HAPPY HALLOWE'EN!

Happy Halloween...




...and an explanation. In September I started a new job which has gobbled up my time like a child gobbles up candy on Halloween night. We still had our annual Halloween party, and I am still putting on a show out in the graveyard tonight - but just barely. These events have been forces of will. I'm hoping that by this time next year, I will have the everyday duties of this new job mastered, allowing me more time to do the things I love on the best day of the year - and more time to blog about it!

P.S. Looks to be a beautiful day...and night...in the Northstar State tonight. 49 degrees for the high temperature - no rain - no snow - no wind. You can't ask for much more than that! Be safe...have fun...and don't blow out the jack-o-lanterns!

Spirit Halloween

Look what's coming to town! Not sure if this is any different than the usual 'Halloween Store' that we've always had here in the past - but I'm definitely looking forward to browsing through the aisles!

Count Down

71 days 'til Halloween, Halloween, Halloween! 71 days 'til Halloween... Silver Shamrock!

Halloween Party

How I would love to go to a Halloween party like this - and that's just the kid's table!

From the Skip To My Lou blog - see more party pics here:

http://www.skiptomylou.org/2010/10/26/halloween-party-decorations/

Double Digits

99 days 'till Halloween, Halloween, Halloween! 99 days 'till Halloween...SILVER SHAMROCK!

I always know every summer, when the Lazy Susan's bloom, that the clock really starts ticking on the Halloween prop building. I think most home haunters would agree that the pressure slowly starts to build each year once you hit the double digit mark on the countdown to the big day. This is where you really start to get serious and buckle down on those props you've been slowly tinkering with and get them finished!

To the average person this idea seems ludicrous. It's only July 24th! You're thinking about Halloween already? they chortle with wide eyes rolling. To which I say: It's July 24th! Only 99 days left! Time's running out!

Got Brains?

A fun little pic I dug up from the crypt - this is me on Halloween night two years ago...

Vintage Goodness

Old Fashioned Red Candy Apple Recipe (circa 1929)

Two cups granulated sugar, one-half cup light corn syrup, one-quarter cup water, red coloring, one-half teaspoon cinnamon flavoring, twelve red apples, twelve wooden skewers.

Cook the granulated sugar, corn syrup, and water in a small saucepan, stirring until the sugar is dissolved. Continue cooking without stirring until the syrup is brittle when tested in cold water. During the cooking, any sugar crystals thrown on the sides of the pan should be carefully washed down with a wet cloth. Remove the syrup from the heat and set at once over hot water. Add coloring and flavoring and mix well.

Insert the skewers, which can be purchased from the butcher, in the blossom end of the apples. Hold each apple by the skewer and plunge into the hot syrup. Draw it out quickly and twirl it until the syrup is spread smoothly over the apple.

Place apples with the skewer end down in a wire cake rack, which has been placed over a large bowl, so that the apple does not touch anything while hardening. These apples should be made the day they will be used.

http://www.homemade-dessert-recipes.com/candy-apple-recipe.html

Random Geekery

Okay - some random thoughts from a certified HALLOWEEN movie franchise geek. I love these movies (well, John Carpenter's original through HALLOWEEN 4 - with a soft spot for part 6), and often have completely random thoughts about the greatness of the early entries and how the later ones could have been improved upon. Here's one example of a random thought I had the other day:

This is actually a long running observation that I've had for many years now, related to the opening scene of the original 1981 version of HALLOWEEN II. You'll recall that film started with the oldie tune "Mr. Sandman" by The Chordettes (a song referenced again in HALLOWEEN H20.) Similarly, every time I hear the 1964 tune "A Summer Song" by Chad & Jeremy I always think now that's a song that should be used in a HALLOWEEN movie! Read the lyrics with Laurie Strode and Michael Myers in mind, giving the beautiful lyrics a slightly sinister undertone, and decide for yourself...

They say that all good things must end some day
Autumn leaves must fall
But don't you know that it hurts me so
To say goodbye to you
Wish you didn't have to go
No no no no

And when the rain
Beats against my window pane
I'll think of summer days again
And dream of you

They say that all good things must end some day
Autumn leaves must fall
But don't you know that it hurts me so
To say goodbye to you
Wish you didn't have to go
No no no no

And when the rain
Beats against my window pane
I'll think of summer days again
And dream of you
And dream of you


Rob Zombie made a habit of recycling oldie standards in his craptacular HALLOWEEN movies, alas, this one wasn't one of them - but I would have loved to hear this in HALLOWEEN H20 as it seems to fit the vibe of that film perfectly (but as we know, that film had its own recycled soundtrack).

To listen, click below:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_D2XD341xHo

Silver Shamrock

111 days 'till Halloween, Halloween, Halloween...

Blazing Jack

Jack on fire
Originally uploaded by Kellie Megnin

This year, after the trick-or-treaters are gone and the props are stored away, I'm remembering to blaze a few jack-'o-lanterns.

Bedtime Story

Came across this on deviantart. Click to see more.

Stellar.

Head Shop

This past winter I picked up a foam pumpkin from Michael's at 90% off and decided the time had come to give our scarecrow, Jack, a new head. He's switched between two different heads for the past ten years, but this third version is by far the creepiest and most extreme. While work on the head is not quite finished, here's a little sneak preview of what you can expect to see come October...

Discard Delight

Picked this very cool book up at a book sale at our local library for a quarter. From the early '80's, this book is filled with old-school make-up hints and home-haunting tips (and a little inaccurate information regarding the history of Samhain), and tons of great black and white photos. I would recommend picking this one up - you can easily find copies for mere pennies at Amazon and other online retailers.

Garage Sale

Every year our community has a Garage Sale weekend around the middle of May. This is a perfect excuse to drive around town and stock up on ultra cheap Halloween costumes, props, masks, and accessories - and this year was no exception! While I didn't bring in as big of a haul as years past, I did score a couple of great costumes for two bucks. Brand new and still in the package (they look like they have never been worn), I found a scarecrow Ghost Face costume and a Headless Horseman costume that will definitely come in handy come October! My daughter even got into the spirit of things and spent some of her own money to buy dad some Halloween goodies. She picked up one of those motion sensor candy bowls with the electronic 'grabber' hand inside of it for fifty cents - so I'm thinking I might hack that apart and use the hand elsewhere in my haunt - maybe in the graveyard or stick it in the mouth of a jack-o-lantern. It's never too early to start thinking about Halloween!

Time Lapse

From Rob Zombie's YouTube channel...

Halloween Roundup

We've had wave a flu bugs sweep through our house, which is partly why I haven't yet uploaded my 2011 Halloween pics to the Hallowzing website. Meanwhile, loads of other home haunts have put me to shame with some really incredible photos from Halloween night. The legendary Pumpkinrot has put together a nice collection of some of his favorites over at his 'What's Brewing' blog. Stop by and check out everyone's hard work - and I promise to get my butt in gear and get some photographs up soon!

http://pumpkinrot.blogspot.com/

That's Life

This image is courtesy of a feature LIFE magazine ran in which they confessed that not all of their front covers were iconic. This one, clearly, they got wrong. With the tagline: "The stuff bad dreams are made of," I thought this one was terrific (and almost exactly what my son wore for Halloween this year!) Not sure why they picked this one as a 'worst cover,' but personally I love it!

See the rest of them here:
http://www.life.com/gallery/66721/image/ugc1273001/lifes-20-worst-covers#index/0

Here & There

One of the more amusing traditions I have in the post-Halloween season is what I call 'Here & There' (sometimes known as: Oh, look what I found!) This is yet another of my little yearly traditions at our house that invariably happens year after year. How does Here & There work? Well, as I pointed out in previous posts, most of our Halloween decorations actually come down the weekend BEFORE Halloween. I know this seems odd, but the sheer enormity of the job, and the crazy amount of items we have dictate this rule. The outside decorations come down on Halloween night for the most part, with a few that I might have missed or were too tired to bother with coming down on All Souls Day.

This is where Here & There begins.

Putting away the Halloween stuff for another year is bittersweet. On the one hand, the decorations have been up for over a month - so when it's time for them to come down, it's time. On the other - it's cool living in a house that's completely transformed for that short span of time. It's a big job and I wonder each year how in the heck it's all going to fit into the orange and black Rubbermaids we have in our crawlspace (sometimes they don't - and we have to add yet another Rubbermaid to our collection and hope it fits in with the rest under the stairs). But, once the job is done, it's a relief to know that it's all packed safely away and life can once again return to normal...

Except I will find a Halloween candle-holder here. Going about my daily routines I will stumble across a string of Halloween lights there ("How did I miss those?") Oh, look - I found this necklace that was part of my daughter's Halloween costume. Here's some prizes I bought for next year's party in this Target bag in the bedroom. There's some black plastic tablecloths in the crawl-space I missed ("I must have walked past those a hundred times!") Here's the jack-'o-lantern guts scooper/scraper thing. There's another set of vampire teeth ("Where do these keep coming from?") You see what I mean? We are now entering into the second week of November and I am STILL playing Here & There - and I fully expect this strange custom to continue for the rest of...

Oh, look - here's a...

Gang 'O Jacks

Some of the jack-'o-lanterns we carved from pumpkins picked from our garden. Counting pumpkins we brought home from visits to two different pumpkin patches, I ended up carving 20 jack-'o-lanterns in total.

Commercial Tradition

Okay so I have one other Halloween tradition (well, All Souls Day, technically) that I'm not so proud of. Sure, I rant about how commercial Halloween has become - I lecture and I preach about keeping it old fashioned and remembering traditions of the past. So what do I do each year? Why, head on out the next morning to hit the 50% OFF sales to pick up the few goodies that happened to catch my eye over the past month.

The jack-'o-lantern cookie jar seen above is one of them. Half price at Target ($10.00), I've had my eye on this one and was willing to push and shove old ladies out of my way to get it! I wasn't impressed with most of what Target had to offer, but this will take a place of honor in our kitchen the whole year 'round!