Decorating for Halloween

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Hello Everyone,

I decide it was time. Time to break out the Halloween decorations. Most people will wait until October, but not me. As soon as I see the merch in the store, it gets me in the spirit to start decking the halls with boughs of halloween. I’ve gathered tons of Halloween stuff from the years. And, well it’s actually just not that much compared to what I have stocked over at my brother, Jeff’s house. You see every year we try to do a haunted garage for the kids in the neighborhood. It usually turns out pretty cool. Plus since I work at a hospital, and I’m friends with people in the Prosthetic department, I’m able to get free body parts: hands, arms, feet, legs, etc..

Okay back to the story at hand. My apartment decor. We’ll get to the haunted garage in another article (I promise)

So, here’s the inside of one of my closets. Yes, I know, it’s pretty messy. But being a computer tech, I end up with lots of spare computer parts and monitors. If you look in the pic you can notice one of my many PEZ boxes. (I collect pez dispensers) Plus a Michelob Golden draft bottle cap light. I got that light at a Anheuser Busch garage sale. Every other year, AB decides to clear out all their old inventory for cheap. I remember one year, me and my friend Josh picked up a ton of stuff. We got a few beer mirrors, beer signs, lights, glasses, and some tubs to hold beer kegs. Although, both of us have lost our beer tubs. I don’t know what happened to Josh’s, but mine I lent out to my cousin, Tom for a party. I’ve never seen it again. Hey Tom, if you’re reading this, do you still have that? I forgot all about that.. Anyway.. again I’m off topic.

Found 2 boxes and a old Halloween Door mat. Here is box number 1. It’s filled with your average Halloween stuff: webs, lights, candy dishes. I also found a bunch of Halloween party stuff, like napkins, cups, plates, table cloths. I don’t know where I got that stuff from, but now I’ve got to have a party to use all of it. woohoo.

You can find the weirdest stuff if you dig deep enough in a closet. I have no idea where this came from. But since this picture was taken, I’ve had the opportunity to read this compelling novel. It’s the story of a young bunny and is stride for adulthood. It went through many twists and turns that parallells my life completely.

Box number 2, isn’t as interestng as box 1. But you can see there are some pumpkin cutout books, a bunch of bags of halloween makeup, and a cool skeleton dish holder. (I’ll show you that later). I’ll have to make one of those pumpkins this year. The book I got in there is all about shadows. It’s pretty cool. You carve a shape in the back of the pumpkin as well as one in the front and it will cast a shadow on the wall behind it. I made one a few years ago. It turned out pretty cool.

Why do I roll up my door mat at the end of the year after using it? It always turns out crappy and wrinkley. Is wrinkley a word? Oh well, don’t bother looking it up, because I’m saying it’s a word.

A couple heavy school books & a tool box will be enought to flatten out that door mat.

First thing on my list of stuff to hang up is lights! I’ve got three sets: skulls, twinkling skeletons, & pumpkins. The skulls weren’t working until I realized I had a dead bulb. Luckily there was only 10 bulbs to check. If there were anymore, I would have had to cancel Halloween.

Hey, did I mention I’m creating this website on my brand new 19" LCD Monitor. It’s so much better than my old 15" CRT handmedown. The brightness didn’t even work on it. Everything was so dim. It’s amazing on this new monitor how bright everything is.

I decided to hang the pumpkin lights i n the little seperation between my kitchen & living room. Actually it’s between my living room & dining room. But since I have no table. It’s just empty floor space. I also decided to hang the giant skeleton right in the middle of it all, so people bump their heads and complain to me that it’s only September.

The skulls looked good draped on my curtain rod above my living room window. I also hung a couple ghouls on both sides to add to the creepy effect.

I put the skeleton lights around my Escher picture. I paid 45 bucks for this picture in the mall. It’s not like I don’t like it. Because I do like it. The only thing was about a year later I bought another Escher (a different drawing), the same size at the flea market for 4 bucks.

What am I supposed to do with all this other crap? I guess I’ll save the party plates, napkins & cups for a party. The rest I’ll just go to town finding places for them.

Here’s my first plan for the top of my tv. Can you find waldo in the picture?

Stop looking he’s not there. But you can see, 2 burger king toys, a scooby doo toy, 2 melting tombstone candles, a scary tree candle holder, a bat heart from the AFI cd "the art of drowning", a pumpkin scented candle, a glow in the dark skull, a skull with crow on top candle, a big battery powered pumpking, 3 pumpkins with flickering light (missing the light), 4 glow in the dark figures, & a glow in the dark coffin on a mustang convertible.

Want to know more about crap? Consult your local library! Okay, I got a few things to add. The missing flickering light from my 3 teir pumpkin stand is missing because I let my Dad borrow it at Christmas. He was making a manger setup, and it made a realistic looking fireplace. Unfortuneatly, he forgot to return the bulb to me. Also, the tree candle holder is pretty interesting. You put a quick melting candle in the top of it. The wax melts down right into the top of the head. So the wax ends up coming out the tree’s eyes and mouth. It’s a pretty sweet effect.

Did you ever have an ex-girlfriend that bought you crap because you liked halloween, but it’s actually craft like stuff, that an old lady would use to decorate her home? Well, I did. It’s just stuff that I kept around, well, I don’t exactly know why, but I’ll end up using it somewhere anyway. The only problem with this stuff is that it’s too friendly looking. Halloween should be about blood, guts, & scary stuff, not friendly pumkkins & ghosts.

Here’s some window clings that I have. It’d work nice if I had a sliding door. You know something with a window that I could stick it on. But I don’t. But, I’ve got an idea.

It sticks just fine to the microwave. And my skull hand looks great on top of that. I didn’t have a really scary bowl to put in his hand, because I’m using putting my cool candy dish on my coffee table. So, I used a generic bowl in his hand. It still looks scary… woooooooooooooo

Here’s one of my favorite little dollar store items that I bought. It’s a little hanging haunted house. I put it close to one of my vents in the apartment so the little figures in the windows will spin around and scary anyone under 2 years old.

I got these spiders hanging everywhere. There’s one hanging right about the hallway entrance. I kind of regret putting it there because it hits me in the head everyday. It’ll probably be ripped down before October is even here.

Here is another one of those happy pappy decorations that I really don’t like. I can’t remember where I got this, but I recall seeing it again last year at another store. I wanted a cool skeleton decoration, and I settled for this thing. Maybe if he wasn’t that sparkley, he’d look more evil. bah!

After fooling with my spider webbing for awhile, I realized it wasn’t worth a shit, so I went out to buy some more stuff. On my way, I found some other items to buy.

So here’s what I got. Candy, of course. I needed that. How else am I supposed to fill the candy dish? I also got a rat, some webbing, that actually will stretch more than 2 inches without breaking, & a 12 piece halloween party pack. The party pack was only 5 bucks and I got tons of decorations in it.

My candy dish looks much better with candy in it. I decided on some Kit Kats & Starburst. I ideal candy would be 100 grand or Whatchamacallit. But I couldn’t find either one, and I wasn’t going to shop all over. It’s a long season. I’ll eventually find some of them. The kit kats I got are pretty spiffy though. Instead of the normal chocolate kit kats, they’re all orange. They taste a little bit different, but they still taste great. The starburst are baja chews are something. Some tropical flavors. I found out that the blue starburst are the best I’ve ever had. The chances of getting a blue on in a 2 pack are pretty slim though. I would say 1 out of 5 packs has a blue in it.

After adding some ‘Caution Haunted Area’ construction tape to this wall, and a little skeleton. I decide that that was enough for this wall.

I added another little skeleton in the kitchen, some caution tape, & some black & orange swirlies to finish up this section.

The bat streamers/garland or whatever you call it, really put this section of the room together.

I added the ghost garland, more caution tape, & a scary tree, to finish up my tv area.

A wrinkley happy halloween banner needed to be added to this blank space next to Megatron’s cage.

I didn’t do much with the main entrance. Because no one wants to look back once they’ve entered. I didn’t know what to do with Megatron’s old cage (the aquarium), so I put a rat, a pumpkin & a blow up bat in there. I also put my caution tape & a stupid foam bat on the wall.

Even my oven got in the spirit by sporting a new kitchen towel around it’s handle.

Oh, also, did I mention I started putting spiderwebs everywhere? Here’s an example. Spooky!

And lastly I wanted to decorate Megatron’s cage (he’s my pet hedgehog if you didn’t know). He told me he loves halloween and he want’s a disco dancing pumpkin headed freak on his cage. So, I abliged.

He was so happy, he decided to lick his head and cover it with saliva. Yes, I know, some animals have strange ways of celebrating.

So, that’s my Halloween decorations in my apartment. I hope you enjoyed it. I would have put much more up. But, since I’m single, I don’t want to scare away any women that I bring home to my apartment.

I will try and do more Halloween related articles for the season, so stay tuned!

– Greg –

9/14 /05