I’ve always loved Halloween. When I was a kid it was the thrill of dressing up as someone else for the night and roaming the town after dark collecting candy. That was after first spending weeks agonizing over the best costume to wear. The opportunity only came once a year, so you didn’t want to waste it on something you’d regret.

I was shy as a child, so Halloween allowed me to be something I was not; brave around other people. Hiding behind a mask helped me feel safe enough to speak up and be more extroverted. Sometimes it helped me achieve my dreams – at least for a night – like the year I dressed up as a Native American. For years I was obsessed with the culture and wanted more than anything to be one of them. That year I was.

As a young mom Halloween was the fun of living vicariously through my children as they participated in the same rite of passage. Helping them create the costume of their dreams was always exciting and often a challenge, like the year my youngest wanted to be Medusa.

We couldn’t find a costume in a youth size, so we made our own. Cobbling together a green gown, painting her face green and embellishing it to look like she had scales, and then tracking down a bunch of plastic snakes to weave in her hair. She looked amazing, and a friend told me it was the best costume she’d ever seen.

For me as an older adult, Halloween has become all about the decorations.

I enjoy decorating my home for all the holidays, but for me nothing, including Christmas, beats Halloween. There’s just something about the creepy décor, spooky spiderwebs, and authentic-looking witch’s potion bottles that calls to me. And then there’s the skeletons…

Those who really know me know that when I really like something I don’t hold back. I go all out, collecting, creating, and searching for whatever obsession it may be. A couple of years ago I noticed some animal skeletons among the stores’ Halloween decorations. I was instantly hooked.

The next year I got more. This year I brought home even more. Currently there are nearly 40 animal skeletons creeping up my home and making me happy. Spooky ones like bats, rats, and spiders, birds like ravens, owls, and buzzards, reptiles like snakes, frogs, and lizards, pets like dogs, cats, and rabbits, and fantasy like dragons, gargoyles, and a werewolf skull. I even have a rooster that’s definitely not anatomically correct (I’m pretty sure feathers don’t have bones in them) but makes me smile every time I look at him.

And my favorite – the dinosaur skeletons, including my one and a half foot tall t-rex, which Brenna found for me on clearance after last Halloween.

Although I’m still on the lookout for new animal skeletons to collect, my next biggest goal is to collect a bunch of life-size human skeletons that I can set up outside my house. I have numerous scenarios I want to try out, the first of which will be a hoard of them climbing up the side of the house and over the roof like a swarm of zombies. How awesome would that be?