure to hear voices in corners, and see twisted shadows scampering close to the walls.

Residents of the American south find haunted houses in abundance. Civil war families, that were killed by soldiers, still occupy many Southern mansions. In Saint Francisville, Louisiana, a house built over an Indian grave, still houses the ghosts of men killed in that home, and some have seen spirits rising right up from the ground. In West Point, Mississippi, a child’s ghost is often heard and seen in a plantation mansion, searching for her mother, especially on the night of Halloween.

While many of these ghosts are benign, many others in these haunted houses resent visitors on Halloween night. Some might throw things at you, while others might try to hang you, as they did in California. Unless you’re prepared to actually encounter a ghost, stay away from haunted houses this Halloween night, when spirits and humans curse their ghostliness. You should be afraid! this Halloween is a truly spooky occasion!

The best pumpkin carving I’ve ever seen made its way around the internet several years ago. It was a jack-o-lantern of expert, but unexceptional carving. Two eyes, a nose, and a wide, gaping mouth that was in most ways extraordinary.

What made this the best pumpkin carving was that whoever did it took the scooped out innards of the pumpkin and arranged them in a way that made it seem that the jack-o-lantern was caught in mid-vomit. Instead of looking like it was wide-eyed with surprise, you’d see that it was wide-eyed with nausea perhaps from drinking too much Halloween punch. It cracks me up every time I think about it.

Another of the best pumpkin carving ideas I can remember is in the same vein. Carve a fierce looking jack-o-lantern. Give him narrow, angry eyes and a gaping maw with sharp fangs. Then, in one side of the mouth stick a smaller pumpkin with a frightened, horrified look on its face. Done properly this should look like the larger jack-o-lantern is eating the smaller one, a bit of malicious delight on this Halloween.

And it’s important to note that jack-o-lanterns are an important part of the Haloween tradition, and have been for centuries. According to wikipedia, the origin of the jack-o-lantern is as follows:

Jack was getting chased by some villagers from whom he had stolen, when he met the Devil, who claimed it was time for him to die. However, the thief stalled his death by tempting the Devil with a chance to bedevil the church-going villagers chasing him. Jack told the Devil to turn into a coin with which he would pay for the stolen goods (the Devil could take on any shape he wanted); later, when the coin/Devil disappeared, the Christian villagers would fight over who had stolen it. The Devil agreed to this plan. He turned himself into a silver coin and jumped into Jack’s wallet, only to find himself next to a cross Jack had also picked up in the village. Jack had closed the wallet tight, and the cross stripped the Devil of his powers; and so he was trapped. In both myths, Jack only lets the Devil go when he agrees never to take his soul. After a while the thief died, as all living things do. Of course, his life had been too sinful for Jack to go to heaven; however, the Devil had promised not to take his soul, and so he was barred from hell as well. Jack now had nowhere to go. He asked how he would see where to go, as he had no light, and the Devil mockingly tossed him an ember that would never burn out from the flames of hell. Jack carved out one of his turnips (which was his favorite food), put the ember inside it, and began endlessly wandering the Earth for a resting place. He became known as “Jack of the Lantern”, or Jack-o’-Lantern.

Stay away from that for a best pumpkin carving contest or home.

When Halloween comes around, the first step everyone takes is to start thinking about their costumes. Costumes are great because they allow you to pretend or act like someone (or even something) else for a couple of hours, or just one night. So people often ask themselves; what or who do I want to be for this Halloween? And many people want to dress up like celebrities.

It makes a lot of sense; the reason many of us love and follow celebrities and celebrity news and gossip is that many of us want to be a celebrity and live that lifestyle of glamor and fame. So what are the great celebrity costume ideas? Well, read on.

First of all, you must be careful with your celebrity costume ideas. There are many that are well-worn out. I’m looking at you, girl dressed up as Amy Winehouse. This is the problem with even the best of celebrity costume ideas; someone else might come up with it also.

For that reason, you want to avoid “flavor-of-the-month” celebrities when thinking about celebrity costume ideas. Anyone that is only recently famous (think, Meghan Fox) is a dubious choice as a good celebrity costume idea.

Going as a celebrity is difficult, as many celebrities don’t necessarily have a “look”. The reason? Celebrities are only people. For that reason, celebrity costume ideas are limited to celebrities that dress in their day-to-day life like costumes, such as Amy Winehouse or Flava Flav. For this reason, you will have to work hard to come up with good celebrity costume ideas.

Better than going purely as a celebrity is to go as a celebrity – in a particular role. Sure, you might be able to “pull off” a Tom Cruise costume, but wouldn’t it be more fun to be Tom Cruise in “Top Gun” or, for the bold, “Magnolia”. Of course, these celebrity costume ideas aren’t without some issues themselves. First of all, dressing as a character (or celebrity, for that matter) will probably force you to act like that character all night. Maybe this sounds good to you, but not to me. Secondly, you run the risk of being a character in a movie or show that few people have seen. Choose carefully, or you’ll spend your whole night trying to explain and convince people that, yes, in fact, this is a great reproduction of their costumes and that it is awesome.

All in all, good celebrity costume ideas are hard to come by, but, when done well are often the hit of the Haloween party.