►Do you let your children participate in Halloween or prohibit it because you think it's demonic?
I'm a Christian, my husband is a Christian, both of my children are baptized. We celebrate Halloween. We love Halloween. I don't see anything wrong with it. Just like with any holiday, Halloween is what you make of it. If a person wants to use it as a time to worship Satan or whatever, then that's their problem. We use it as a reason to dress up, throw a party, and have fun - I don't think there's anything demonic about that.


►Are you excited for Halloween?
I am very excited for Halloween, it’s my second favorite next to Christmas. I used to not really care about it growing up though because living in a rural area growing up the only thing you can do for Halloween is dress up in a costume to go to school and that's about it. I really started to appreciate Halloween when got into my early twenties and started going to Halloween parties. When I got married and had my own home I could finally decorate for Halloween and I really love the way it made my house look inside and out. Having children just made me love Halloween even more - we have so much fun decorating the house and getting spooky and creating and wearing crazy costumes.
It's such a unique time of year that's so different from any holiday that we celebrate. I can't help but be excited about it.


►What are your favorite Halloween songs?
In no particular order:

1. This Is Halloween from Nightmare Before Christmas
2. Oogie Boogie's Song from Nightmare Before Christmas
3. Time Warp from Rocky Horror Picture Show
4. Thriller by Michael Jackson
5. The Munsters theme song
6. Somebody's Watching Me by Rockwell

►What's your best Halloween costume picture?
I don’t have photos of my best, but this is definitely one of my favorite $0 costumes: Hipster Snow White, 2014.  My sign says “She said it was an organic apple. #snowwhiteisblack”


BONUS:
My husband went as hipster Peter Pan (His sign reads “growing up so too mainstream.”)  and our son was hipster Aladdin!




►Do you wear the same costume for Halloween year after year, or do you change it up?
I love dressing up for Halloween. I love dressing up in costumes. Period. Any opportunity that I have to come up with a new costume, I'm going to do it. When I got married that meant one more costume I got to create for someone. And then I had two children and now I'm in costume hog heaven.

But this year, for the first time in my life, I'm actually going to re-wear the costume that I wore last year.

Last year me and my family attended my aunt's funeral on Halloween morning. We had already planned to attend a fall festival that evening so all of our costumes were laid out and waiting for us at home. We lived over an hour away so we got home, rushed to change into our costumes, I did everyone’s makeup and we were running a little bit late. When we got to the fall festival downtown it was already over. Apparently it had closed early so even if we did get there earlier it would have been over.

So there we were - me as a ghost, my husband as a werewolf, my daughter as a pumpkin, and my son as a zombie... all dressed up with nowhere to go. There wasn't a single trunk-or-treat event or another festival anywhere. So we just went out to eat and got stared at like people have never seen a family in costumes before.

So I told myself we’ll just try again this year!



►What is the most offensive Halloween costume you have ever seen?
I didn't see it with my own two eyes but I saw a photo on the internet that I don't care to hunt down to share because it's so wrong. It was a man in his 20s was wearing a priest’s robe and he had a dummy child wrapped around his waist with a child head hidden in the robe… I'm pretty sure you can imagine what that looked like or what he was going for there. Yuck.



►Would you rather stop celebrating Halloween or Christmas?
I'd rather give up Halloween.
I truly adore Halloween, but no one uses Halloween as an excuse to travel across the country to be with family and friends. Halloween isn't the time for exchanging gifts and drinking eggnog and listening to Christmas music. I need that stuff in my life too.

And besides, I could do many of the same Halloween type stuff that I love during Christmas: Eating candy, dressing in costumes, being weird and happy, etc.