Yes, it’s early. No, I don’t care.
My fall decorations went up Labor Day weekend. The calendar flipped to September and so did my entire front yard. Hay bales. Pumpkins. Scarecrows. And from there we ramp — progressively, intentionally, and with a level of commitment that my husband tolerates with a specific brand of patient love — all the way into full Halloween mode. Giant skeletons. Skeletons climbing the trees. Fog machine. Gravestones. The whole shebang.
Halloween has always been my holiday. Before kids it was a great excuse to go all out. After kids it became something else entirely — because now there are tiny humans who are genuinely losing their minds with excitement alongside me and we get to do family costumes, and I cannot overstate how much joy that brings me.
Last year we were a heist. My son was a police officer. My husband was a police officer. I was the bad guy — full villain energy, Hamburg costume, the works — and my littlest was dressed as a bag of money I was in the process of stealing.
Cute upon cute upon cute.
My husband has exactly one costume stipulation. One. Whatever I put him in has to be a onesie. He is not here for intricate costumes with parts to figure out or pieces that fall off or anything requiring more than two minutes of effort to get into. A onesie and he is fully on board. This is his line and I respect it because it has made things extremely workable.
This year we’re going Marvel. My oldest is coming into his own — figuring out what he likes, making his own choices — and he decided he wants to be the Hulk. So we tailored the whole thing around him. He’s the Hulk. My youngest is Captain America. My husband will be in a Spider-Man onesie. And I will be Black Widow, which I am frankly very excited about.
The bonus feature of our Halloween — and this is something I am deeply grateful to our neighborhood for — is that we live in a golf cart community. So every year we dress the golf cart up to match our costume theme and cruise it from house to house, which is both practical given the distance between driveways and also just genuinely the most fun way to trick or treat. A Marvel-themed golf cart this year. I am already planning it.
If you have your decorations up, your costumes planned, or your pumpkins already selected — hi, we are the same person and I see you completely.
And if you have been nailing family costumes for years and have ideas I need to steal for future Halloweens — please share. This year is locked in but I am always building the pipeline.
What’s the best family costume you’ve ever seen or pulled off? Drop it in the comments — I need inspiration and I need it now.
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