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At the Children's Museum of Indianapolis' Haunted House — ranked among the top 10 haunted houses in the U.S. by Rand McNally and routinely pulling in upward of 60,000 visitors in a season — the organizers plan "lights on" hours, so younger patrons aren't, literally, haunted by the experience. That's just one of their clever twists on the traditional haunted house."The biggest thing is to be creative and think outside the box," says Alli Stitle, Indianapolis Children's Museum Guild member and one of the haunted house's lead organizers. "We have a theme that changes every year, so it's fun to create costumes around lace front wigs that, decorate in those colors, have activities, games and crafts and food choices all around the theme."Three ideas:Vamp it up: Take a cue from pop culture — and the folks in Indy — and turn your home into a vampire villa. "Our theme is vampire vacation, so each room is a different dead-stination," says Stitle. "Dead-tona Beach, Count Rushmore, New Gore-leans."Think lots and lots of hanging black bats, giant rats, plastic spiders, gray drop cloths and, yep, cobwebs."We do place settings to look like a haunted dinner table with bugs and dirty plates, and we fill the glasses so they look like they're filled with blood," says Stitle. "You don't have to make it expensive. Lots of black paint and household props like old clothes turn it into a really spooky environment."Get mummified: "We always think black and orange for Halloween, but an all-white party throws in a modern twist and adds something a little unexpected," says Ladd-Sanchez. "You can focus the whole party around mummies, which are a traditional Halloween symbol."White gauze will full lace wigs take you far, allowing for pumpkins, dolls and just about anything your heart desires to be made into a mummy. Throw in a few other touches of white: white pumpkins, paper ghosts, white bowls filled with yogurt-covered raisins, white M&Ms, white mints and, Ladd-Sanchez's personal fave, a chandelier made of bones.A show of hands: If you're catering mostly to younger kids, you may want to skip the whole "haunted" thing and just make your house a Halloween haven with festive food and a few gross-out activities thrown in for good measure."Kids are very tactile," says Ladd-Sanchez. "They love to be involved in that old school kind of fun where you blindfold them and have them stick their hands in bowls full of cold spaghetti (aka brains) and peeled grapes (eyeballs). You see them going 'eww, eww, eww,' but they're having fun."Deviled eggs can be made to look like bloodshot eyeballs with a black olive slice and a dash of paprika, and bat, witch and ghost-shaped cookie cutters can turn blah sandwiches into edible decor."I also like the carvable, foam jack-o'-lanterns you can find at craft stores," says Ladd-Sanchez. "You can paint them fun colors chinese hair or paint faces on them or use razor blades to cut designs on them."Easy upgradesOddball jack-o'-lanterns: If you're buying pumpkins anyway, look beyond the typical round, orange varieties and try your hand carving green, white, striped and oddly shaped pumpkins.Old school games: Kids have nearly forgotten what it's like to try to capture a caramel apple hung by a string. Give it a try, and while you're at it, split into pairs and see who can "mummify" their partner first using rolls of toilet paper.Luminarias: Not just for Christmas, brown paper bags with sand and a battery-operated candle inside can be spooky fun along the front walk. Crumple the bags a little first. Or give your kids a bat stencil to decorate them first.Minimal costumes: Not one to don Cinderella's swishy gown? Opt for a wig, and play everything else straight. Or go for a crazy hat or makeup — just a touch of lunacy is enough to delight trick-or-treaters at the door.A grown-up treat: The best trick-or-treat destinations? The houses where friends and neighbors offer up a little grown-up treat at the door (usually just for parents they know well).

What to be this Halloween? A costume consultant can tell you - The Globe and Mail

“I see you as either Audrey Hepburn or a zombie,” says Libia Castano, head costume consultant at the Value Village outlet in Toronto’s High Park neighbourhood. Castano says Hepburn comes to mind because I’m tall, but I worry the zombie suggestion has something to do with my lack of under-eye concealer. Castano herself is dressed as a skeleton, complete with full maquillage and black-and-white contact lenses – a touch jarring, considering that it’s 9 a.m. on a Monday.More related to this storyTrick or treat, stress the treat: 13 ghoulishly good candy recipesHey guys, try these gender-bending alter egos for HalloweenThrow a sleek and scary Halloween partygalleryLooking for a costume idea? Here are 10textgalleryHey, sugar: What's the best Halloween candy? Have your sayvideoVideo: Do it yourself Halloween costumesgalleryThe scary things celebrities dress up as for Halloween“Halloween is our Christmas,” Castano continues as we walk past a rack of red-paint-spattered wedding dresses, a costume idea she launched last year with great success. “People want the best costumes and they often don’t have time to pick one out, so they want it done for them.”The costume consultant is the latest in a long line of make-life-easier experts (see also renovation coach and dog whisperer) that didn’t exist a decade ago. Their rise has both proved a boon to time-pressed professionals who take Halloween seriously (who, after all, has time any more to scour the city for feather boas and cowboy hats?) and upped the ante in terms of costume execution (at many parties,Scream masks just won’t cut it any more).“People always want to top themselves,” says Rachel Matthews, a Toronto-based stylist who doles out lots of (pro-bono) advice to friends consumed with costume angst. “My rule of thumb? If you don’t feel 100 per cent confident, don’t wear it.”Those who do provide costume services for a living start out by trying to define their client’s “costume personality.” At Value Village, the costume consultants (who are available at all of the discount retailer’s Canadian locations) help customers pull together a look after a few basic questions, while other costume experts probe Hair weaving deeper.“The No. 1 thing I look at are the person’s natural features and then their personality, but I also always ask what they secretly wish they had done with their lives,” says Alexandra Suzanne Greenawalt, a New York-based fashion stylist who often helps her clients hunt down the perfect costume. (Among her best work: takes on Cleopatra and Medusa as well as her own reincarnation as celebrity stylist Rachel Zoe.) “New Yorkers are very competitive,” she says. “Choosing a costume has become one of those things that adds stress to their lives.”There’s a big difference between a clever costume and a clever costume that fits well, stresses Laurie Sluchinski, owner of Boo La La, a costume sales and rental shop in Vancouver. “If you want to take first prize,” she says, “you need to consult a stylist who can choose something that works for your body type.”Boo La La started offering complimentary consultations by appointment this year and were nearly booked solid two weeks before Weaving hair Halloween. During each 30-minute session, stylist Dani Barnes discusses past costumes, how far one is willing to go (wearing striped tights, for instance, will take the typical burlesque costume, composed of a corset, tutu and mini top hat, “to the next level,” Barnes maintains) and the type of response desired. “Most of the girls want to be sexy,” she says, “and most of the guys want to be macho.”Consultants typically offer a range of costume suggestions, ranging from basic to no-holds-barred. (Barnes recently dressed one female client in a full-length gold-sequin gown – immediately deemed not sexy enough – so she shortened and cinched it, then added a black wig and police cap for a look she dubbed “glamorous Marilyn Manson.”)Regardless of final choice, it doesn’t take a Sigmund Freud to divine what makes a person gravitate toward certain guises. “On Halloween, you can do whatever you like. It’s like being in Vegas,” says Dale Peers, who teaches a course on the psychology of fashion at Toronto’s Seneca College. “You might choose a costume that you’re Remy hair normally too inhibited to wear or adopt a trait that might be lacking in your own persona.”That may explain the glut of superheroes and sexy pop stars on Oct. 31, often referred to by psychologists as the “day of id.” But what about the corpses and chainsaw murderers? “There’s an excitement to confronting a fear that you might normally be overwhelmed by,” suggests Jennifer Baumgartner, a Washington, D.C.-area psychologist and author of the forthcomingYou Are What You Wear. “These people may also want the ability to shock others.”Many, however, play it safe. “I find that when I’m dressing people, a lot of them worry that it’s going to be over the top,” says Boo La La’s Barnes, who counsels cautious types to channel their inner Lady Gaga. “She’s given a lot of people the confidence to put on something out of the norm – why not wear a crazy dress with a pair of wings and Dracula fangs?”There’s also something to be said for not over-thinking it. “There’s always the possibility,” says Baumgartner, who decided on her own to dress up as a bumble bee this year, “that you just really like the costume.”