Halloween is a time for fun and laughter. It should be a magical time for your daughter, not a time of stress and strife. She should be going to her school's carnival, attending friend's parties, going on hay-rides, and finally going out Trick-or-Treating.  Not fighting with her parents about Halloween costumes.

Costume ideas are everywhere. If you have time, you can put together a really wonderful costume. But if you don't have the time to drive all over town, shop at every thrift store and dollar store in town, and check out the costume stores for miles around; then you may want to think about purchasing a costume this year.

I know that right now money is tight, but if you choose wisely, you can get your money's worth out of the costume you get this year. Who knows, maybe you will be able to use some if not all of the costume again next year?

So what is a time-pressed, short of money parent to do? If creative costume making just isn't your thing and your daughter plans on going out Halloween to get some candy, then you will need to really shop carefully and buy her costume. There are many, many Halloween costume stores around and if you shop really early, you may actually find something there. If you are like most of us, though, you probably will wait until the last minute and then begin to frantically search for a costume.

You might want to shop online this year. There are several reasons for doing so—it can be done whenever you have the time; it is relatively easy to do; you will find a much better selection to choose from; you can buy a whole costume or just various parts to make one up. These vendors will still have a fairly good selection right up to the actual holiday. The best part of shopping online is that the costume will come to you.

Ok, so you will shop online. Now what? You will spend hours and hours searching sites, viewing pages and pages of costumes. That is the down side to online shopping. It can become a time drag for you depending on the speed of your home computer. It can get overwhelming because there are so many sites to choose from; and each site has so many costumes to offer.

This year, if you want your daughter's costume to be different from all the others so that you can easily keep an eye on her as she goes house to house in the growing gloom of the evening, I may have a solution for you.