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.