What Did We Wear?

Just a quick post about costumes!

Tel and I were Little Red Riding Hood and the Big Bad Wolf. I got my costume from eBay for just under a tenner, and we got the various bits of his costume from eBay as well, though I did shop around a lot to find cheaper things than just one big costume. His probably came to somewhere between fifteen to twenty quid, but it was worth it - you can't see it in the picture but as well as the gloves and full head mask, that included a fluffy tail!

I had a slight panic when my costume first arrived and I gave it a trial run, because the advert had made it look like it covered a respectable amount of skin. Well, it doesn't. You WILL flash your arse in this sort of kit! Luckily I solved this problem by making it look deliberate and wearing frilly pants with built-in suspenders, so the odd bending-over moment wasn't a big deal. You've got to be pretty brave about the state of your thighs though if you're going to go for this.

I'm off shopping for the day, hopefully to come back with maybe a freezer and definitely some birthday presents for the lovely Tel, who is turning 27 this Thursday :) at some point today though I'll be updating about the Tempt Your Fate game - with pictures!

Set-Up: Evaluation

I didn't mean to leave it this long to update this, but the last couple of days have been wicked tiring! As it turns out, a really awesome party = a lot of cleaning up afterwards.

So! Everything started to kick off properly on Friday 29th, when I started decorating. One of the first things to go up was the graveyard outside. I took the pic opposite while it was still light because I'll be damned if I'm any good at taking pictures when it's dark. Just visible in the trees are two hanging skeletons. When it got darker I turned on the LED finger lights that were set up at angles to light up the tombstones, but the batteries were appalling - as in by the time the first guests were arriving, four of the six were almost out. At least I know in advance for next year though - then I can do what I wanted to do in the first place; invest in proper stake lights!

All those leaves scattered around? They did not come from the tree at the top of the picture. That's two bin bags worth of leaves from down the street! In fact, that wasn't even enough. You'd think two huge bags full of leaves would go a long way, but that's another tip for next year - get way, way more leaves.

This is my front door! It's not exactly Halloween-OTT but I'm crazy disappointed that I didn't have time to get more photos of the little details of the decorations. I meant to go round and get photos of everything, but we underestimated how much time we needed to get ready so I was still making Tel into a wolf when the first guests arrived. And then once the party was started, it was all about pictures of people rather than things. So I'm gutted I don't really have a proper record of all the little details that made it an awesome night, which is why I'm posting a picture of my door - it's one of the only details I do have!

Things I have learnt so far then! That I need more leaves, better lighting, and more time to take pictures before everything gets going. Also, that if my boyfriend will be wearing a costume, it's better if he starts getting ready earlier in the night so that he's not trapped in the upstairs bathroom, frantically rubbing face paint into his beard while people start arriving.

I did get a couple of pictures of the kitchen. We used a Chop Shop bloody instruments banner across one corner, which looked great and is completely reusable - it's folded up in a box, ready for next year. Also visible in this first picture is my version of the Tempt Your Fate game that I found about on the Halloween Forum. We nailed two cauldrons to a corkboard to hold fates to be taken and used fates, and all the punishments, such as Awful Antidote (dark rum) and Spooky Spirits (cherry and apple vodka shots) were lined up underneath. We had other fates, but I'll come back to that in another post!

Most of the food in these pictures isn't unpacked yet so the effect isn't spot on, but the food we had went down really well. I've had parties before where you're left with acres of food afterwards that no one seemed to want but this year, we had about 25 cheese balls, 6 coconut balls and a bowl of gummy sweets left, and that was about it! Nothing was homemade, since we didn't have much time or space, unless you count throwing some mini sausages and some vegetable spring rolls in an oven until they're slightly too cooked as homemade :)

Another note for next time - make time to get coloured lightbulbs. An orange bulb in the kitchen would have looked really interesting, but we never got round to going to a hardware store. We could have used green in the bedroom as well, for a bit of additional spook!

I didn't get a proper pic of the inside of the conservatory and to be honest, there wasn't much to see since I'd planned to have the pumpkin carving set up in there, but we were let down by the person supposed to be selling us a table and chairs, so we just did it in the kitchen. Which meant the conservatory was really unused, except as a brief pitstop for people who were on their way out to have a smoke. What you can see in this pic is the room roll that covered three quarters of the conservatory. Never again. I thought the idea of room roll was fantastic, but it took forever to put up, the top and bottom halves didn't line up properly and the material didn't want to stick to either white tack or sticky tape. Definitely not worth the effort for so little return.

We're Moved In!

Just a quick, snatched update - we've got the house keys, are are busy moving things in :) we've done most of Tel's house, and we're up at this freakishly stupid hour so we can go to mine and get some more boxes etc.

Next stop - Homebase!

Signage Part II

I love signs :) you can hang them on things. And take them down again. And hang them elsewhere. They're interchangeable. They come in many different forms. I've already got too many signs this year (see this post) as it is, but at least I'm prepared.

On that theme, I wanted to post a quick picture of my door sign this year. I got it from T K Maxx, right near the start of my Halloween shopping, and it's the sort of sign I can see becoming a fixture of every Halloween, every year. Tada!

A Clintons Halloween!

I've just been to Clintons :) with Tel, who got the dubious honour of carrying our newest (and arguably awesomest) purchase home.

Clintons are outdoing themselves this year, especially compared to everywhere else within the shopping centre. The only real contender, if you don't count the supermarkets (which aren't in the same area anyway) has been Poundland, and they're held back in quality by the fact that they sell all their products for a pound regardless. So while they've got an equally large selection, Clintons is winning points for variety and coolness. I stood in the middle of the one-sided aisle they're using for Halloween this year and took a picture in either direction - to the left there is all the costumes. Most of it's standard stuff, but there are some cute accessories like nails/lashes.

To the right here is all the accessories and decorations.

They've got a lot of half-face masks this year that I don't remember seeing before, and a lot more in the way of scene setters. I'm holding off on buying any room rolls until we get into our house and I can measure up some of the rooms - like the conservatory which I'm hoping to make into a pumpkin carving dungeon - but it's nice to see that they've got a fair bit of variety. They've also got a lot of chop shop decorations in, like the bloodied cloths, the hanging bloodied instruments banner and the room rolls featuring saw-esque scenes and skeletons.

There's not so much in the way of tableware but that's the same in Poundland - you're mainly looking at paper cups and napkins. Clintons are selling 12" silver platters though, which are cheap but not cheap-looking, so I might end up using those. My main problem with the tableware from shops is that a lot of it is aimed at kids, or seems to be, with cartoon ghosts and pumpkins dominating the themes.

This little scene was right near the front entrance of the shop. That huge foam skull in the middle there? That's mine now. It's hard to get a handle on exactly how big it is from that picture but looking at it now (on Tels' bed, grinning at us), it looks about 4 times bigger than a human head.

I keep meaning to pick up a scythe, like the ones they have on display here. For the little graveyard at the front of the house, I want to make a grim reaper. It sounds easy - get a black robe and a skull, attach skull to a stick, put robe on stick and glue one sleeve to a scythe - but it being so close to Halloween means all the vaguely grim reaperish robes out there have gotten far more expensive than necessary. It's tempting to just buy a swatch of black cloth and make one myself, except I keep remembering that I can't even sew a button back on a coat, let alone create a hooded robe out of a rectangular piece of cloth. Sigh.

Signage And Theft

I mentioned in a recent post that I'd bought two signs for my graveyard, because I got duped by the supposed bargain warehouse that is eBay. To be fair, they are two very different signs. I might even use the one that I don't hang in the front garden in the back garden, so it gets some use. For now, I'm having trouble deciding which I like more, and want to put out front regardless.

The top one is the eBay purchase. It's not plastic but a thin slate material, and writing is white. I'm fond of the little slogan underneath - 'one way in no way out' and it did cost me more, just under a fiver, so I feel like it should get some airtime.

The bottom one is from Tesco and is not wood, but a sort of stiff foam material. It's not quite as cool, but it certainly looks the part and I don't think anyone would question why it was out there. Additionally, it only cost me a quid, which leads me to my other topic of discussion for this post - potential Halloween theft.

I get the feeling that Americans, bless them, don't have to deal with this one so much. Because Halloween is such a big deal over there, everyone and their dog has a display out on the front lawn, so you don't steal from others because it opens the door on everyone having a pop at each others tombstones. At least, I assume that's why it works. Maybe they all have really high-tech surveillance cameras instead.

But over here, Halloween isn't such a celebrated occasion. I don't know whether I'll be the only person on our street who decorates - I wouldn't be surprised if I were. I'm not even sure whether we'll get Trick or Treaters, though I very much hope we will.

So the lack of Halloween spirit this side of the pond makes me worried that my outdoor purchases, such as my 6 awesome tombstones, and of course one of my graveyard signs, might well go 'missing'. Or be vandalised. None of this stuff can exactly be nailed down. I'm not exactly going for ostentatious, but I'd like to be able to enjoy our party without glancing out the window every five minutes, wondering if I'll see three chavs on a motorbike making off with my mock cemetery.

Which is also why I'm leaning towards using the cheap Tesco graveyard sign for my outdoor display. As much as I love the other one and want to show it off, I'll be gutted if it goes walkabout. It cost more, and it came from eBay so I couldn't even run down the shops last minute to grab a new one. Whereas the Tesco one only cost a quid, and it can be easily replaced with very little hassle.

Just another of the serious and important questions surrounding this time of year...

Lenticulars and Skulls

Well, I took a couple of photos today at Tel's house, just to show off what I bought earlier!

The two Lenticular pictures just make my day, because they were cheap but effective. I will probably just hang these on a couple of walls to add a bit of ambience. It's not just the big decorations but the small details which make a difference, so as well as large stuff I want to have some smaller, less obvious decor that people might notice and be interested in!

The skulls are a part of that as well - they're not going to be a massive deal, just something cool on a table or sideboard that might or might not get noticed. What I like about the skulls is, they're just 'normal' enough, being tealight holders, that I can probably get away with leaving them up for some time after Halloween, without it being weird. Can't say the same for the pictures of course. Or the graveyard I'm going to put in the front garden!

There's still hope about the foggers. Someone from Portsmouth thinks they've seen them in the Asda online store, even though I've had no luck - this isn't that surprising, I find supermarket websites like Asda and Tesco really difficult to navigate. So hopefully... I might be able to order a fogger online even if I can't pick one up personally!

Even then... I'm still debating whether to get a proper fog machine, either for the indoor bedroom balcony or the 'graveyard' outside.

Minor Letdown

Well, just returned from Asda. As it turns out, no they don't have foggers this year :(

I did get a few little things though, two pictures that change in different angles, a cobweb table cloth and three skull tealight holders representing see no evil, hear no evil and speak no evil.

Still. No foggers. Bit disappointed by that one.

The Price War

So I'm freshly showered and waiting for Tel to get dressed so we can walk to my parents, borrow the Kia and go off to Asda!

I'm looking forward to this because online sources have told me that they're selling foggers at reasonable prices. If there's one thing I really want, it's a fogger! Especially since I've been on eBay and seen them going for ridiculous prices.

That's one real problem I've come across. The Poundland in my shopping centre got their Halloween goods in before a lot of other places so I've already been in there and picked up a couple of bowls, some hanging skeletons (pictures to come soon!) and a couple of other little bits. A few days later I'm browsing eBay and what do you know, seeing the same goods I've already browsed in Poundland, being put up for twice or even three times their original cost. And the thing is, people bid on them because they haven't been to the stores and checked the prices out. I can understand why - you just assume eBay is a bargain.

I've been caught by it as well. I bought a sign on eBay that is made of a slate material and says 'graveyard - one way in, no way out'. I think it's awesome, no doubt, but it cost me £3.20 with p&p on top. A couple of weeks later when Tesco got their stock in, I went to have a look around with my sister and found a perfectly decent mock-wood sign that says cemetery on it. For just £1. Truth be told, although I really like the slate one, I also would have been perfectly happy with the fake wood one.

So I bought the wood one anyway. You know, because it's good to have choices :)

Two Weeks To Go!

This is my first blog post, and hopefully one of many!

As I write this, I have exactly two weeks until my first ever Halloween party. My boyfriend Tel and I are moving in together on October 22nd, and on October 30th we are throwing a Halloween/Housewarming party! I could not be more excited, and I've been buying stuff like crazy. I'm going to take some pictures of my purchases so far when I get back to my parents house tonight.

This blog is also hopefully intended to spread the excitement of Halloween for other UK Enthusiasts. I'm a member of www.halloweenforum.com, which has been a really excellent source of inspiration, but the majority of it's members are american, and I can personally attest to the fact that we just don't have as much choice or support in the UK when it comes to Halloween. I don't even know whether I should expect ToTs (trick or treaters) or not!

So, roll on the 30th - I can't wait :)