The Great Pumpkin

Don’t even think about leaving your house without having an awesome pumpkin sitting on your porch.

Step one to the decoration that will adequately represent your own coolness is finding the perfect pumpkin. Around this time of year you can often pick one up at most grocery stores, but if you’re serious about it and need a legitimate selection, venture down Milledge to the South of Five Points.

There you will find Milledge Avenue Baptist Church’s annual pumpkin patch. They’ve got pumpkins of every size from the palm of your hand to as big as your chest cavity, ranging in price from 50 cents to $25 respectively. And it’s only a five-minute walk from the Miller Learning Center.

As far as the actual carving goes, again, local grocery stores will usually have some basic stencils. But if you want to flex that creativity, here are a few quick steps to a more personalized pumpkin.

Head to the Miller Learning Center and grab one of the Apple computers. Find a cool picture, open it in Photoshop. Hit the filters button at the top, and select either stamp or base/relief. This might take a little fiddling with the sliders, but you should come out with a black and white image that you can then size and print. Tape it to your pumpkin, carve the black through the paper, and you’ve outdone everyone on the block.

Time to get dressed

Whether you’re going downtown to be a part of the even-more-ridiculous-than-usual scene (instead of simply drunken mayhem, it’s drunken mayhem with pirates, pimps and pumpkins, oh my!), or walking door to door in your dorm or neighborhood with friends, the perfect costume is a must.

There are always those creepy shops that set up over in Beechwood, the modern carpetbaggers peddling simple, off-the-rack masks. But if you really want to make a scene, you’ll have to go the extra mile.

Before you blow your allotted costume cash on a getup that you’ll see 15 other people wearing, check out Junkman’s Daughter’s Brother (458 E. Clayton Street).

Not only can you find the normal, off-the-rack slutty nurse costume, but there you can also go all out and rent a full suit. Get all the joy of being King Kong and terrorizing your favorite bar from the countertop shouting, “KONG WANT NATTIE LIGHT!” without having to actually buy a $300 gorilla suit you’ll only wear once.

Rentable gear runs the gamut for price, but expect around $50 plus a deposit.

Junkman’s is also a quality place to pick up pretty much anything when it comes to Halloween: make-up, fake blood and a bevy of trickery as well.

But sometimes the best costume are homemade. JoAnn Fabrics (in the Kroger shopping center on Alps) and Hobby Lobby (2656 Atlanta Hwy) are good choices for fabric and other crafty materials, and check thrift stores all over town for that finishing touch in the form of sequin coated denim or whatever you’re too lazy to do yourself.

Trick AND treat

Candy and caramel apples are old news. You can always go the health-nut soccer-mom route and get the little boxes of raisins. Or you can actually be cool.

If your a treat kind of person, try out chocolate covered pumpkin seeds. You’ve got them all left over from your sweet carving anyway.

Just rinse them really well, get the slime off them and lay them out on a lightly greased cookie sheet. Salt them pretty heavily and bake for 10-15 minutes at about 350 degrees.

In the meantime, melt a bowl of chocolate (whatever you like) in the microwave. You’ll need a pretty big bowl with some extra room. When the seeds are done, pour them into the bowl and stir them into the chocolate, coating them all.

Then pour the contents of the bowl through a strainer, getting off the excess chocolate, which can be drizzled on the seeds later if you like that extra sugar kick. Let the seeds dry on a tray, bag them up and hand them out to good little boys and girls.

If you live in a neighborhood with very bad little boys and girls, on the other hand, make a huge bowl of pasta. Put a layer of candy on top — something good like Snickers or Skittles. Then set the bowl on your porch.

When the greedy little rats attack the bowl or pour the whole contents in their bag, laugh loudly as you watch through the window.

Congratulations. You have beaten those punks at their own game.

And probably guaranteed yourself an egging later on in the night. Happy Halloween!