Halloween Starts Online

By Elizabeth Wasserman for The Online Family

There's a new saying for parents this Halloween: Click or treat. These days, you can literally prepare for Halloween entirely online.

No longer do you have to drive around from store to store scouring shelves in the weeks leading up to Oct. 31. Now you can use the Internet to search for a costume in your son or daughter’s size. Or you can go online and order custom-wrapped Halloween chocolate bars to distribute to kids who come trick-or-treating to your door. You can also read up on the web about ghostly craft ideas for the class party. And if it's adults that you'll be celebrating with on All Hallows Eve, log on to find sophisticated decorations to turn your abode into a haunted house that would scare even adults silly.

"Ten years ago, you were basically stuck with buying a costume or decorations at [a party store or the local drug store]," says Sherri Foxman, founder and CEO of Party411, a Cleveland-based online party supply store that has a special section devoted to Halloween. "Today, if you’re having a party, you can find virtually any prop online, and you can find more and more custom stuff to make your costume or party much more unique and original. If you want to find discount candy for trick-or-treaters, that's on the Internet, too."

Here's a list of online resources to help you get ready for Halloween and find what you're looking for in less than an hour:

1. Find costumes 
Maybe your daughter wants to dress as one of the stars of High School Musical, or your son wants to be Iron Man. Finding the right costume in the right size can sometimes be a challenge. But several popular costume web sites have a wider selection because they ship directly from a large warehouse. BuyCostumes, HalloweenMart and Halloween Express are just some of the online stores that offer costumes for both kids and adults.

"People can really search the web and nail down exactly what they want to be," says Heather Siegel, vice president of HalloweenMart, which is based in Las Vegas. You don't want to show up at a party and find seven different jokers all dressed exactly like you. Adds Foxman: "Since a large number of web sites do surveys, you can also find out which are the most popular costumes -- so you don't see yourself coming and going."

2. Get decorations
Your home is another thing to "dress up" on Halloween. On the web site for Martha Stewart Living magazine, you can find directions on how to turn small pumpkins into sconces or how to decoupage buckets with old candy wrappers to make festive decorations. Other sites sell more disturbing decorations, fit for the occasion, such as an inflatable grim reaper archway, from Spirit Halloween's web site, or a full-sized swinging hangman, from HalloweenMart.

"We provide everything you could want to turn your home into a haunted house," Siegel says. "We have expensive animated props -- all you need is an air compressor, and you can have a guy jumping out of a coffin or a lady flying at you and spinning her head 360 degrees." If it's something more modest that you're looking for, fake body parts (with fake blood) might do the trick. 

3. Plan a party
You want your Halloween bash to be different than the rest? Start trolling the Internet for party themes. For the kids, Batman parties are all the rage this year. But if you want something less scary for the younger set, Party411 offers pumpkin- or candy corn-themed plates, balloons and table settings in addition to a double-decker cupcake tray that looks like a haunted house. Foxman's favorite adult theme offered at Party411 is "Dead Rock Stars" -- complete with Elvis invitations, inflatable guitars, strobe lights and fog machines.

"You can not only find costumes and decorations but how-tos for anything," she says. For parents, a web site like Green Halloween may help you select organic foods for your kid’s party, in addition to games that are more natural and less reliant on plastics and other nonbiodegradable products -- such as dunk for apples or building a scarecrow. Another way to throw a green Halloween bash is to start from the get-go by using online invitation sources, such as Evite or Regards.

4. The Candy
Halloween wouldn't be complete without the treats. Using the Internet, you can find resources for printing customized Halloween wrappers for candy bars (WrapCandy), order custom-printed M&Ms (MyMMs) or custom-wrapped Hershey bars with spiders, bats or pirates (WrappedHersheys).

To make sure the candy your kids bring home from trick-or-treating is safe, turn to the Poison Control office in your state. You can find this resource by doing a search online with key words like: OklahomaPoison, CalPoison (California), MNPoison (Minnesota). These organizations offer parents tips on how to inspect candy, and they advise to toss anything unwrapped and to check fruit or homemade treats for tampering.

The big treat about Halloween in the age of the Internet is that it lasts more than one day. "Every day of the year is Halloween for us," says Siegel of HalloweenMart. 

Elizabeth Wasserman is a freelance writer and editor based in Fairfax, Va. She writes for a variety of publications, including Congressional Quarterly and Inc. magazine, and she edits the online publication CIO Strategy Center.