Kids up and down the UK are starting to get excited about the prospect of celebrating World Book Day, which falls on the 1st March this year. The event celebrates and encourages reading in general, and really helps kids to feel engaged more with books- every child is given a £1 book token to spend on a book of their choice. Many schools support the day by encouraging pupils to dress up as their favourite literary character, and this really helps them to get inside the mind of that character even more. 

Of course the classic children's books are really popular source of inspiration when it comes to selecting a costume. Wizard of Oz is a particular favourite, as is Peter Pan and the classic fairy tales. Over the last few years though Harry Potter costumes have been probably the most popular costume choice for Book Day. And it’s not just Harry that kids are dressing up as! The Hermione Granger costume is just as popular choice, if not more so! ‘Girl Power’ is still alive! 

Last Christmas a whopping 10 million turkeys were sold in the UK! A survey also showed that 87% of people feel that Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without the festive bird. It's hard not to feel sorry for this poor creature, as sometimes its seems their only purpose in life is being eaten with lashings of gravy and a handful of roast potatoes. Let's be honest, they're not the best looking creatures either!

This year at All Fancy Dress we are encouraging you to be a turkey instead of tucking into one! Our excellent turkey costume will have you showing off your very finest turkey impression and turning a few heads in the process. However if you are looking for something a little more 'subtle' our turkey gobbler hat and Christmas turkey hat are probably the right choice for you.

So don’t sit around this Christmas stuffing your face with turkey, go be one! 'Sympathy for the turkey'!

 Although most people won't admit to this, probably the most popular thing about Christmas is the food (perhaps because there is just so much of it around!) This Christmas at All Fancy Dress we encourage you to tie that much loved Christmas food in with your Christmas fancy dress costume. So if you don’t want to pile on the pounds this Christmas by eating all the puddings, how about being one yourself!? Our Christmas pudding costume is extremely entertaining and is sure to make others 'want a slice' of the action (yes I know the puns are terrible!)Or if you want people dribbling over you this Christmas why not try out our saucy Christmas pudding outfit, the alternative designed for women. Be sure to get your hands on a Christmas pudding costume before they go past their sell by date! And of course, copious amounts of brandy should be applied!

It could be a cheap Christmas for some of us! Well, those of us who go by the name Mary, Joseph and even Jesus.

This year Travelodge are offering a truly festive offer in their hotels. Couples going by the names; Mary and Joseph, are being offered free hotel rooms this Christmas as are those named Jesus! Rooms are available at the inn from Christmas eve until the twelfth night (January the 6^th 2012). Even modern day ‘mangers’ are available in the rooms. A Travelodge spokesman said: “The phrase 'no room at the inn' is renowned within the hotel industry. Therefore, this year we have decided to evoke the true spirit of Christmas and help ease the cost of the festive season and invite couples called Mary and Joseph and for the first time anyone called Jesus as our guests.”

So if you fancy a few free nights at the Travelodge this Christmas, why don’t you dress yourself in our nativity costumes and perhaps you’ll be in with an even better chance of getting a free room!

According to finance site 24/7 Wall Street, the Zombie Industry is now worth a whopping $5 Billion a year! We'd love to say that this is all made up of zombie costume sales, however it is a combination of a very wide range of products and industries. Indeed, zombie video games alone account for $2.5 Billion! Add to this all the sales from the many Hollywood movies, DVDs, comics and of course costumes, and you have a massive worldwide industry that is growing at a rapid rate.

One of the key reasons for this rise in popularity has to be the wealth of zombie movies released in recent years, from Shaun of The Dead (pure genius!) through to 28 Days Later. Cripes, even Brad Pitt is getting in on the action as he is currently filming the epic 'World War Z' at the moment! Zombies are big on the 'small screen' as well with the TV series 'The Walking Dead' already a world wide hit. A lot of social commentators believe that the rise of the zombie in our popular culture is a direct reflection of the anxiety-ridden times that we live in. We'd like to think that it's just that zombies can look so darn cool!  At All Fancy Dress we have see this 'zombie trend' developing over the last 3 or 4 years to the extent that zombie costumes are now our biggest selling category at Halloween, displacing the more traditional witches and vampires. As a personal fan of the zombie look I do hope this trend continues into the future! Let's watch this space!

 The queen of bling and R&B attitude, Beyonce, has taken to dressing up as a bee! Quite appropriate really as her name is Bee-yonce! She sported the bee costume at Kanye West's recent Halloween Party, and the chunky nature of the costume helped to disguise her baby bump. Unless you have been hiding under a rock for the last 6 months you will of course know that Beyonce is expecting her first child with her other half Jay-Z. You can see the pic of Beyonce in her bumble bee costume here. And of course we would like to extend our congratulations to Mrs Z!

It's great to see the continuing trend for people to wear regular costumes at Halloween. This has long been practised in the USA, where people see Halloween as an opportunity to dress up in any manner of costume, and the practise is starting to emerge in the UK as well. Indeed, quite a significant proportion of our Halloween sales were for regular costumes. Personally I would always go for a zombie costume myself, but then that probably says more about my personality than anything else!

From everyone at All Fancy Dress we would like to wish you a really happy Halloween. Whatever you are doing, whether its Trick or Treating, holding a fancy dress party, or just staying at home and having a horror film fest, make sure you enter into the fun spirit of the day.

It's great to see that the UK has really started to take Halloween to its heart. For many years the USA has celebrated the event with real gusto. Just about every house in the states is covered throughout with halloween decoration, grizzly looking pumpkins, jack-o-lanters and spooky spiders. There's also a host of 'scary farms' and 'horror houses' that spring up during the Halloween season to scare the wits out of its unsuspecting vitims.

These trends are starting to emerge in the UK too, and we love it. Long may the Halloween fun continue- have fun, but be safe! Happy Halloween folks!

Greetings fellow Halloween Fans! We're 'dead' excited here at All Fancy Dress Towers, as we're now officially only 7 days away from the best (and scariest) day of the year! That's right, you may think we're mad but we get more excited about Halloween than Christmas here at AFD. We love the sense of fun and anticipation involved in choosing your costume, followed by the creativity of customising it to suit your inidividual look! And there are literally hundreds of ways to 'pimp' your costume, from fake blood through to fangs and even funky coloured cosmetic contact lenses (which look truly scary on zombie costumes)!

And let's not forget the fun kids can have carving pumpkins, Trick or Treating, and helping you to decorate your house (spooky style!) It's really great to see that we're embracing Halloween with real gusto now in the UK, and who knows, maybe we can teach our American cousins a thing or two about how to celebrate Halloween in style- Have fun, but stay safe folks!

Now if you thought Ozzy Osbourne Looked a bit scary (and well, yes he is a bit) then you ain't seen nothing yet. That's right becuase this fierce looking Zombie Rocker Costume combines the edginess of the rock n roll persona, with the added 'bite' and attitude of a rabbid wide-eyed zombie! The parralels between zombie and rock star are there for all to see- the vacant stare, the post drug-binge addled brain, and the long extended growling.

We love this outfit at All Fancy Dress- It can be worn not only as a Halloween Costume but also fits in nicely with the 1980s theme! This zombie rocker costume includes beige shirt with bone print on the front and an attached black waistcoat, skeleton mask with hair and a red headband, and a cool bone guitar.

Party on Zombie Dude!