Halloween was a big success at our house this year. We had 164 trick-or-treaters which is more than we had last year. A lot of that is due to the fact that we live in a new area that is still being built up, so next year will be even more. As for the unofficial Neighborhood Decoration Competition that I mentioned last week, we won hands down. All is right with the world, though some neighbors swear to outdo us next year. Considering that we already have some great ideas, I doubt it. The spiderweb came out really well. People were totally freaked out at having to walk under it. As promised I took some pictures of it during the building, but unfortunately completely forgot to take a picture after the first step when I tied the three ropes together. You can get an idea of what it looked like by looking at the first picture. I started with a knot in the middle and slowly worked in a spiral until I reached the edges tying an overhand knot at each intersection. Getting the tensions just right was a little tough because I knew it would be a lot different once it got put in place. Using a overhand knot, though, allows you to slide it up and down on the basic structure to adjust it. The whole process including measuring time took about 4 hours, but it’s reusable which will make next year a lot easier. It went up into place quite easily, but the worst part was getting the spider positioned so it wouldn’t weigh down the web. Take a look at the pictures we took during the making of the web and the final product in place. Unfortunately the web doesn’t show up so well in the final picture, but it looked great and you’ll just have to take my word for it.
Now that we are getting down to the wire on Halloween I want to pass on some things that you can do to spook up your crib a little more. A lot of the stores are running out of things and so is your wallet, so it’s a good time to get the creativity juices flowing. Every year we try to add a new thing to our house for Halloween. Up until now we have always had a 6′ spider web hanging up on our porch with a big spider on it. This year I got a bee up my butt and decided that wasn’t enough. I started looking online for anyone who had built a giant spider web. I’m talking about a 20′+ spider web and that means the actual spider web being 20′+ not counting the attaching ropes. While I did find some good tutorials none of them were quite as big as I want it. I want it stretched from the roof of my porch and across the lawn to attach to some trees on the other side of the sidewalk. Scary Hubby always rolls his eyes when I come up with these ideas, but he happily goes along. We have had some new people move in around the neighborhood who have sworn to beat us at the Best Decorated House competition and I can not allow that to happen.We never unveil our decorations until the day of Halloween. We want people to see it for the first time on Halloween night to get the maximum scare. Anyway, while the tutorials weren’t for big enough spiderwebs, I figured I would just use the same technique with more rope. I bought 600′ of white nylon clothing line. I figured the cotton would deteriorate over time since it is usually snowing or raining here on Halloween. Most of the people online that had done it, built it in place. Since we don’t like people to know what we are doing in advance we can’t really build it on the spot. So, our back yard will have to do. I thought we would just do it on the lawn (yeah, I know what you’re thinking dickhead) but Scary Hubby just had the idea of stretching it between the fences. That way there’s no bending over (I still know). Now you could just go the easy route and buy the mega one shown here from the Spider Web Man for $149.95, but I’m not willing to do that when I can build it for $20 and have it exactly the way I want. Of course, if you are the dickhead I think you are you’ll probably buy it. I’ll post some pics when we build it.
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Halloween Decor — Tags:
bedding,
black,
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skeletons,
skull,
sofa,
velvet — jane @ 10:01 am
I took my usual trip to Target to check out their Halloween stuff. Unfortunately I was a little late this year, so a lot of the cool stuff I had seen online had sold out. Drat! I did make one great purchase, but it’s not on the Target website strangely. So you obviously can’t order it. You’ll just have to go into the store. It’s made specifically for Target, so I doubt you can buy it anywhere else. I took a not so good picture of it, so you can at least see what it looks like. It’s a very short pile velvet and then the skull part is raised with a higher pile. Contrary to the picture it is very black. I had to lighten the pic so the skull would show up. If you look at it in a certain light you can’t even see the skull. It is solid black on the back, so if you ever fall out of your skull mood just turn it over. There are a lot of skull pillows out there, but I really like the simplicity of this one. They also had a white pillow with Halloween words written all over it like scary, boo, halloween and stuff like that in different fonts. It’s cute, but specifically Halloween so I didn’t want it. Both pillows cost $12.99 each, so I quickly snapped up two of the Skull Pillows for my house.
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Accessories,
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casket,
clothing,
coffin,
costume,
Halloween,
horror,
movies,
zombies — jane @ 10:25 pm
I love Halloween parties. Everything about them. From the planning to the decorating to the cooking. Unfortunately there is one thing that I don’t enjoy about the average Halloween party and that’s the costumes. Before you judge me and bite my head off in a fit of rage, let me explain.I have said it before and I will say it again. I don’t like funny costumes. Halloween is about scary stuff, not funny stuff. Save the jokes for April Fool’s Day. I’ve tried many times to tell people only to wear scary costumes and you’d think with my friends that would be easy. Unfortunately, no. It’s not even the actual costumes that bug me, it’s the randomness of it. I have always wanted a party like the one in the first Addams Family movie or even just a good scary theme would make me happy. Victorian dead people, classic horror movie characters, zombies or even just the weirdest scary thing that you could come up with. Victorian dead people is probably my favorite though and these Casket Cuff links would be perfect. Can’t you just picture a guy in a rotted out tuxedo with tails, a spider infested top hat, some makeup and these fantastic Casket Cuff Links? Actually I think I’ve seen some movie at some time where a guy dresses up like that for a Halloween party, but I can’t remember what it was. Oh well, he sounds like my dream date.
Woo hoo!! It’s the first day of October and you know what that means… it’s almost Halloween!! Well, in my book it’s Halloween all month long. Actually it might just be all year long, but this is my favorite month of the year. I will be covering all things Halloween this month. From decorations to recipes to costumes. Not today though, because I just have to talk about this bed first. I have been waiting my whole life to find a bed that fit my personality and would look good in our house. I’ve searched in antique stores, online, department stores, garage sales etc. and never found anything until today. I was finally looking through my latest collection of catalogs and came across this French Gothic Iron Bed. It’s so gorgeous and exactly what I have been waiting for. Now I just have to come up with an extra $3000. Anyone willing to chip in? Luckily Scary Husband agrees that it’s awesome, so hopefully that bad boy will be sitting in our bedroom soon. Until then I will tape the picture to our current bed and just pretend. This bed will look so good in my castle one day. You know the one, right? The $15 million dollar one for sale in Great Britain? I’m still $100,000 short, but almost there.
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Decor,
Fashion,
Halloween Decor,
Nature — Tags:
Art,
black,
clothing,
costume,
Halloween,
hat,
spiders,
velvet — jane @ 7:01 pm
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 a lot of guys that like to dress goth. They go all out and sometimes I’m impressed at what lengths they will go to. When I first saw these Edward’s Shoes online I thought they were for women and was shocked to see that they were men’s shoes. I thought I’d show them to my goth guy friends and see what they thought of them. I turned out to be more right than I thought I would be. None of the guys would wear them and thought they were too feminine. The consensus seemed to be that none of them would be caught dead in them even if they were just trying to look dead for Halloween. Most of them felt they looked rather dorky and I have to agree. Even if they were for women I certainly wouldn’t wear them. They kind of remind me of the white shoes that men wore in the 70s only this would have been the goth version. Why did they call them Edward’s Shoes anyway? I hope it wasn’t after Edward Cullen because you can be damn sure he wouldn’t be caught dead in them either.
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TV/Movies — Tags:
awards,
Halloween,
horror,
monsters,
movies,
oscars,
review,
vampires,
video,
werewolf,
witches,
zombies — jane @ 12:48 pm
I finally got around to watching the rest of the Oscars. I was out that night and only caught the big awards at the end. I had heard that there was finally a tribute to horror movies and I was anxious to see it. Now that I have seen it I have some complaints. First off why were Taylor Lautner and Kristen Stewart presenting this? I mean, really, are they today’s only answer to modern horror movies? I liked the movies, but they are pretty tame in the horror department. Why not have the queen of scream, Jamie Leigh Curtis or Mr. Nightmare himself Robert Englund? Heck, why not Bruce Campbell? I know they wanted to pull in the viewers by getting the Twilight kids, but use them for something else. There were much better choices for this presentation. My other big beef with this was the opening statement that the Oscars had not honored a horror movie since The Exorcist, 37 years ago. Really? What about the numerous awards that have been given out since to horror movies for visual effects, sound, makeup, costumes etc. Do these not count? Tell that to the winners. So, if these don’t count, what about all of the awards given to Silence of the Lambs? Best actor, actress, picture, director, screenplay were all awarded to that which is much more than what was awarded to The Exorcist. They only received awards for sound and screenplay. I guess you could argue that Silence of the Lambs was not a full on horror film, but the Academy included it in the montage, so that argument goes out the window. Putting all of that aside, I was thrilled to see the Academy giving horror movies their due. You can’t deny that the general public loves horror movies and it was about time that they paid homage to that.
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.
Filexd under:
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Arts/Crafts,
Fashion,
Jewelry — Tags:
Art,
black,
blood,
bracelet,
earrings,
Halloween,
necklace,
red,
ring — jane @ 2:58 pm
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.
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