When you are setting up your haunted house it is important that you don’t forget the bathroom. There are quite a few things that you can do in there. One of my favorites is actually very simple. Get some red craft paint and print in large letters on the mirror Redrum with the d and the second r written backwards like it was in The Shining. I do this whenever I have a Halloween party and it really freaks people out. Another thing you can do is this shower curtain. Not another bloody shower curtain! I know I have covered a few of these in the past, but this shower curtain has a twist.  When your guests walk into the bathroom they see a shower curtain with blood splatters and the silhouette of a man wielding a knife. That could be pretty scary on it’s own. As they walk further into the bathroom suddenly they hear the music from Psycho along with blood curdling screams. It all works with a motion activated sound box that runs on batteries. The whole thing costs only $19.98, so it’s really a no-brainer. It would be too noisy for me to live with this year round, but for Halloween it’s fantastic.

Every time I have a Halloween party I make punch with ice hands and put it in one of those huge black plastic cauldrons. The one thing I recommend though is finding a large bowl or pot to put inside. It can’t fit too snugly. This will allow you to put some warm water and dry ice at the bottom of your cauldron, so the smoke will flow out through the gaps. Doing it this way means the dry ice will never be in the punch and you won’t have to worry about your guests touching it. To make the ice hands you will need some surgical gloves that are not powdered. These can be purchased at most drug stores. Rinse out two gloves, fill with water and tightly tie them shut with some string. Lie them flat in your freezer and let freeze for 2 days. Run a small amount of warm water over the gloves to loosen them. Be careful when removing the glove. Use scissors to cut away if necessary. If you lose a finger don’t worry. It makes it even creepier.

The punch can be any recipe you like really. I always use the recipe below and you can choose to add vodka or not. I usually don’t for the people that aren’t drinking.

1             96 oz. Orange Juice
4             48 oz. cans Pineapple Juice
4             2 liter bottles of Sprite or 7Up
1             1.75 liter bottle of vodka

Mix well. Put the warm water and dry ice at the bottom of your cauldron and then put your pot/bowl inside. Pour in your punch and then add your ice hands. The hands floating in the punch is really creepy and your guests will love it.

For my store I have always been very adamant about all of the props being life-size. I believe it is much more realistic and therefor scary. 15″ adult skeletons just do not seem scary to me. Throughout the store we have many full size animatronics. Customers love it when the butler says something to them as they walk by or the werewolf rattles it’s chains. It freaks them out and it even catches us off guard at times too. All of the life-size creatures say something or move around in some way except one. The one I am referring to is the Grim Reaper or as we affectionately call him: Grimmy. No object scares us more than old Grimmy. He is far and away the best prop we have and he doesn’t even move or speak. He will make me jump out of my skin at least a couple of times a week. I tried to find him online, but it seems the exact one we have is no longer made. I did find a very close version of him that I think would still have the same effect. I highly recommend you get him for any decorating you plan to do for Halloween. He’s a little expensive, but trust me you’ll get more bang for your buck with this Grim Reaper than any other screaming or moving prop you can find.

When I go to a Halloween party I like to see scary costumes. I always dress in scary costumes myself, ever since I was a small child. I do remember being about 5 years old and dressing up as a doll, but I’m sure that was my Mother’s choice. Another time my sister and I dressed as Indians. That was also my  Mother’s choice. Other than that I have always preferred scary costumes. Once in a while though I do really enjoy seeing someone dressed in a funny costume. Preferably one that has a sense of humor or is clever. I don’t enjoy seeing costumes like a princess or an M&M. It’s Halloween for Pete’s sake! Halloween is scary. It’s better than not dressing up at all though. This One Night Stand costume made me laugh out loud when I first saw it, so it makes my funniest costume list this year.

Please don’t be a loser. Wear a freakin’ costume, damn it! I’ll kick your ass to the curb if you don’t.

Every once in a while I throw a big Halloween Party. I love adapting normal recipes into scary ones. This recipe for Witches Fingers was adapted from a Danish Christmas cookie recipe that my Mom always made. Everyone is always creeped out by these cookies!

Ingredients:
2 3/4 c. flour
1 tsp. salt
1 c. powdered sugar
1 c. butter softened
1 egg
1 tsp. almond extract
1 tsp. vanilla extract
3/4 c. whole blanched almonds (skin removed)
red food coloring, preferably paste/gel

Preheat oven to 325° F. Combine dry ingredients. Lightly grease a cookie sheet. In a large bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg, almond extract and vanilla, beat in dry ingredients. Cover and refrigerate dough for 30 minutes or until firm. Optional: If you want to paint the nails, which I never do anymore, this is the time to do that. Use some red food coloring that’s been diluted with water and brush on with a clean small paint brush. Working with one-quarter of the dough at a time and keeping remaining dough refrigerated, roll heaping teaspoons full of dough into finger shape for each cookie. Press an almond firmly into one end for nail. Squeeze in center to create a knuckle shape and use a sharp knife to make shallow cuts in several places to form knuckle. Place cookies on the prepared cookie sheet and bake for 20-25 minutes or until lightly golden. Let cool for a few minutes. Remove from cookie sheet and let cool on a wire rack. Repeat with remaining dough. Optional: Dip ends of fingers in red food coloring. Makes about 5 dozen.

* Not an actual picture of my cookies. I didn’t have one. This was taken from another Witches Fingers cookie recipe, but they look pretty much the same.

Even though it is the month of October it doesn’t mean I’m not going to do T-Shirt Tuesday, so here it is. As I have stated before Halloween is very important to me. I love everything about it. Once I figure out what I want to be for Halloween, I spend a ridiculous amount of time on it. The costumes become very involved and ornate. Sometimes costing way too much money, but I can’t control it. When I have a picture in my mind I will go to the ends of the earth to make it happen. Every year I have multiple parties to go to. People know I love it and will go all out. I think that might be why I get invited. It can’t be because of my sparkling wit. At every Halloween party there is always that one guy that comes in a t-shirt and jeans and declares he’s homeless or something. I realize that not everyone has the time or energy that I put into a costume, but come on. There are great t-shirts out there like the Ghostbusters Venkman T-shirt below left that take no effort at all. Even the stupid one below right shows you’re kind of into it. Make an effort when you get invited to a Halloween party. Even if it is just a t-shirt costume. Otherwise you may just be sitting at home drinking yourself into a stupor while you moan that you never get invited to parties and have no friends. I know I wouldn’t invite you.

As ususal I haven’t decided what to be for Halloween yet. It’s always a big ordeal for me because I want something scary, but not particularly gross. Many years ago when the show Roseanne was still on TV they did Halloween specials every year. Did you know that you can get the seven best of the Halloween specials on DVD? Anyway, I was always a huge fan of them and still watch them every October. In 1992 they did an episode about how Roseanne couldn’t get into the spirit of Halloween. The whole family continually tried to play jokes on her to no avail. Roseanne is then visited by the ghosts of Halloween past, present and future and finally realizes how much she is needed on Halloween. The episode culminates in her showing up at the annual Halloween party dressed as the statue of liberty and setting off the fire sprinklers. Well, in this episode Darlene appears in one of my favorite costumes ever dressed as Tippi Hedren’s character from The Birds. For years I have wanted to recreate that costume, but never had the time. Now I can just buy it! I would have to add a pecked out eye or something, though. Maybe that’s what I’ll be for Halloween this year…

In my bookstore we have an area dedicated to a mad scientist’s laboratory. This was so much fun to put together and can be easily used in your Halloween display or haunted house. You can always buy the premade stuff shown below, but that can run into a lot of money. What we did was buy some of the premade things that we couldn’t easily recreate and mixed it in with the things we could.

Start out with some test tubes and a rack that you can buy from places like American Science and Surplus. You can fill these with water colored with food coloring or if you are afraid of them spilling you can also do colored geletin. Buy some jars in varying sizes or save the jars you empty in the kitchen which is even cheaper.  These jars can be filled with all sorts of things. Like a plastic bloody brain or eyeballs that can be purchased cheaply in any halloween store. You can even get more creative and hit the grocery store. We actually used matzo balls in one jar. If you prepare some clear geletin and put it in each jar the items will appear to float, which we found makes them much more creepy. Buy a toy microscope which usually comes with some accessories which can be used as well. In the dark you can’t tell the difference.

Place a couple of boxes in various sizes around your table to add some height. Put a black cloth over the table and boxes. Now arrange all of your props together making sure to put some things on the boxes. Add a skull or two and a hidden colored light and you have yourself a creepy laboratory display.

I just got back from seeing Zombieland. I’m not a big fan of zombie movies in general, but I do love the funny ones like Shaun of the Dead and Fido. Zombieland did not let me down. This was gorier than what I normally like, but the humor and casting made up for it. It starts out with a guy played by Jesse Eisenberg  just trying to stay alive in a world taken over by zombies. He meets up with Woody Harrelson’s character, who was a brilliant piece of casting, playing the anti-hero with nothing to lose. Together they embark on trying to find a place that isn’t overrun with zombies. They meet up with Abigail Breslin and Emma Stone’s characters and lots of zombie killing ensues. Along the way there is a fantastic cameo by someone I will not name. I don’t want to ruin it for anyone. Overall the movie is extremely gory, especially early on. Once you get to the meat of the story it’s not quite as bad. The best part of the movie was the narration by the main character. No real names are given in the movie, so they each go by the name of the place they are from. You get the feeling that Jessie Eisenberg’s character has been surviving for quite some time in zombieland and he has devised a list of survival rules. He’s very strict about not breaking them and throughout the movie these rules continually come into play. A great movie overall that I really enjoyed, as did most of the people in the audience. No where near the brilliance of Shaun of the Dead, but can any movie touch that?

If you are putting together a haunted house you have to include a library. What’s a spooky house without a library holding some of the scariest books ever written? If you want to put in that extra bit of spookiness though, you need these haunted books. In my bookstore I have these set up in between the books for sale. They are motion activated, so when someone is standing there looking at books or walking by it sets them off. The Beast Within the Books prop on the right pops open up to show the little monster with eyes that light up. It shakes and and makes some spooky sounds. With the Possessed Books prop on the left one of the books slides out back and forth and makes some spooky sounds. After using these two items for two years I have a few things to say about them. First off they work great. They don’t go off every time which is actually nice. You can’t depend on it to go off when you want it to. In the end it makes it more of a surprise. The down side of these is that they are quite noisy. Not the sounds they are supposed to make, but the mechanical sounds they make. If there is a lot of general noise though, this shouldn’t be a problem. The nice thing about these is that they are just plain scary, not gory so it’s good for the little ones as well.