I love the fun and challenge of homemade Hallowe'en costumes. These range (not in order) from 1958 to 1989, and were chosen for the practical reason that they were the photos I could find handily.
The Trees in Autumn
The Happy Clown
The Salt and Pepper Shakers
The Fierce Knight
The Quill Pen and the Umbrella
Those were the days! The days before the proliferation of adult Hallowe'en parties, "harvest festivals," trick-or-treating at the mall, "Trunk-or-Treat", and safety-above-all. We enjoyed crisp fall nights (we never went out before dark!); hand-carved pumpkins with candles inside (though every Hallowe'en was haunted by the memory of the hoods who prowled the streets smashing them, breaking my six-year-old heart) and roasting our own pumpkin seeds; roaming throughout the neighborhood as a family, waving at our friends as we passed (we only went to the homes of people we knew, but that was most of the neighborhood and certainly provided a more-than-sufficient "haul"); consuming cider (unpasteurized, of course), doughnuts, and my mother's amazing pumpkin cookies. And we never, ever bought a costume! Hallowe'en was about children, creativity, family, and neighbors even more than candy. Not that the candy wasn't significant in those days when sweets were not so readily available as today.
I tried to keep my experience of Hallowe'en alive for our children, and succeeded to some extent. Moving to Florida pretty much did away with the "crisp fall nights" part, however.
