To be honest, Halloween is one of my least favorite holidays. I still like it—but it’s not my FAVORITE =) And the reason is… it’s sooo expensive! You have to find a costume, but in order to find a GREAT costume you have to spend so much on cheap pieces of fabric that you will never wear again. Also, you have to find some fabulous party or even to wear the expensive costume to, and that usually includes a ridiculous cover fee. I’m all about house parties, but do people even do those anymore??

Anyways, I know that Halloween in New York is supposed to be crazy—but the CRAZIEST Halloween I’ve ever witnessed was in Santa Barbara:

Halloween in Santa Barbara

It REALLY looks like that! Just rows and rows of college kids’ homes, people spilling in and out of them with bottles of beer in their hands… while TONS of people are walking up and down the street in their insanely creative costumes.

Some of the best costumes were DIY:

- a green scantron (people would kick the scantron guy and say “you made me fail bio!”)
- 3 guys in a cardboard box that looked exactly like the Cinnamon Toast Crunch guys
- 3 guys dressed up as the Rice Krispy cereal guys, throwing their actual cereal at the Cinnamon Toast Crunch guys saying “we’re better!”
- a guy dressed as an ipod… it looked so real, it was amazing! (this is when ipods first started to come out, so it was much cooler back then)
- a guy dressed as a box of Kleenex and a sign that said “blow me” (ok a bit gross, but clever!)
- guys dressed as amazing, hot, beautiful french maids

Ironically, all of these were GUYS! I am amazed that they took the time & consideration to work on these things for probably hours. And as for the girls?

The best, cheapest DIY costume you can do as a girl is to dress like a hooch.  My friends and I had NO idea what to dress up as. And just seeing the people that were arriving the “event”, we knew it was serious business.  So since we had no money as college students, we decided to dress slutty and call it a day.  THAT wasn’t even that scandalous compared to the rest of the girls dressed like this:

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Literally every girl was in lingerie. The most flamboyant lingerie you could find!! It was hilarious and made us look incredibly conservative in comparison! Halloween is a get-free card for all females to dress as slutty as possible and get away with not being called a slut. Weird yet liberating huh?

I know it’s really cold in NYC, so last year all I did was wear these crazy eyelashes and called it my “costume.”

last halloween

I just bought a pair of Revlon blue eyelashes from Duane Reade, like this:

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If you want some more, ahem—moderate style DIY costumes, here’s a link where you can get some ideas!