Ever wonder why there are very few Halloween stores when looking for a costume? When you do find a store, they are usually full of people with a small picked over selection of products for sale. Avoid the frustration this year; be smart, take the following suggestion and shop early. The best way to select a unique costume for Halloween is to visit an online Halloween Shop. What better way to find a wide range and huge selection of high quality unearthly costumes, makeup, jewelry, accessories, decorations, party supplies, scary props, videos, tapes and even pumpkin carving patterns from the comfort of your own home. Shopping for Halloween items online is becoming increasingly popular.

Online costume stores offer quality costumes for every age group and size. Adult costumes featuring like various historical and cultural characters, clown costumes, French maid costumes, pirate costumes, funny costumes, witch costumes, devil costumes, vampire costumes, nurse costumes, cowboy costumes, the list is endless. What’s great about these stores is they can also be used for other holidays, not just for Halloween. Buy from the store when needing items for school plays, sporting events, birthdays, graduations, anniversaries and for every holiday on the Calendar.

Costume stores strive to provide for those customers who are looking for a costume in all adult men & women sizes, even the hard to find plus size costumes. Among the largely shaped outfits one can find fairies, geisha, goddesses, Red Riding Hoods, gladiators, pirates and werewolves. The younger theatre and Halloween fans are also likely to find interesting outfits here. The online stores offer almost all adult costumes adapted for teens and children with dozens of outfits especially designed for toddlers and babies. See the angel and fairy costumes for the most adorable getups you’ve ever seen for the little ones. Before buying a costume it is strongly recommended that you look at the sizing chart for the manufacture of the particular item as each of the manufactures make costumes differently. An experienced store staff will be able to give you information and answer questions on costume sizing.

Popular items from the TV, Movies & Comics sections, feature interesting outfits like Batman, Elvis, Harry Potter, characters from Star Wars, Disney’s Pirates of the Caribbean, and comic book characters from DC or Marvel Comics such as Superman, Wonder Woman and Spiderman. If you are looking to be a little more risqué this season, have a look at the adult’s sexy costume section. There will be the perfect little number for those scandalous playboy bunnies at heart. These also make great Valentine’s or anniversary gifts for that special someone in your life.

A novelty that is becoming huge for online costume stores is that special item for your pet. Eccentric costumers can now purchase an outfit for their dog or cat, and they get to choose from about a dozen different ones. Imagine trick or treating this year with Rover the super dog or Fluffy the pirate cat. Now there’s something you don’t see every day.

All Halloween fans know costumes are not complete without accessories. These online masquerade shops contain quite a lot of accessories to top off your costume. In the accessory section you’ll find beards, wigs, jewelry, wings, horns, shoes, weapons, helmets, capes, robes, hats etc. In the makeup section you can find all sorts of makeup kits, face colors, blood, fangs, prosthetics and other stuff you might need for the Halloween season.

The larger online costume shops will also have products for magicians and clowns, where they can find dozens of prop articles from lights, smoke machines, puppets, magic hats, swindle card decks and some other stuff to put on a great show for children and adults alike.

Don’t’ miss out on the show stopping party decorations and supplies before checking out of the store. No party would be complete without a blood feast of holiday napkins, balloons, themed plates, cups and utensils. You will also be able to pick up other fantastic items like glow in the dark skeleton props, bats and spooky spider webs. So what are you waiting for, check out an online store for that perfect Halloween costume this season skipping the lineups and picked over items. Share in the Halloween spirit and type in that eerie URL to buy exactly what you are looking for… and in your size!

Matthew Lester
http://www.articlesbase.com/art-and-entertainment-articles/the-way-to-find-a-terrorific-halloween-costume-this-season-124313.html

Here are some easy-to-make, kid-friendly party or trick-or-treat favors. This video is part of Halloween 2008 show hosted by Jennifer Perkins . SHOW DESCRIPTION :Let the ghoul times roll with our bewitching costume, pumpkin-carving, party-planning and decorating ideas-sure to spookify your home inside and out.

Duration : 0:4:26

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This year's Halloween party invite.

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Also, who invented trick or treating and when did trick or treating begin.

Halloween (Hallowe'en, Hallowtide, Hallowmas, Allhallow-even) is short for "All Hallows Even" which means "All Saints Eve". It is the eve before All Saints Day, a Catholic day to honor all the saints who do not already have a feast day of their own. All Saints Day was originally celebrated on May 13 when Pope Boniface IV rededicated the Pantheon in Rome to 'St. Mary and All Martyrs' in 609 A.D. It was moved to November 1 in the 8th century when Pope Gregory III dedicated St. Peter's Basilica to all the saints. In the 10th or 11th century A.D. All Souls Day was added as a day to pray for the souls in purgatory and attend a requiem mass to honor the Christian dead.

Folk customs surrounding All Souls are the origin of the belief that the dead return on Halloween. People would visit cemeteries, decorate relatives' graves, and leave food offerings for the dead. Pagan Roman customs may have influenced the practice of offering food to the dead. During Parentalia and Feralia, which were celebrated in February, Romans offered food and flowers at gravesites. Also, All Saints original date of May 13 coincided with the final day of Lemuria which was another festival of the dead in pre-Christian Rome (where All Saints originated). Lemuria involved beans as part of the rites and today a treat called "beans of the dead" is popular in Italy for All Saints.

Samhain had an influence on All Hallows in Ireland, and that is the version that turned into what we know as Halloween today. Samhain in the medeival Irish sagas and records was a day of great importance. It was a day of feasting, games, drinking, great battles in some accounts and a peaceful feast in others, heroic feats, and interaction between mortals and the realm of the faires (divine or semi-divine beings who could be dangerous, and not the little creatures with wings that we think of today). In Ireland the customs that are associated with Halloween are the same as the ones mentioned in the sagas as being part of Samhain: divination, partying, the belief that supernatural beings mingle with or harass humans on this night. The word 'Samhain' has gone through numerous changes and spellings (Samuin, Saman, Samain, Samhuinn, Samhna) and its etymological evolution is somewhat confusing. Today 'Samhain' is the Irish word for the month of November, although it used to mean November 1 or the feast day of Samhain. Oiche Shamnha is Irish for Halloween; it means the "eve of Samhain" or the "eve of November 1".

All Saints and All Souls celebrations in the Americas can be traced back to the arrival of the Spanish missionaries and French Jesuit missionaries in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The Native Americans adopted these Christian traditions and combined them with remnants of their native celebrations. These feast days are still celebrated today.

In the nineteenth century Irish and Scottish immigrants settled in the United States and brought their Halloween customs with them. Unlike the more solemn, purely Catholic observance of All Saints/All Souls Day typical in continental Europe, the Irish version was more of a fun harvest festival in nature. Victorian-era Americans adopted the holiday with enthusiasm.

Halloween is now considered an American holiday, even though it is a bank holiday in Ireland. In many parts of Europe All Saints is still celebrated in its traditional Catholic form, in other places modern Halloween is celebrated side-by-side with All Saints, and in places like Mexico and South America it has become a separate and distinct holiday (that has retained a strong Catholic flavor). In many European and South American countries, as well as Mexico, All Saints is a public holiday.

Here you go:
The practice of actually saying "trick-or-treat" is purely North American and the earliest mention comes from newspapers from the 1920's (1930's in the U.S.). Despite the fact that there are ample mentions of Halloween vandalism prior to the advent of trick-or-treat, people are divided on whether it was invented to curb this vandalism. Some people in Canada and the United States practiced some other begging practices prior to this, but those appear to have been more localized traditions. They were practiced at Christmas, Thanksgiving, and Halloween and included belsnickling and guising. Although the Irish and Scottish brought their version of All Hallows (Hallowe'en) over to the United States in the mid-19th century they didn't bring begging customs with them. There were, however, begging and costuming practices that had taken place in parts of Europe since the middle ages: guising, mumming, wassailing, belsnickling, and souling. Souling was an All Saints/All Souls (Hallowe'en) custom where children would offer prayers for the souls in pugatory in exchange for "soul cakes". If the ancient Celts dressed in costumes or practiced begging customs we have no evidence of it. There also weren't any begging or costuming practices associated with the original All Saints.

Here is the actual 1927 article mentioning trick or treat in Canada. You will have to zoom in - there is an article about a bonfire and one about trick or treat:

http://lethbridgeherald.newspaperarchive.com/cache2/68673276.pdf

And here are some stories about similar practices in the U.S. for Christmas and Thanksgiving:

http://www.winchesterstar.com/article_details.php?ArticleID=3480

http://www.greenpt.com/anytngftkg.htm

I like it kind to be a muder mstery party. If you have ideas plz put them into steps of things i would need to do, supplies ineed, and how much it would cost.

Are you familiar with the board game "Clue"? You could have the guests act out a game, live.