haul off the zombies, it’s over

The chiseled features of the pumpkins are now sagging and shriveled. Once bright, supple flesh is now mottled and mold ravaged. The candles have exhausted themselves; puddles of pallid wax and charred bits of wick scattered across the mantle. The bats are limp and spiders are legs up. It’s time to mop up the blood and pack away Halloween for another year.

Goodbye Zombie Zone . . .

Goodbye candles and spiders . . .

Goodbye smoking cauldron and bottles of potions . . .

I will try to stay strong and not shed a tear as I carefully wrap my skulls in paper and box them up with the cauldrons and candelabra.  Besides, it’s hard to stay sad too long with a bag of B positive waiting to be tapped.

 

*Many thanks to The Zen Assassin for the Zombie Zone sign!

if I could get away with it, I’d dress like this all the time

My job has a “use them or lose them” policy when it comes to vacation days. I had two days left to use before my anniversary date in November, so I took off yesterday and today.  I figured that I would need the extra time to prepare for my Halloween party and boy was I right.  Because I tend to be a little OCD and a bit of a perfectionist, I was fiddling with my decorations for most of the day yesterday.  I know that no one will care if I have three spiders hanging from the doorway or two, but I spent hours rearranging them anyway.  I settled on three spiders. For some reason odd numbers calm me. Yeah, I have a therapist.

Today will be spent buying food and vacuuming.  You’re enthralled, I know.  I also have to get my costume together.  I have all the main pieces, but I think I still need some details.  Like goggles.  And dry ice.  And a Van de Graaff generator.  I may have to do without that last one.

I’m not going to reveal my costume here untill Halloween, but I will let you see my costume from last year (and because I promised fellow Halloween junkie Thought’s Appear that I would). 

That is me on the left as zombie Princess Leia, my mom in the middle as The Ghost of Halloween and my sister on the right as Julie McCoy the Cruise Director from The Love Boat.  If you haven’t read the story about last year’s Halloween party I would really love if you would.  It’s a big ball of rad.

Here’s another pic with my mom’s boyfriend Captain Bill (yes he really is a captain).

He didn’t rent that costume, folks.  He made everything.  Capt’n Bill don’t play. 

Here’s one with my husband.

Yes, my husband is Stewie Griffin from Family Guy.  The only way he would dress up is if he could be Stewie so I sewed a big pair of red overalls for him.  He already owned the teddy bear. 

So, yeah, last year’s Halloween is a big act to follow.  I know that there won’t be any surprise guests or explosions, but that’s okay.  I am looking forward to spending time with some old friends who I haven’t seen in a while. 

Excuse me, I have some spiders to rearrange.

creeping up the place

Every year, I am tempted to “forget” to take down my Halloween decorations and just leave them up all year long.  I love the creepy little accents to my life that much. 

That being said, I prefer subtle decorations that blend in with my existing decor to turning my living room into a haunted house.  I want it to look like it has always been there.  And, I resist the urge to use that fake spider web stuff.  I used to be a fan, until I realized that it doesn’t look like spider webs at all.  It looks like cotton candy.  Cotton candy isn’t scary.  Plus, I saw way too many people going overboard with it to the point that it looked more like snow than anything else.  I freed myself from the faux spider webbing and I haven’t looked back. It was liberating.

Because I am cheap and own a glue gun, I like to make many of my decorations.  And, because I am lazy, most of these decorations are ridiculously simple to make.

I did not make the black skull candle, but I love it dearly.  I did make the stitched up mummy candle holders.  It’s just rolled gauze (or you could use cheesecloth) wrapped around tall, glass candle holders (the small one is actually a juice glass).  I used double stick tape to hold it in place, then made a few stitches with needle and black thread.  Simple and cheap!  I didn’t have to purchase a thing to make these since I already had the gauze which was left over from when my husband set himself on fire years ago.  Thanks, hon!

Spider under glass.  I’m so damn classy.  A few years ago I made about twenty of these spiders one evening while watching television.  I’m an excellent multi-tasker.  The body is two black pom poms hot glued together, then glue four black pipe cleaners to the pom poms.  (Sorry I don’t have step by step instructions with corresponding pictures.  Lazy, remember?)  The legs bend however you need to pose them.  This one is about to nom on an itty bitty pumpkin.  Ain’t that cute?  I have these spiders perched all over the place.  There’s one on my desk at work, too.  He does my filing for me.

  

 Okay, I didn’t make the drippy blood window clings or the eyeballs (they’re bouncy balls) I just like them. 

I did make these pumpkins, though.

Just cut fabric into an eight inch circle, and with heavy thread, stitch very loosely (twelve stitches or so) in and out around the perimeter of the circle leaving both ends of the thread hanging free.  Take a plastic grocery bag, ball it up and place it in the center of the circle.  Tie the ends of the thread together and pull them tight which will gather the fabric up (like tying the draw string on sweat pants) and around the bag ball until it’s completely covered.  Knot the thread tight so the fabric stays put.  Next, wander out into your yard and find a dry branch and break it into two or three inch segments.  Hot glue a branch segment into the pucker made from gathering the fabric and you have a pumpkin.  Seriously, it will take you less time to actually make one than it did for me to figure out how to explain how to make one. 

The pumpkins can stay out through Thanksgiving.  The eyeball jar and bats print will probably have to be packed away before then.  Maybe I can keep the bats up longer.  Just put red hats on them for Christmas or something.  Who says bats can’t be festive for all seasons?