Halloween is fast approaching....

.... and my mojo is FINALLY back!  I had a headache earlier, and went to lay down to take a nap, but for some reason I could not stay asleep.  My mind started to wander, and the next thing I knew, I was thinking of Halloween and the ideas were flooding my brain!  I grabbed my sketchbook and pencils, and headed to the dining table and just babbled on and on to Emily and my friend Beth while I sketched a rough layout of what I sort of want to do with the first room you come into when you walk into the front door.  From there, it avalanched into my pulling out the Dead End idea scrap book, old invitations, browsing through past years' photos... I am ready to start on some new stuff for this year!

The only issue I am having with the new-found "spirit", is the lack of both time and, more importantly, money.  I have to use things I already have around the house and in my "stock" of Halloween thrift and junk treasures, recycled stuff, and scraps.  I have also started a new job, which requires some overtime, but I also have a more normal schedule and I LOVE what I do now.  :)

I can't do everything I planned to do at the close of last year's season, like the new pumpkin patch display; nor do I think we will be able to get married at the party like Tom and I wanted to do, but I HAVE to get something new going for this year's display and for the inside of the house.  I have so many ideas right now, for one room in particular in the house, and a few ideas for outside that will just be minor cosmetic changes to the existing cemetery layout and maybe a new prop or two.

All I can say now is that I am really happy that the ol' feeling is back; I missed it so!

Bugs, bugs, bugs... and other things

I love my children. :) Chips off the ol' block for sure. My daughters are always on the look out for interesting things for me to use in my witch bottles and other assorted Halloween projects. Two days ago, my youngest daughter brought me a gift that she and her sister found out in the driveway:
They also bring me cicadas when they find them, knowing that they used to be called "tree nymphs" back in the old days because of their "singing".
They keep an eye out for spiders as well, since I have a nice jar 'o arachnids that I'm collecting. This particular beauty is one that my husband found in our bathroom and called me to come retrieve:
I've just decided to start using our beach findings in the display as well. I found a really nice sea urchin skeleton on our last trip to the beach:

I love mermaid's purses as well, I remember the first time I found one at Little Talbot Island. They're actually shark/skate/ray egg cases and are also called Devil's purses. They sound gross, but they're lightweight and dry somewhat hard. I was thinking of making a papier mache "Devil's Purse" on a much larger scale to add to the display. This one is from our last trip out to Talbot and is about 3 inches long:



I think a walk around the yard is in order now...

Invitation inspiration

FINALLY! I have been inspired! I was perusing the party section of Halloweenforum.com, and I came across this thread:

http://www.halloweenforum.com/party-ideas-experiences-recipes/80428-spell-book-party-invitations-pics.html

I absolutely LOVE these invites (Cover shot pictured above)! Kudos to BevAnn for coming up with these fun little spell books. Very creative, and lots of room for individualizing them. The more I think about what I want to do for my own invites for this year's party, the more I really am leaning toward doing something like these little gems. I have been really getting annoyed, because my mind just is not cooperating with me in the Halloween sense lately, and seeing these mini spell books totally jolted me into creative mode. Exactly what I needed!

So, I was thinking, if I did something like these, of how I would give them an overall look. I'm leaning toward the usual tea-staining (I really love tea-staining, the whole process is fun to me) and maybe aging with paint like I did on my foam witch spell book. (Pictured below)

Wow... September already!

Time is certainly flying right by. I can't believe that it is September already and that Labor Day is almost upon us. I have not done a single thing toward this year's haunt. Not one. I think I lost almost all of my "mojo" as my husband put it on our way home from lunch yesterday. As with last year, I am just not feeling it. I'm hoping that will the annual "get it down from the attic" day next Wednesday will spark some kind of inspiration.

Anyway, on to better topics! A few weeks ago in August, my daughters were out with their father on their weekly "Day with Daddy" and my 12-year-old, Taylor managed to talk him into visiting the pet store, and subsequently the Dollar Tree next door to the pet store. Apparently, the Dollar Tree had some Halloween goodies out, and she bought me a little gift to start the season. I love my girls, they always know what Mom will enjoy:


My son, Brandon, was looking at some really cool masks for air-soft safety back in July, and came across some really cool ones in interesting shapes with wicked designs, flames and other assorted cool-as-hell paint jobs. Then he wondered if he could make his own, not necessarily for use during games, but just to have. So we busted out the papier mache and he learned to make his own masks. So far, he's only done three of them:





He painted them all by hand, doing a black base coat, then dry brushing and accenting. Not too bad for the first attempts. To make the paint jobs a little more interesting and fun, he decided he wanted to learn airbrushing. Yesterday, we busted out the compressor and the air brush kit and I let him have some fun with it. He practiced for about an hour, then decided to do a practice mural on a sheet of styrofoam that I had sitting in the garage. He calls it "Bowling with Bananas". I think he'll be pretty awesome with the air brush:

I'm looking forward to seeing his progress... and using his talent to paint my Halloween stuff... lol

Evil Doll

So, back around the "other" holiday, my sister and I were working in the toy section of our store, and there was this baby doll that a customer squeezed and it GROWLED! We played with that doll half the night, and I said I wanted one for Halloween. Well, I got one for the "other" holiday - as a gift from my sister! This doll is a trip... the laugh it does is really cute, but that growl thing it does is downright perfect for a haunted nursery type display. I plan on painting her and making her "special". Anyway, here's a short video of her little sounds. The growl is at the end of the video. I wish there was a way to have ONLY the growl play and not the other two segments of laughter.

This year just sucks, period.

So, I had the party on Saturday. A whopping 20 people showed up, not including my next door neighbor and her party guests who came over for a few minutes. It felt like a lot less people since a few didn't stay long and a couple didn't come til late. I almost felt like I went back in time to the first party I had where only 5 people showed up. It just seemed so danged LAME after the growing party every year. Anyway, I didn't stress out this year, didn't get all upset and end up in a crying spell at 4 pm before the party, didn't rush or yell at everyone. I just did what I could, Andy helped out and did what he could and whatever didn't get done just didn't get done. I just had a "screw it" attitude about it all this year.

I had to work on Friday night/Saturday morning before the party, so I came home from work around 8 am and took a 2 hour nap. The previous mornings I got about 3 or 4 hours' sleep, so I was pretty tired. I had a ton of food, even without doing all the homemade stuff and Jello molds and other things I normally do... which led to a lot of leftovers, so I took some of them to work for my coworkers to enjoy during our lunch break. I really am wishing now that I just canceled the party this year. My BFF and I ended up going next door and crashing what was left of their little party since every one left my house around 11. We played a dice game and had some laughs. I came home around 2:30, stayed up and talked with Andy until about 3:30, then cleaned up the party mess til I was falling asleep standing at the sink at 5 AM. I slept until 7:30 PM Sunday evening, when Andy had to come in and wake me up so I could get ready for work that night.

Since we didn't have many guests and the party just wasn't hopping like usual, we didn't take very many pictures.

This is me with my very best friend Shelly. Pic is dark and blurry, but I find that I look best in dark and blurry, especially standing next to her. :)

This is my other best friend, Ivy on the left, with two of her friends. Ivy was dressed as Ellen Degeneres... the costume was great!

This is our friend Gary's son, Jesus. If he is Jesus, does that make Gary God? Hmmm....
But I LOVE this picture. It just seemed so... perfect.

This is Chip and Cindy, Ivy's parents and our good neighbors that live down the street. Their costume with the body tattoo sleeves and all was a riot. These are two of the most laid back and reserved people I know. Cindy's a school teacher (sorta) and Chip's a lawyer.


This is Daniel the Dork who never freakin' dresses in costume and his beautiful and always perfectly costumed wife, Ashlyn - who even coordinates whatever wonderful dish she brings with her costume! This year, she was the Princess from the Princess and the Pea, and she even made matching individual beds with peas desserts!

Here we have an action shot of Gary and his wife Jackie and the rest of their gang. And all the rest of the crew, including a couple of our very best friends, Catherine and Darryl.


Andy, watching the World Series, he just can't resist.
Chip, Cindy, Shelly and her husband Dave.The rest didn't get photographed. I took a few pics of the food and stuff, but they're on a different camera that I can't locate right now. Andy and I were zombies, in case you were wondering. :) I didn't need a whole lot of make up with the lack of sleep and all. Next year, the invite list will be pared down some. Three strikes rule is in play now, and those who haven't attended in the past 3 years of being invited will be eliminated from the list.

It's beginning to look a lot like ... HALLOWEEN!

I am finally making some forward progress here at the Dead End. It's been a slow moving ride though as I still really just don't feel like doing any of it, but I know that if I don't get it all done, I'll be miserable and I'll regret it. So I plug along. My work schedule kind of puts a kink in things, but that's something that everyone else deals with too, so it's not a big deal. The hardest part is that I can't really work on anything that requires noise or being outside since I'm awake at night and sleeping part of the day when I'm off from work. If I'd gotten started sooner, I wouldn't be in this predicament! Anyway, I got all the invitations out save one or two that need to be hand-delivered. Kinda went simple this year:



Got all the gossamer up on the walls, webs up, most of the stuff that needs to be hung. Today we got the big stuff down from the attic and got the crypt put together. I set up most of the tombstones and 3 lights as soon as it got dark. So far, this is all we have:

Later today, I'll set the columns, arch and fence up, and get the FCG set up, as well as the beef netting webs on the house. I started to do them today, but I realized I had to clean up the hedge and trim back some limbs before I could get the ladder in there. I also plan to get the PVC set up in the back yard around the pool deck for the lights to be strung up and set up the assorted clay and ceramic stuff I have collected over the years for candles. I think I may stick some fake fall colored flowers in the flower pots around the pool too since I really don't have the time or money to plant live ones right now. Anyway, it's finally starting to look like Halloween (on the outside) so now people can stop asking me if I'm okay. :)

I've also been working on the website, adding new pages and stuff. All that stuff can be found on the home page or on the "In The Works" page for other stuff.

And speaking of the web pages, someone - wait, no, TWO someones - decided to burn my and other haunters' webpages and content to CD sets for sale on ebay. It ticked us all off, but the auctions have been reported and removed. It's not the first time, and certainly won't be the last, but it's prompted me to make a few changes on how I do things on the website. I won't ever take down my content though. The whole point of having the site is to share with other haunters. I just want to make sure that people know WHOSE content is being shown. ;-)

And speaking of "WHOSE"....... I was folding some Halloween t-shirts at work, and I got to looking at one in particular that has a picture of a mummy on it, and the caption says, "Whose your mummy?" That darn pet peeve of mine reared its ugly head and I hollered at one of the supervisors and asked who the heck authorized the sale of a grammatically incorrect t-shirt! I can understand a typo or grammar/spelling errors in a written ad or something that is not a big deal, but the MAIN QUOTE on a t-shirt being MASS distributed????? Aye yi yi! I can't believe that no one caught this before it went to print (either that or they're all just ignorant). I realize most people won't even notice it, but that kind of stuff just makes me shake my head in wonder. I know a lot of the t-shirts are made in [insert third world country here], but the designs are concepts by English-speaking artists.... there is just no excuse. (For those who actually DON'T get what the error is, the proper usage is "Who's" which is the contraction of "who is" -- not "Whose" which is the possessive form of who, like "my" or "your" or "their". You wouldn't respond like this: "My your mummy!" You'd say, "I'm your mummy!" That's basically the error made there.)

Aside from all the Halloween prep and things irking me out of the blue, things are going okay. I still love my job. My sister works with me now in the same department, which is actually kinda cool. It takes some of the load off of the other 3 of us and keeps things running smoother on the days I'm off because she's totally nit picky like me and takes good care of our sections.

So, that should catch everyone up for now!

Hellraiser, and some other stuff...

If you can believe this, I never saw the movie, "Hellraiser". So when I had nothing better to do this past weekend since I was off work, I stopped on the Encore channel that it was playing on and gave it a watch. Interesting movie. Sadistic, dark, strange. I liked it. I missed the first 15 minutes of it, but I got the main idea of the movie as it wore on. I also found it a good source of inspiration for some new props. I really liked the winged demon at the end of the film. I can see one of these gracing my haunt (on a smaller scale for storage, of course).

Photo source: http://www.cenobite.com/index.shtml

I also watched "Mommie Dearest" again. I LOVE that movie. It's sad that it is a true story based on Joan Crawford's daughter, Christine's memoirs, but it is a GREAT movie. I can't tell you how many times I've watched it, and it kind of creeps my kids out that I like it so much and that I recite phrases from it often. On a Halloween-related note, I really sort of thought the scene where she goes nuts over the wire hangers and dirty bathroom was a good spot for some prop ideas. Joan's (Faye Dunaway) face with the night cream on it and her hair pulled back was just frightening and would make a great prop for a hag. :)

"I told you... NO WIRE HANGERS..... EVER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!"

image source: http://www.tvgasm.com

As for the rest of life right now, I'm just sort of drifting with the ebb and flow of sleep and work. I love my job. I don't care for the cattiness of some of my coworkers, but I really don't have to WORK WITH them, so it's all good. I'm training with an intelligent and wonderful woman and she is a lot like me in her work ethic, so she and I will make a good team. My sister also works there on the 3rd shift in a different department, so we get time to catch up on breaks.

I still have no interest in Halloween or doing anything for it, and now the time crunch is here. I'm giving myself until next Monday, and if I have not gotten the itch to get something done, I will just go ahead and start decorating and setting up inside the house. Usually it's all done by now. It will be interesting to see how long it takes me to get it set up from start to finish (the interior) under time constraints.

I'm also struggling with keeping up with emails, forums, and blogging... so if anyone has sent me comments or messages, bear with me. It's taking me a while to get back to everyone. I'm not ignoring people, just have a lot to adjust to and it's gonna take a while.

I think that's about it. Catch y'all later!

Halloween Decorating and Party Planning

I have collected a few books over the years that I pull off the shelf and peruse quite often throughout the year to get some inspiration. I love looking at the pictures and descriptions on each page, drinking in each one and letting it swirl around in my mind for a while.

Lately, I've been feeling some burn out. Lots of things I want to do, things I plan to do, things I need to do... but I have NO motivation at all. I've started things, only to leave them collecting dust after only a few minutes of starting. I will walk out into the garage with the intention to work on something, only to just sit there staring at it and not DO anything at all. Normally by June or July, I have several new projects completed. This year I have nothing, except that one batch of tombstones that I gave away.

So, I decided it was time to pull the books out and hopefully give myself a little spark of "something" to get back into the swing of things. I scanned the covers of the books that I love to look at the most, and a few pages of each. If you like Halloween books, these are definitely worth buying. I got most of them from Amazon.com.



One of my absolute FAVORITES out of my collection, is "Halloween - A Grown-up's Guide to Creative Costumes, Devilish Decor & Fabulous Festivities", by Joanne O'Sullivan. This book has it all... really cool, beautiful costumes you can make yourself, simple and elegant decorating ideas, party theme ideas with matching invitations, stories, history, and recipes. The section I loved the most was for the New Orleans Voodoo Cocktail party.

The book is very well written and artfully laid out, making it an excellent choice for Halloween party planners. I highly recommend it.

















Another book that I look through MANY times during October while planning the party is "Halloween Treats - Recipes and Crafts for the Whole Family" by Donata Maggipinto. There are so many delicious recipes in this book that I find it really difficult to decide which to try. GREAT photographs accompany the recipes and instructions and many of the crafts are perfect for children to help with.










"Halloween Parties: How to Throw Spook-Tacular Soirees & Frighteningly Festive Entertainments", by Lori Hellander, is an awesome source for some fresh and contemporary party ideas. There are several different themes included and it's loaded with recipes and ideas.














From cute and slightly country to spooky and cool to vintage and beautiful... "The Big Book of Halloween, Creative &Creepy Projects for Revellers of All Ages" has it all! I LOVE this book by Laura Dover Doran. There are lots of great ideas for Halloween decorations for both inside and outside the home. She mingles scary stories that would be perfect for sitting around a campfire with wonderful snippets of history, myths and quips. Loads of pictures grace this book with personal stories from other people, their traditions and festivities surrounding Halloween. Recipes, costume tips, and even some do-it-yourself prop instructions are all in there. This is definitely another must-have for Halloween lovers.





Jill Williams Grover's "Scary Scenes For Halloween" totally delivers some spooky goodness for Halloween. I've used MANY of the ideas from this book over the years. Ideas for children's AND adult food and decorations are included and the photos are just wonderful to look at. Some really neat and simple prop instructions are mixed in with some candy displays that will TOTALLY wow the kids and adults alike. This is the first Halloween book I ever bought for myself, and I am completely in love with it.









Below are some of the other books I have and look through often. Some of them are super, some are so-so, but all are great for ideas in some way or another.

Garage of Evil - Network!!!

Steve-O started up a network on Ning.com for the Garage of Evil members to join, post and get to know each other better. If you're not a part of it already, you MUST check it out. If you don't, Steve-O will come to your house in his underpants and sing Yankee Doodle Dandy while juggling bowling balls at your front door.

One note of warning, this network for the Garage is for PROP builders and haunters... not for sharing Jello-mold recipes and showing off your pets/soccer awards/goth/fetish stuff. The occasional mention of BOOBIES will occur!! It also is not to replace the GoE Yahoo Group which we lovingly call the "treehouse", but to supplement it.

Now join, or else!

http://garageofevil.ning.com/

How far I've come over the years

I was just going through some old photos, and I found it amazing how much progress I've made in my display over the past 9 years. I didn't really get into doing anything outside the house until 1999 other than an ape dummy and JoL's. I had a LOT of inside knick knacks and decorations all over the inside house though. Anyway, here's the before and after shots of the differences in 1999 and 2007.

The outdoor part, 1999:

And 2007:

First foam tombstones, 1999:



Much improved 2007:

First props that stood up - scraps of 8-foot long quarter-round and tree limbs hammered into the ground, masks, stuffed clothes and gloves, 1999:
And 2007's handmade heads and hands with PVC frames and duct tape double bodies:


My 1999 party decor in the nook:

And 2007's version of the nook:

Which leads me to my ultra-boring version of my dining room in 2000:

2007's less "bright" version:

The extent of my 1999 decor (aside from orange flowers and other crap) in what's now the office:
And how the office is done in 2007:


A look through the kitchen in 1999:

And what a difference a few years makes in 2007:


Imagine if you will, a lot of white wall... and no spooky ambiance above these two clowns in 1999:



Now the same wall in the family room in 2007:

Everything about my display and party has changed, and thankfully for the better. This just goes to show, for those of you who are still intimidated by doing your own thing, that you CAN do it. It only takes patience, lots of trial and error and being able to follow instructions. A tiny bit of artistic talent is a plus, but it's really not all that necessary to pull off a decent look. It's taken me a long time to get to where I'm at with the whole haunting thing and I've been working on it diligently for the past 10 years now -- and I STILL have a lot to learn!