We love Halloween best when family and friends get in on the fun. We, your trusty Girlfriends, have found inspiring sites for Halloween activities - food, costumes, party ideas and haunted houses. Continue, Gentle Reader, and see what we have in store for you! For fun at home, we have two sites: FunMunch (www.funmunch.com) and Family Fun(www.familyfun.go.com) FunMunch has Halloween stories, jokes, links and more. Family Fun has crafts

and puzzles. Both sites feature costumes, ! pumpkin-carving tips, food and party ideas. We've highlighted the best of these ideas below.

Family Fun is a familiar site to our long-term subscribers, but their costume ideas can't be beat. Halloween costume ideas are what led us to Family Fun in the first place, and one of us makes her kids' costumes every year from this site. One of the things we love is that there are many ideas, from elaborate to last-minute, toddler to group costumes. Family Fun also identifies the amount of time needed to make the costume. FunMunch features costumes, as well, but their selection is very basic.

For Halloween food, we love the recipes at FunMunch. We think we are going to make the eyeballs ourselves. There are only four recipes at FunMunch, but each of them is a Halloween classic and worth the review. Family Fun, a larger site, has many recipes. We like the recipes that have photos of the finished project. If you are going to have a big Halloween party, you will be able to find the entire menu here.

Halloween is about Halloween parties. We have been to parties after Trick or Treating or instead of Trick or Treating. FunMunch gives some ideas for games that will substitute for the house-to-house candy grab. Family Fun has a variety of party themes. Most of the ideas in these sites are for multi-generational parties, although there is no age limit on silly fun.

Enough with home-grown! Let's lose some sleep! Haunt World (www.hauntworld.com) lists and rates haunted houses nationwide. Although we have not done an exhaustive search, we have checked a number of towns and Haunt World is very good about listing several nearby sites. We love the "skull ratings," but when we checked there weren't

many ratings. Maybe more to come. One of us is far too chicken for a haunted house, but one of us is very tough, and will probably visit them all.

Whether you want to go all out or add just a little eek to the season, these sites have the information you need.

Your freaky Girlfriends,

Suzanne and Alex

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