Don’t miss the chance to dress up and be your self.

Have you got your Halloween costume yet?

Halloween has become the second biggest holiday of the year, in large part due to the number of adults who have taken it beyond carmel apples and tiny tots in witch costumes.

What’s not to love about a holiday that allows grownups to act like children again, dressing up in costumes and living out their fantasies. OK, some people do that on a regular basis, but we won’t go there.

While a Halloween costume on the surface is designed to disguise, in reality it often reveals more than it conceals.

Is that the mousey office receptionist dressed like Elvira? Who knew that conservative city official harbored a hankering to be Dr. Frank N. Furter?

The mercenary merchants of commerce were quick to tap into this market of adults yearning to free their inner child, with adult Halloween costumes becoming serious business.

To me, purchasing a ready-made Halloween costume feels like cheating. Oh sure, you’ll look stunning in that $800 Darth Vader costume, but how much imagination did it take?

A large part of the fun of Halloween is coming up with a costume that is creative, unique and totally inner you. There’s a lot to consider when deciding on a costume. Do you want to go for the traditional gross out factor, with lots of gore, blood and fake guts spilling out of gaping wounds, or do you want to go the fantasy route, with glitter, fairy wings and pixie dust?

Some people prefer to take the humorous approach, with costumes that double as bad puns. I confess I tend toward this camp. My first idea for this year was to be Conehead the Barbarian. Get it? I thought I could combine a classic SNL Conehead with a barbarian outfit, and voila — instant bad pun. A friend suggested other options could be Conan the O’Brien, Conan the Barber or Conan the Barbarella. All good choices, but in the end I decided it was too expensive — Coneheads go for $25 at Seattle costume shops.

With that plan rejected, I turned, where else, to the Internet, home of a billion and two Halloween costume ideas.

After hours of extensive research (yes boss, that was research) I came up with a few favorite suggestions. You can never go wrong with a costume that involves duct tape, and the guys who brought you “The Jumbo Duct Tape Book” now offer “Duct Tape Halloween Book: Filled with 101 clever costume ideas and the general stupidity you’ve come to expect from Jim and Tim.”

Some choices from the book:

Used bubblegum: Dress entirely in pink and duct tape a shoe to your head.

Modern Metallic Mummy: Wrap yourself head to toe in duct tape, moan repeatedly. These moans will be quite genuine if you have neglected to wear clothing under the duct tape.

Movie theater floor: Duct tape yourself sticky side out and stick popcorn and candy wrappers all over your body. Eww.

Baked potato: Wrap duct tape around a puffy ski jacket, use white duct tape for a dollop of sour cream. You could reuse this costume to set yourself apart on the ski slopes. Way apart.

Everyone knows the best place to get costume parts is at thrift stores, so it’s fitting that Goodwill offers a few cheap and quick costume ideas.

Bag of jelly beans: Take clear plastic trash bag, cut holes for legs and arms on the sides (do NOT cover your head), fill the bag with different colored balloons and tie the top closed (loosely) around your neck with a colorful ribbon. You’ll probably want to wear a leotard under this outfit as well.

Highway: Get an all-black outfit, paint two solid yellow stripes down the middle of the shirt. Goodwill doesn’t suggest this, but you could add some fake blood and a coon skin cap and go as roadkill.

A lot of people just can’t stop at costuming themselves and the kids — they have to get the pets in on the action as well. Be warned, some animals are more willing to endure this humiliation than others. Your daschund may not mind wearing a cloth, stuffed hot dog bun (get it — weiner dog), and your pug may be perfectly proud in a pink tutu and tiara, but your cat is not going to like being stuffed into a caped crusader outfit. Try it, and you may end up going to the Halloween party as The Incredibly Scratched Up and Bleeding Owner of a Very P-Od Cat. Bandaging optional. wu

For questions or comments, contact Marcie Miller at mmiller@northkitsapherald.com.