I’ve always loved Halloween.  I got it from my Gramma.  It was her absolute favorite holiday and seriously the only time she would ever let someone take her picture.  Her creativity always amazed me.  One year when I was little (after she convinced me to NOT be a ballerina or a princess like I wanted to be every year) we dressed up as the Jolly Green Giant and Little Jack Sprat.  We won the costume contest that year!  Another year she dressed up as a robot and my Mom was the mad scientist.  One of my Mom’s favorite memories was when Gramma dressed like a beach bum, carrying a boom box, and had everyone along the parade route listening to the ocean in her seashell.  My family came up with some pretty awesome ideas as well.  One year they went as all the characters in Little Red Riding Hood and another year they were the three blind mice with the farmer’s wife who cut off their tails.  But my favorite was when they gave life to the nursery rhyme “Hey diddle, diddle.  The Cat and the Fiddle.  The cow jumped over the moon.  The little dog laughed to see such sport.  And the dish ran away with the spoon.”  Gramma always enjoyed decorating too.  She once dressed up an inflatable skeleton and had it sitting on her front porch.  Well, her neighbor eventually came over because she was afraid that it was a real person and was concerned that it hadn’t moved in awhile!  She also created a pulley system where you opened the front door and a rubber bat (or spider) lifted up where you couldn’t see it and then as the door closed you’d be standing right under it and it would land on your head!  That freaked me out!  One year she made her front porch look like a funeral parlor.  She borrowed some mannequin heads from my cousin who is a beautician and stuffed some clothes.  She had the bodies laying out on a couch with a blanket covering them and had candlesticks beside the bed.  Both the blanket and the candlesticks actually came from my great-grandma who did own a funeral home.  But you should have seen the faces of the trick-or-treaters as they arrived!  My Gramma has since passed away and I miss her more and more with each Halloween, but her memories of this cherished holiday will continue to live on forever.