You have no time to read. I’ll keep it simple.
A Lunar Eclipse: For Couples (or if you’re going solo, get creative)
The sun. If you have a dog, include dog. Make some sort of sun out of whatever you have on hand. Panty hose make for a nice impromptu stretchy material to attach the sun around your dog’s waist. Or you could tie the sun to a harness.
If you don’t have a dog, tie the sun around a wrist and hold your arm out for photos. (The sun would go with the person wearing the shadow costume [see below], not the moon. And make sure your shadow costume wearer places the sun in front of the earth.)
Now the earth’s shadow. Wear all black, buy an inflatable earth or use whatever you can think of. I made this hat with wire which I bent into a halo shape, then placed over a black mask.
If you can’t find an inflatable globe, you could print out an image of the earth, affix the image to cardboard, and tie it to your wrist to hold in front of you.
Now the moon. I found an image on the internet, printed it out, covered it in clear mailing tape and stapled it to a black shirt. (Tip: Staple from the inside or risk getting stabbed a little throughout the evening.) Add black pants, black shoes, etc. Voila. You’re a moon about to be eclipsed. The smaller person in the couple should be the moon and should stand behind the shadow, barely peeking out. This is an eclipse after all.
Last Minute Costume Ideas
Retired (Hawaiian shirt, golf club, AARP card, etc.)
If you have a portable musical instrument, be a musician.
If you partake in any hobby that requires a costume, be that. (For instance, I’m wearing my flamenco skirt and castanets for tonight’s party.)
If you have formal wear, pretend you’re at prom. Add pimples and dorky glasses. Or go with a retro look.
More Costumes
Couples or solo, look here for details on these homemade creations:
A jumping cholla, a saguaro.
Fifty Shades of Grey, The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo
The Wind, a Tumbleweed (Yeah, people will say “blow me.”)
A Black Hole, A Shooting Star
The Ultimate Procrastinator’s Last Minute Costumes:
An undercover cop. Click here for details.
A Sale of Two Titties. (Print out: $$$FORSALE$$$ and affix to your chest.)
A Tale of Two Cities (Print out: London + Paris, for instance) and affix these to your butt…again, remember, staple from the inside. Or if you’re going to a really fun party, you know what to do. Don’t recommend Sharpie markers for that.
Last year’s last minute costume.
What’re you gonna be for Halloween?
Diotima's Ladder 
Halloween did not exist where I live when I was young. I don’t remember when it started here, but I think it was started by certain business people who tried to create a new market (costumes, parties etc.), just like Valentine day was introduced recently by the flowers and chocolate industries.. To me, it feels completely artificial. There is just no tradition of it. For younger people, it might be something they have grown up with, but I have no relationship to it. I don’t think I know what it is all about. I did not think of it until I saw your article 🙂
Just moved into my new appartment yesterday, sitting between boxes now. Trying to find my cooking pots (which of the boxes are they in?), I found a box with some interesting books I had inherited from my aunt last year (see https://denkblasen.wordpress.com/2015/11/21/a-small-inheritance/, so these are the friendly ghosts visiting me tonight). The books had been stacked away in my cellar and only resurfaced now.
I don’t have an icebox yet (left it with my daughter, who is staying behind). There are two floor lamps I am carying around from room to room. No bed yet, just a mattress on the floor. Feels like camping. Indoor camping. Tomorrow I have to go back to Cologne to help fix some problems with the old appartment.
My current costume is pyjamas and morning robe I am an indoor camper. 🙂
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I love indoor camping! Some of my fondest memories as a child are putting up “forts” with bed sheets and books and sitting under them while watching horror films. (I can’t stand horror films now, but I loved them as a kid. I don’t really know why. Who wants to be terrified?)
Halloween is a tradition for many people here, but it’s a different thing for different people. For instance, the whole “trick or treat” thing used to mean there was a real potential for tricks. When I was growing up, there wasn’t much tricking going on, but parents stayed home and handed out candy while the (older) kids went off with friends to go around the neighborhood. Back then, for me, there was still some tricking going on amongst the older kids, but this wasn’t taken lightly. Usually this meant kids would “TP” someone’s house—take rolls of toilet paper and throw them into trees, an obnoxious decoration to clean up. Other kids would throw eggs on people’s garages, etc. Some did worse things. Nowadays trick or treat is mostly benign, parents are almost always with their kids, sometimes dressed up even (they never did that when I was a kid), and there’s a huge industry for Halloween. I remember a lot more DIY costumes growing up, but now the costumes are usually bought. Still, though, last night I saw a kid wearing a homemade Spartan costume, and that made me smile. Plus the kid was so respectful and smart and went on and on about Spartans, which gives me a bit of hope…something very much needed at this time.
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My last-minute go-to was always “insane serial killer” … they look like normal people. And it fits well with my three rules for costumes: (1) Must be able to sit down comfortably in them; (B) Must be able to eat and drink easily in them; (iii) Must be able to use the bathroom easily in them.
Best costume I ever made was: Blue Punk Monk. I stitched a bunch of white hotel bath towels I “just happened to have” into a monk’s robe and dyed it blue. That was the blue monk part. I borrowed a friend’s electric guitar and mounted a small battery-powered amp to the strap so I could actually play the guitar. That was the punk part. I also fixed an empty bottle of Blue Nun wine to my rope belt to help the monk (and blue) connection.
That was also one of the best Halloween parties I’d ever been to. The guy hosting it had set up this massive Murder Mystery Treasure Hunt, and we were running all over town chasing clues. We actually had to visit a police station and a hospital, among other places. Damn, that was a blast!
Best costume a friend ever did was a college friend who made herself up to be a 50-year-old woman. It was flawless; no one recognized her. We all wondered who that older woman was at the party and who invited her. She disguised her voice, so even talking to her didn’t give it away. Awesome!
Cleverest simple costume: A guy I knew just made a large cardboard frame that went around him. He was a Kodak slide.
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That is freaking awesome. I like the idea of strapping an amp on to make yourself heard as well as seen. I didn’t know you played guitar?
The old woman costume sounds pretty amazing too. I can’t imagine what it would take to pull that off. Maybe a Hollywood makeup artist.
And I’m jealous of your Halloween party. I once did a video scavenger hunt and I got to be the cameraman, which pleased me very much. That was back in middle school and I still have fond memories of that day.
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I wasn’t an Axe Master or anything — keyboards were more my thing — but I picked up some guitar along the way. It was nice to have a more portable instrument than a piano.
The old woman costume was borrowed clothes, a wig, and fairly ordinary makeup, IIRC. More a matter of lots of pancake and overly red lips and stuff. Wore glasses, too, as I recall, and as Clark Kent knew, glasses totally disguise you.
What is a video scavenger hunt? Video was before my time. We barely had color film. 🙂
That Murder Mystery Scavenger Hunt was a once-in-a-lifetime blast. The host was a script writer, so he’d written a fairly elaborate story. He had a guy — supposedly a suspect — sitting on a bench at a police station and another in a hospital — supposedly a victim who’d survived. And a shadowy figure in a dark, scary garage — an informant. And others scattered around town (West Hollywood and Santa Monica). All had to be questioned, and all could lie to you! The trick was to solve the mystery!
Very possibly one of the best parties of any kind I’ve ever been to!
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Geordie bear as “some sort of sun” – priceless! 🙂
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Happy Halloween, Tina! Our dog (Beauchamp) is a black and white striped “ruferee” this year. 🙂
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Aw, that’s really cute. I hope you’ve posted pictures?
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Love it! You have the most entertaining (dare I say quirky?) and inventive costumes. I think I saw a photo of the tumbleweed and wind costumes you guys wore from a year or so before. I like that you got Geordie Bear involved. I imagine you had to move around a lot to get back into eclipse formation.
I didn’t dress up this year, but if I did, I’d probably go as a Canadian tourist (basically what I’ll become in a month or so, so I’m out-procrastinating everybody by being a month late and not even doing DIY).
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Nice! What does a Canadian tourist look like? I know Americans are easily spotted by our tennis shoes and t-shirts. Not to mention our volume.
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A baseball cap, tennis shoes (those things are universal among tourists), t-shirt and cargo pants, haha. Though I would be wearing jeans from the Gap.
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Cargo pants…so funny. When I was in France, American students told me they’d pretend to be Canadian. That’s sort of a thing for American tourists. I could always spot American students by their gym clothes (which they wore as regular clothes.) Older American tourists wear blindingly white tennis shoes. Young or old, we’re all pretty loud. 🙂
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