Halloween contest!

Local Shopper had lots of great entries in our October contest at our Web site, localshops1.com. Here are some of our favorites! Can you guess which one we picked?
Answer, of course, is on localshops1.com!

-- Ester Venouziou

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Two entries by Tamara Hart

First, we dressed our two year old son up like a killer tomato. He was so fat with all the newspaper we stuffed in him that we had to put him in a wagon to go door to door. We went to visit our nieces and trick or treat with them. Our youngest niece as we started walking around to collect chocolate, started screaming and ducking. We asked her why she was doing that and as she started running home she yelled, "BATS!! BATS!! BATS!!". We didn't she her the rest of the night. Oh, yes there were bats. The rest of us thought it was pretty cool seeing it was Halloween, plus they eat the bugs that fly around and bite us.

The second Halloween was when one of our other nieces, who is was a teenager, decided to put make-up on my husband. He was going to wear the blow up ballerina costume. She made a real production of it. He looked pretty good too. Even with the mustache. When we went out with the kids to get treats someone yelled at my husband, "Show us what's was under the skirt!!" Well, the costume was connected from neck to ankle, but he could jump up and down and the skirt would fly up and down with him. He twirled around and acted like he was dancing then lifted the little skirt in the back as to moon them. Everyone laughed so hard just from him dancing and then a man fell out of his chair when he lifted the back of skirt to moon them.




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By Lena Hunt:

When I was in fifth grade, my teacher appointed me the task of being a vampire for our school's spook house. Thoughts of strobe lights and being chased by people in black with "chainsaws" crossed my young mind as I pictured the spook houses I had experienced. I begged the teacher to let me be a greeter. She refused.

Grand opening night of our haunted abode, I laid shivering with fear in my own cardboard coffin. Even my fake vampire teeth were chattering! Suddenly, our first paying visitors came through and boy, did I ever scare the living daylights out of them when THEY SCARED ME by simply walking past my spray-painted coffin. I jumped up and dashed out of the mock coffin, nearly leaving my black cloak behind. Strobe lights, figures in black, and screaming chainless chainsaws followed me all the way out of my own haunted haven.




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By Lena's daughter, Lauren Mabra


When I was only seven I dressed up as a rock star; I thought it was the coolest idea. So I threw on my pink wig (compliments of the Dollar Store) and some purple leather pants, then we were off on our Halloween adventure.

Our neighborhood was the ultimate trick-or-treating place. People would give out the whole six-candy-bar pack and not just individual candy bars! My friends and I would be having a heart attack over how much candy we've gotten from just the second house and our parents would be having a heart attack over how cold it was!

By the time we got home, my wig was a huge, pink fuzz ball (so much for Dollar Store quality), but I didn't care about that… I wanted the candy! All of us kids had a secret annual trade-your-bad-candy-for-someone else's, so we dumped all of our sweets out and began.

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By Backyard Getaway, host of our Nov. 15 garden party!


Halloween has always been my favorite holiday. My favorite halloween memory was when we took our 2 year old grandson trick or treating for the first time. He was a bit shy at first but once he realized that he was getting candy from every person he met he couldn't wait to get to the next house! But, I have to say my most memorable halloween was a few years earlier. When our kids were young we would have costume parties. My husband would create a haunted house. We had added a room to our home. The roof wasn't on yet just cement block walls. It made the perfect haunted house. One of my sons friends was a bit of a prankster & he decided he would scare the guys working the haunted house. I got the bright idea to scare him. As he entered the room he was suprised by one of the guys & he started swinging & backing up. I was right behind him & ended up with a broken nose & toe!


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By Andrea Johnson

Magical and memorable: Halloween 2003 will always be very close to my heart. Bo and I eloped and were married in Gatlinburg, TN on November 1, 2003. We arrived in town the day before, on Halloween. After checking into a cozy room, and racing to get our marriage license before the courthouse closed - we ate a great dinner, we strolled around Gatlinburg, enjoying the town and the amazingly cool weather. People in bizarre and outlandish costumes roamed the streets. For everyone else, it was just Halloween. For me, that night, everything was right in the world because I was holding Bo’s hand. I lost Bo just 10 months later in a car accident. We would be celebrating our fifth anniversary this year. Instead, I hold the memories from that Halloween weekend very close to me and try to smile when I think of how very blessed I was.