We might be too old to go door-to-door and ask strangers for candy… but we’re not too old to dress up as slutty versions of our favorite childhood fairy tales characters, animals, or public service workers, are we? Besides, if we’re struggling to pay $49.99 for a “Sexy Bull Fighter” costume, dammit, we want to get the most bang for our buck!

Here are a few games and party options that you can host throughout Halloween week, just to get into the spirit of things!

Liquor Treat
This game can be the most fun, but is also the most difficult to pull off, especially if you live in a dorm with a strict RA or a No-Alcohol Policy. Similar to an “Around-the-World” party, you have to rally everyone on your floor/in your apartment building to participate. The members of each room or apartment choose a theme…and a type of liquor. When guests arrive, they go door to door and can stay to mingle in any room they like. When they ring the doorbell, they are also rewarded with a shot– hence, this is the grown-up’s version of Trick or Treat.

Scary Movie Drinking Games
Take advantage of the fact that F/X, Sci-Fi, and all of the basic cable channels will be playing Friday the 13th, Nightmare on Elm Street and Halloween over and over for the whole month of October. If you are familiar with the movie, you can make up your own rules – e.g. take a shot every time the theme song plays in Halloween, or chug a beer every time you hear the “whispers” in Friday the 13th, or you can find several ready-made drinking games online to play. The good news? You’ll be so buzzed by the end that you won’t be too scared to sleep with the lights off!

Monster Mash
(Courtesy of Celebrations.com)
This is one of those counting drinking games that is so difficult to get the hang of, and so easy to get absolutely smashed by playing.

Sitting in a circle, you and your friends go around the room and count off–no small feat for college students! On numbers divisible by “3,” the player says the word “monster” instead of the number, and on numbers divisible by “5,” they say “mash” instead of the number. Whoever screws up, drinks. Once you get going, then, the game should sound something like, “1..2…monster…4….mash…monster….7…8….monster….mash.”

Boo! Zoo
Too smart to waste your night on a mere counting game? Throw in some crazy hand gestures! This is the Halloweenified version of the game “Zoo,” which you may or may not have heard of, but that needs to get into your Drinking Game vocabulary.

To play Zoo, everyone sits in a circle, again, and before you begin, go around the room and have everyone think of a word and a quick hand gesture to go along with it. For Halloween, then, a player might be “Ghost” and have a ghostlike motion, while another player is “Stab” and makes the universal signal for stabbing someone.

To begin the game, everyone must clap in a “We Will Rock You” rhythm. The starting player is predetermined, and the opening chant is as follows: “What are we playing?” “Boo Zoo!” “Why are we playing?” “Get f**ked up!”

The starting player continues the clapping, but inserts her word and gesture into it, and then inserts another players’ word and signal. Example: clap-clap-Ghost, clap-clap-Stab. Stab must be alert, and continue the clapping rhythm, following suit by shouting another players’ signal and performing their movement. The best part of this game is that whenever someone messes up, all players must partake in a group social! This one gets extremely tricky in large groups, which means more drinking for all involved!

Bobbing for Booze
I’m not going to lie, bobbing for apples was NOT my favorite fall game growing up; then again, who really wants to stick their face in some tepid water that the other kids have probably snotted and drooled in, only to come out with a freaking apple? For college purposes, why not mix things up a bit? Buy a bunch of nips from the liquor store (or have everyone bring a couple to throw into the pot), and toss them in a bin or vat of some sort that’s filled with water. Give everyone a turn to bob for nips, and then let everyone shoot their prizes! If you want to be bad, buy some nips of the nastiest liquor you can find, because you won’t be able to see what you’re bobbing for while you play.

And if you are really up for a challenge, toss the nips in a vat of jungle juice instead of water, and see where the night takes you from there!

[Get your Halloween on here.]

We know that most people count down to birthdays and Christmas, but Halloween is our favorite holiday of the year by far. I mean, there are costumes! And candy! And scary movies! And candy!

Oh wait…we said that one already.

Since we love this day so much, this week we asked our writers to weigh in on their favorite Halloween traditions. Some are old, some are new, but all are reasons to make this our #1 holiday.

Olua: Since my family never let me celebrate Halloween, I used to love watching all the cartoon specials they showed Halloween week. They also used to give us candy in class. Good times.

Kathryn S.: Getting wasted in a vinyl dress. Spill all the beer you want on me, it’ll slide right off!

Erica – Kent State: Carving pumpkins. This year my roommates and I did it surrounded by Carlo Rossi, pumpkin shaped cookies and our kittens. Then we baked the seeds. Delicious!

Carly – Grinnell: I love handing out candy to kids at the door. I just think it’s so fun to look at their costumes. Oh, and watching scary movies. Yessss.

Kelly – UMass: Keg stands in a slutty costume

Noa – CU Boulder: Scary movies and a little…er…herbal supplement.

Alex – Cornell: Decorating. I just get some sick rush from covering my house in pumpkins and spiderwebs.

Lauren – University of Michigan: Reese’s pumpkins. The peanut butter to chocolate ratio is perfect.

Suzanne – Tulane: The excuse to dress up in costume for a week straight. Everything is better in costume.

Kari – FSU: Helping my family put together our scarecrow, Upside Down Bob. Bob’s quite the character, he does a headstand in our front yard from Mid October til’ Black Friday and draws a lot of curiosity as to the sanity of our fam from passerby. Ahh, tradition.

Sarabeth – University of Texas: Dressing up! Nothing like being able to wear anything the eff you want for a night with no one to judge.

John – UConn: Predictably, my favorite Halloween tradition is trick-or-treating – but apparently it’s not as traditional as I’d thought. I went trick or treating as a freshman and most of the shrimpy little fifth graders

weren’t even dressed up, the pigs.

S.E. – Fordham: Carving pumpkins is my fave. I like taking all the orange goop out of it before I

put the candle in.

Heather – Penn State: Eating enough candy corn to feed a small country.

Elise – UCLA: Slice and Bake Pillsbury Cookies with those weird witch pictures on them that never turn out looking like witches, but taste sooo damn good.

While Halloween now is more closely associated with finding a (slutty) costume and drinking Halloween inspired beverages, as a kid, there was nothing better than going door to door loading up on enough candy to last you till the 4th of July.Only problem is, my mom – the smart woman that she is – knew her life would be torturous through July if she let her three hyper children keep that much sugar around.

So every year, my two older brothers and I would have to dump all of our coveted, prized candy into the middle of the table. My mother then carefully separated the candy into piles – Milky Ways in one pile, Twix in another, Candy Corn in another, and so on. She then handed a bucket to each of us and, one by one, we would go around taking our pick and filling our buckets.

Once they were filled, the rest of the candy went to inner-city kids whose neighborhoods were too dangerous to trick-or-treat in (which now I see was a very noble thing but at the time I couldn’t understand why they deserved my candy gold. After all, I spent three long hours in the cold with clown makeup on my face, saying stupid poems at people’s doors while they filled my bag up with all that deliciousness).

Going around that table, each taking our turn, made our piles of crack candy like a game of Monopoly. 100 Grand (because of its rarity) was like Park Place, while Apple Sauce (I mean really WHO GIVES OUT APPLE SAUCE ON HALLOWEEN?!) was like Baltic Ave. Having spent so much time pouring over every. last. piece of candy, I think I’ve become somewhat of an expert. So, I bring you my list of the all time Top 5 BEST Halloween Trick-or Treat Treats.

1) 100 Grand: It’s like a Nestle crunch bar meets a Milky Way meets Amazingness.

2) Peanut Butter Twix and Peanut Butter M&Ms. No explanation needed.

3) Double Stuffed Oreo’s with the Bright Orange Frosting. I’m not even sure if they make these anymore, but nothing says childhood like playing the Oreo game.

4) Skittles. The non chocolate version of M&Ms. Note to self: Don’t stick them up your nose…

5) Whatchamacallits. Mainly because I love the name and still find it slipping into my vocabulary. You know, while playing games of Concentration or jumping around on my Skip-It.

And an honorary spot has to go out to any big candy bar given. Those houses were the BEST. They were few and far between, but they were total jackpots. I bet if you drove through your old neighborhood now you could point out the houses that gave out the full sized Snickers.

Oh and I totally ate those before I got home, or hid them in my room… it took too much room up in the bucket and there was no way those other children were getting their paws on that treasure.

What are your favorites?

Last Saturday in Manhattan, I saw every costume imaginable. Swarms of bees, a duo from the Great Gatsby, a Pharaoh, Cat Woman, Sponge Bob, even a seriously drunk Teletubby. Everyone came out to play.But the best costume of the night went to the super skinny hipster boy standing right near my L train exit on Bedford. He was about as authentic as an Amy Winehouse imposter can be: short shorts, ratty white tank, beehive and thick black eyeliner. He was unmistakable replica. And it probably only cost him the price of a black wig.

If you’re broke or lazy or broke AND lazy (like me!) Halloween is more of an inconvenience than it is a good time. So instead of being Debbie Downer (hey, costume idea!) by not dressing up, here are some cheap ideas that are easy to put together on the fly.

Like say tonight… or tomorrow.

Easy DIY Ideas:

Amy Winehouse

Miss South Carolina

Drunk David Hasselhoff (get drunk…eat a burger…done!)

Oscar de la Hoya in drag

Print out Masks:

Obama, Brit Brit, Putin, Fred Thompson, Ron Paul and Ahmadinejad

Larry Craig

Star Wars

A Pug or a kitten

A slew of masks from Forbes

If I didn’t have to dress up for work, I would totally be a Blythe doll! So adorable!

“What is it?” I asked, trying to keep my eyes away from the bloody heads and severed body parts in the window display.

“I’m wearing a white sheet, and over that I’m putting on underwear and a bra.”

“What’s that supposed to be?”

“A slut ghost!” My friend said, bursting into laughter. “Funniest thing ever, right?”

She definitely wins points for creativity, and for finding perhaps the one costume that hasn’t yet been turned into glorified lingerie by the Halloween industry.

It’s true. Once you reach a certain age, October 31st becomes less about candy and more about showing off—especially if you’re a girl.

I’m not sure where or when the tradition of skanking-up costumes began, but these days, anything can be turned “sexy.” Sexy pirate. Sexy ballerina. Sexy Bee. Sexy Girlscout. I mean, I could go on, but it might get redundant.

While some people get bent out of shape by a gal’s choice to dress like a sexy FBI Informant, I’ve never had a problem with it. I’ve heard the whole, it objectifies women! argument, but if a girl is buying her own costume, putting it on herself, and walking around with full knowledge that she’s showing a lot of skin, it seems like risqué costumes are more about letting loose and having fun than being forced into something for the enjoyment of others.

Personally, I’m an easy going girl with an easy going style, but once a year I thoroughly enjoy showing off the fact that I take care of my body and have a good sense of humor (Look! I’m a saltshaker! I’m dressed all in white with glitter and I have a big S on my chest! Hahaha…but isn’t this skirt cute?).

Ranting about that girl at the Halloween party who wore spandex and homemade ears and played it off as an adequate representation of a cat just wastes time and energy. Like all things in life, some people will take risqué costumes too far, but begrudging a girl her god-given right to be a sexy mailman is just downright lame.

Do I recommend answering your door to little trick-or-treaters in a garter belt and black mask? No. But do I propose showing off what your mama gave you in a room full of adults? Sure.

Just remember to be creative. Dressing like an actual whore never won anyone anything except an awkward situation on the sidwalk.