Danni's Doorstep: Creative Halloween Costumes

As we get closer to Halloween, one of my favorite holidays, the age old question of, "what am I going to be?" pops into my head. Fed up with being Hermione again, or reusing my Legends of the Hidden Temple costume from last year (as awesome as it was!), I felt I needed something new and something cheap if my wallet has anything to do with it.

So I went to work scouring the web for creative or funny homemade costumes. There were some really good ones, really bad ones, and some that I just didn't get. Here are some great costumes I saw:

Your favorite commercial character. 

A loofah.

Russell and Carl from Up!

And we know that we will get our lady gaga's, draculas, any member of the Jersey Shore, and of course the age old sexy kitten, sexy nurse, sexy _____ (fill in blank with any generic female role). But I never want to be those age old characters I want something new, something different, something out of the box!

After hours of searching, I have an idea for this year. If I can pull it off, I think it will turn out really well. (Check back after Halloween to see what I went as)

So now I want to know: What are you planning on being? What are some of the most creative costumes you've seen?

...Do you smell what I'm steppin' in?

Danni's Doorstep: My Childhood Was Better Than Yours: Legends of the Hidden Temple

Times were much simpler when I was growing up. Our clothes were age appropriate, we didn't have cell phones, and the promise of dessert was all that we needed to get us to do our chores. TV for kids was also extremely different.

The best example of this is Legends of The Hidden Temple. It was one of the greatest game shows for kids other than GUTS or Where in the World is Carmen San Diego? (more on those later). The show combined two things: physical activity and trivia about world mythology. Essentially this game show masked exercise and education as fun and let me tell you; we fell for it!

Never having been one for a lot of exercise, I was amazed that I wanted nothing more than to don one of those brightly colored shirts, gold helmet, yellow mouth guard and make my way across the Nile (a pool) on wobbly rope bridge to reach the steps of knowledge and solve the mystery of The Missing Scepter of Cleopatra. With the promise of Space Camp or a year's supply of whistle pops in my sights, there was nothing I couldn't conquer. My fear of heights? Minimal! My fear of drowning? Nothing! My fear of failing? Impossible! All the while I learned interesting facts about different myths from around the world. What could be better!

Nowadays children's programming has very little substance. There are very few shows encouraging kids to get up, off the couch and to move and aeven fewer encouraging them to learn something other than how to stalk boys or pull stupid pranks on girls. Hopefully kid's TV will go retro and we'll go back to a time where there where kids were actually kids and not spoiled rotten miniature adults.


So until that day, I'll put on my purple parrot t-shirt and gold helmet that I ordered online for Halloween and dodge and duck and roll around my apartment and yell out answers at trivia night at the local bar (helmet not necessary).

Kids of this generation don't know what they're missing!