I, like many women, love hats. I obsessively buy them thinking I will look fabulous in them and then often times don’t have a place to wear them. The fancier the better. Let’s face it though. How many places can you wear an elaborate hat to? I have now found this fantastically creepy Spider Hat that I just have to buy. Unfortunately it’s $145, so it will take a little convincing to get Scary Hubby to agree that I need it. Luckily he loves when I wear a hat, so it shouldn’t be too hard. Plus, all of my hats look really good displayed in our house. So if I never find a day to wear it besides Halloween I can say it’s just part of the house decor.
I know it’s a little early for most people to be thinking about Halloween, but not me. Every year we try to outdo ourselves and everyone else on the block. The only way to do that is to have your eyes open all year round. I have been buying remote controlled spiders for years and have never found one that really works well or is all that realistic. A while back I ordered one from the UK and it finally arrived. Unfortunately I could not seem to find this guy here in the US, so I had to wait. This Radio Controlled Spider is far and away much better than all the ones I’ve seen. I got the Black Widow, but it is also available in a Tarantula, but I’m not sure you can get that one anymore. You’d have to look around. It was designed by the Natural History Museum as an educational toy. Yeah, right. Maybe an education in how to scare people out of their minds. Anyway, he measures quite big at approx. 12″ wide and 10″ long and runs on 6 AA batteries and 1 9V battery. Like other radio controlled spiders you can hear a little motor, but the plus with this one is the look and movements which are far superior to any I’ve seen before. I can’t wait to try it out on Scary Hubby, though he’s used to my attempts to scare him, so I don’t know how well that will work.
I found this fantastic skull over at Z Gallerie. They always surprise me with their cool little scary items that they come up with now and then. This Metallic Skull is another one of those nice surprises. It’s not that big at 7″ x 4.5″ x 5.25″, but with the high shininess factor you probably wouldn’t want it any bigger. It will pack quite a punch on it’s own. You could even hang it from the ceiling and use it as a disco ball. I absolutely love this little skull! It reminds me of something in a movie, but I’m drawing a blank at the moment. I’m sure I’ll wake up at some point in the middle of the night and remember it. I’ll post it when I think of it, but until then you will just have to keep refreshing my page and breathlessly await my update. Not going to do that? WTF? What kind of stalker are you anyway?
As I have stated before, I am not a fan of wallpaper. Wallpaper is a PAIN to remove when you get tired of it, so I swore off wallpaper years ago. Of course ever since I said that I keep finding more and more wallpaper that I want. Must control myself and not get any…ever. Well maybe this one. Camille Rose Garcia is an amazing artist that creates the most visually creepy and amazing images. Ms. Garcia creates everything from paintings to dolls to books. She has fans out there that are devoted to her unusual art and create amazing tattoos from it. She even created the cool wallpaper on the left, but at about $200 a roll maybe I will have to settle for one of her prints…or not. They start at $400. Maybe she makes coasters?
Once again I received a great photo from a reader. This one is of a very creepy looking tree at the side of the road. As usual I tried to find the origin of this picture, but with no luck. Makes me wonder if it wasn’t manipulated. I wish this was in my yard. It would scare my neighbors to death and they’d never sleep. What a great Halloween decoration! Some plots of land have all the luck.
As usual I am always looking out for ways to freak out neighbors. Of course it’s always fun to do it at Halloween, but that’s expected. I like to do it at different times and in unexpected ways. I found these severed fingers and immediately started thinking about Halloween. Moments later my brain started going beyond Halloween and came up with some great ideas. I love to decorate for Christmas. I know, sounds strange right? Actually not strange if you think of all of the fun things you can scatter around mixed in with your plastic Santas and elves. People get very freaked out when you mess with Christmas. I love it as much as the next person, but that doesn’t mean I have no sense of humor. Try sticking these severed fingers on your Christmas tree, so it looks like someone is clawing their way out. How about putting them in the hay in your nativity scene on the front lawn. Better yet! Stick them in the turkey before you bring it to the table. Maybe not…might be a little too freaky for some of the older folks. Point is…have some fun. You’d be amazed at what you could come up with to do with these fingers.
Well, after spending the last month searching for the best Halloween decorations, recipes, costumes, decorating my new house and watching movies here are my thoughts. LAME! Okay not totally lame, but not as good as in years past. My biggest gripe was Halloween decor or the lack there of. Every Halloween I have spent hundreds of dollars on new decorations for the store and for the house that I could not live without. This year I spent $19.00 and that was just for spiderwebs, candles and misc. crap. WTF?! My thoughts are that with the bad economy they just didn’t really come out with anything new and scaled back on some of the more pricey items. My favorite has always been animatronics. I love things that move and say things. The ones they had this year were cheap looking and weren’t all that scary frankly. Costumes were pretty lame as well. I wanted to post the scariest costume of the year, but I really didn’t see anything that was worth even a wimper. Some of the bad costumes that were popular, like Micheal Jackson and Octomom, were just in bad taste and stupid. Decorating our new house was great and everything worked better than we had hoped. We even got voted as the scariest house in the neighborhood, but there were a few that were really close. We’ll have to step it up a bit next year. Movie selection in the theaters was not even worth discussing, though rarely is it. All I can say is I really hope next year the economy is back on track and decorations are plentiful. This is my favorite time of the year and I found it depressing to go into stores that normally have huge Halloween displays and only had pitifully small racks of cheesy decor. Just my two cents.
A while back a reader sent me the link to this group on YouTube.com. I have since listened to everything they have and have fallen in love with them. If you are having a party this weekend you really need to include them in your music. From what I can tell they are actually from Sweden, but you’d never guess it from their songs. Check out their website where you can buy all of their albums. The lead singer sounds just like Johnny Cash! Take a listen to Last Night Down By the Grave below. This one is on the slower side, but they can really get rockin’. My favorite is probably Halloween which you can find on their myspace page, but I really like Back From the Grave too. Well, hell I love them all actually. Give them a listen. You’ll be glad you did. Thanks Per Arne Iznogood for introducing me to this great band.
Years ago when we were first setting up the bookstore we were determined to find a full-size skeleton for an idea we had. Seems like it would be easy, right? Nope. At least not then anyway. All of the skeletons we found were not full-size. Most of them were 3 or 4 feet tall at the most. Finally we were forced to go to a medical supply company to get one. It looked great, but it weighed a ton and the bones were very sharp. It was so hard to move around without getting poked. I am very excited to see that finally a light weight realistic full-size skeleton finally exists for only $34.50. At 64″ it still isn’t as tall as I would like, but it is adult size so I can’t complain. Every year we take a few things from the store to decorate with at home. The skeleton quickly became one of those items. In the store she is set up in an antique wheelchair and sits near the window. We put a victorian looking dress on her with a Mrs. Bates wig. You know Mrs. Bates from Psycho? Gray hair in a bun? Anyway, we bring Mrs. Bates home every Halloween and set her up in a wing chair in our front window. We turn out all the lights and point a slow strobe light on her. We then tie clear fishing wire around her wrist and run it through a hook in the ceiling. Whenever an unsuspecting trick-r-treater comes to the door one of us sits behind the chair and pulls on the fishing wire to make her look like she’s waving. This really freaks the kids out and some of the parents too. I’m tempted to get one of these light weight skeletons too, so we don’t have to drag Mrs. Bates home every Halloween. Each time I set her up I think of the ending of Psycho when Norman has been arrested and is thinking to himself:
They know I can’t move a finger, and I won’t. I’ll just sit here and be quiet, just in case they do… suspect me. They’re probably watching me. Well, let them. Let them see what kind of a person I am. I’m not even going to swat that fly. I hope they are watching… they’ll see. They’ll see and they’ll know, and they’ll say, “Why, she wouldn’t even harm a fly…”
Right about now you are probably starting to give the pumpkins you bought a look. You know the look, right? The one that shows you are speculating how you plan on cutting the thing up. This can be a daunting task for anyone. I spend a lot of time on this very thing every year. I just get so bored with the standard jack-o-lantern even though it can be quite scary. You know the one they show during the credits at the beginning of the original Halloween? That one is so simple, yet so scary. Maybe it’s because I know what’s coming in the movie. Anyway, someone gave me the book Extreme Pumpkins last year and it has opened up a whole new world to me. This book is based on the website www.extremepumpkins.com created by Tom Nardon. If you’ve never heard of the site or the book you need to check it out immediately. He will get you so excited about carving your pumpkin!
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I, like many women, love hats. I obsessively buy them thinking I will look fabulous in them and then often times don’t have a place to wear them. The fancier the better. Let’s face it though. How many places can you wear an elaborate hat to? I have now found this fantastically creepy Spider Hat that I just have to buy. Unfortunately it’s $145, so it will take a little convincing to get Scary Hubby to agree that I need it. Luckily he loves when I wear a hat, so it shouldn’t be too hard. Plus, all of my hats look really good displayed in our house. So if I never find a day to wear it besides Halloween I can say it’s just part of the house decor.
I know it’s a little early for most people to be thinking about Halloween, but not me. Every year we try to outdo ourselves and everyone else on the block. The only way to do that is to have your eyes open all year round. I have been buying remote controlled spiders for years and have never found one that really works well or is all that realistic. A while back I ordered one from the UK and it finally arrived. Unfortunately I could not seem to find this guy here in the US, so I had to wait. This 
I found this fantastic skull over at 
Once again I received a great photo from a reader. This one is of a very creepy looking tree at the side of the road. As usual I tried to find the origin of this picture, but with no luck. Makes me wonder if it wasn’t manipulated. I wish this was in my yard. It would scare my neighbors to death and they’d never sleep. What a great Halloween decoration! Some plots of land have all the luck.
As usual I am always looking out for ways to freak out neighbors. Of course it’s always fun to do it at Halloween, but that’s expected. I like to do it at different times and in unexpected ways. I found these 
Well, after spending the last month searching for the best Halloween decorations, recipes, costumes, decorating my new house and watching movies here are my thoughts. LAME! Okay not totally lame, but not as good as in years past. My biggest gripe was Halloween decor or the lack there of. Every Halloween I have spent hundreds of dollars on new decorations for the store and for the house that I could not live without. This year I spent $19.00 and that was just for spiderwebs, candles and misc. crap. WTF?! My thoughts are that with the bad economy they just didn’t really come out with anything new and scaled back on some of the more pricey items. My favorite has always been animatronics. I love things that move and say things. The ones they had this year were cheap looking and weren’t all that scary frankly. Costumes were pretty lame as well. I wanted to post the scariest costume of the year, but I really didn’t see anything that was worth even a wimper. Some of the bad costumes that were popular, like Micheal Jackson and Octomom, were just in bad taste and stupid. Decorating our new house was great and everything worked better than we had hoped. We even got voted as the scariest house in the neighborhood, but there were a few that were really close. We’ll have to step it up a bit next year. Movie selection in the theaters was not even worth discussing, though rarely is it. All I can say is I really hope next year the economy is back on track and decorations are plentiful. This is my favorite time of the year and I found it depressing to go into stores that normally have huge Halloween displays and only had pitifully small racks of cheesy decor. Just my two cents.
