When you were a kid and Halloween rolled around, you knew what you were doing.

You'd get your bed sheet, cut a couple of holes in it and ghost yourself down the street, grabbing whatever candy you could get your hands on.

Growing up in the Harvard Houses, however, the kids of masters, tutors and professors have to be a little more creative. After all, it's not likely that the sophomore pre-med downstairs will be waiting for the trick-or-treat knock with a bowl full of Sugar Daddies.

This year, Malia Preble and husband Scott Yang, both tutors in Kirkland House, are going all out for their children's costumes.

"My older daughter will be a skyscraper," Preble said, "and the younger daughter is Cinderella."

Alana Yang, 4 1/2, even came up with the skyscraper idea herself.

"It was either that or an eyeball," Preble said. "I was rooting for the eyeball."

The costume came together in four hours, welded out of foam core into a two-tiered structure. Total cost: $5.24.

"We looked up the Chrysler Building on the Internet and the hat will be in that art deco style," Preble said.

Preble said Alana and sister Keala, 2 1/2, will probably go trick-or-treating in the neighborhood behind the Divinity School.

"They are usually decorated pretty well there," Preble said. "Right around the dorms is the worst."

Marc Busch, assistant professor of government and social studies, will be taking his kids out trick-or-treating this weekend as well.

"I have two children and we are going to be Halloweening all throughout the neighborhood," said Busch, who lives with his family on Faculty Row behind Pforzheimer House.

"The neighborhood around PfoHo is good. We've always had good luck," he said.

Zach Busch, 4, is planning to go as King Neptune and his sister, 18-month-old Lelia, will accompany him as Ariel from Disney's The Little Mermaid.