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.

Oh, how I appreciate a macabre sense of humor. So many people out there are so uptight. In the world we live in today you really have to stop once in awhile and smell the dead roses or just get a good laugh. I’m sure I will be bombarded again with emails after people read this post, so let me just say now I am not a serial killer or psychotic. I enjoy life as much as I can and have a great sense of humor considering the things that are going on around us. All that being said, I found this great Slit Throat Choker on Etsy! The artist’s name is Tiana Rutledge and she creates this choker and many other things including Slit Wrist bracelets and Blood Drop earrings. She also makes this fantastic Black Rose ring. I just love her stuff. They are all hand sculpted from flexible polymer clay and very reasonably priced. You can get the entire Bloody Mess set for just $28. Great for Halloween obviously, but I plan on wearing mine year round. I can’t wait until I can wear it to pick up my daughter from school. Those uptight private school moms won’t know what hit them. Shocking them always makes my day.

Make your Christmas a Skull Christmas with these Skull Utensils. Actually that would be a pretty expensive set to buy considering it’s $25 for one knife, one fork and one spoon! Plus they are just made of plastic! Who would buy that? They are totally cool and would look awesome on my table tomorrow, but not at that price. They also come in orange and white. Not sure why you would want them in orange. Well, I guess for Halloween. Anyway they are on sale for this price, so move quickly or someone might actually pony up the money for these.

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.

*Thanks Joe1785 for the picture.

Being a lover of all things alcohol I am always on the lookout for scary bar accessories to add to my collection. Here are some fantastic skull swizzle sticks that will fit right in. They were apparently released only for the Halloween season, but you can still buy them. This always pisses me off! Don’t they realize how many people out there love this kind of stuff? And not just at Halloween? Skulls are so popular now. You can buy practically anything with a skull on it at Kmart or Target nowadays. Not that I’m particularly thrilled about that, but that’s another story. It just always makes me mad when I find some cool thing on the internet and I can’t buy it because it’s not Halloween anymore. I spend so much money during Halloween on every day stuff for my house. When will they learn? Anyway, if you like these you might want to snap them up because it’s only while their supply lasts.

Found these creepy Coffin Shaped Eyeglasses. They are beyond creepy cool, but I do wonder how well you can see out of them with the cross design right in front of your eye. I love the tagline too: What would Dracula wear on the Riviera? They’d be great for a Halloween costume, but I’m not sure about the practicality. They are apparently sunglasses so that helps. Maybe you can’t see the cross when you are wearing them. If anybody has these please let me know. I really like them, but feel like I wouldn’t be able to see and be bumbling around in them. A++ for style though.

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.

As promised a week ago here is the list of the Scariest Movies to watch on Halloween according to the Scary Jane readers. I was bombarded with emails on everyone’s choices, so thank you. Apparently you guys are really passionate about this. Overall I’ve seen and love the majority of these, but I am interested in the one or two of them I haven’t seen. I feel like quite a few were left off, but that’s just my opinion. If you don’t agree with these you have only yourself to blame because you didn’t send in your vote. So, here are the top ten Scariest Movies and the top ten Scariest Family movies that got the most votes in no particular order:

1.     Halloween (original)

2.     Scream series

3.     Psycho (original)

4.     The Changeling

5.     The Ring

6.     Evil Dead

7.     The Shining

8.     Seven

9.     The Exorcist

10.    Rosemary’s Baby

* Honorable mention to: Martyrs, The Haunting (original) and The Legend of Hell House

1.     Hocus Pocus

2.     Casper

3.     Halloweentown series

4.     Beetlejuice

5.     The Witches

6.     Scooby Doo (movies)

7.     The Nightmare Before Christmas

8.     The Haunting Hour: Don’t Think About It

9.     Twitches series

10.    The Addams Family (movie)

*Honorable mention to: Gremlins (I think this might be too scary for the little ones, though)

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.