Halloweeeeeeenie!

So this was my first true experience of Halloween in the US. 
It is a really big holiday here and many people dress up their houses up to 4 weeks before the event.

We went round Balboa Island, Newport Beach and had a look at some of the houses a couple of days before Halloween. We got chatting to a guy who had the best house on the island (IMHO), and he said he loved doing it just for fun. He had the monster mash playing in the background! He even had cards printed to advertise his Christmas show. We will be going back to check that out in a few weeks.

Then on Halloween we travelled about 40 minutes south of HB, down to Mission Viejo which is the kind of place where families chose to live - even more suburban than Huntington Beach (which is pretty suburban!) We went to my friend's partner's family house, and they had the special ingredient for Halloween - children!

So I was the only adult in the group who got dressed up, and went as a spider. My friends cut holes in sheets (one of which was fitted) but I don't really count that as an effort!!! I have used this costume idea before and it is a really cheap and easy way to get into the spirit (!) of the night. And it saves me being a sexy/slutty witch/cat/pirate wench etc. These seem to be the only options available to women!

So we walked round the streets with the two little ones (a fairy princess and Captain America sans shield or hood) knocking at houses and being given a plethora of candy. The neighbourhood was rather like the one where they trick or treat in ET, so I expected to see ET dressed as a ghost any moment. People in the houses were really friendly and pretty generous! It must cost some of these people a fortune in candy!!!

We were only out a couple of hours, but the kids seemed to really enjoy it. My friend who is only 5ft also really enjoyed pretending to be a child and collecting free candy from strangers! We also got to share some of the kid's candy, which was nice, although I did feel like I had overdosed on sugar afterwards and felt a bit sick! I was really surprised at the amount of older kids who were out. I thought after the age of 13 it would be pretty uncool to run round the streets getting small bite size treats of chocolate!

We got home to see the Halloween celebrations in West Hollywood on the TV. That looked immense. One thing is for sure, I will be joining the half a million people who get dressed up and hang out there, the next time I have a US Halloween!!! And I can dress up as a sexy spider...