No One Cares About Halloween Anymore...

But I'm going to post about it anyways, because I forgot to 2 months ago, when it would have actually been timely.  Behold, this is what takes up my free time from Sept - Oct, and also makes it impossible for me to pee at night without scaring myself shitless.  I get asked for pictures of our parties from friends that miss out, or more likely because then it will get me to stop talking about my Halloween decorations, o I'm putting them up here in the off chance that some rich person will come across this site and want to pay me a lot of money to turn their home into a living nightmare. Enjoy!

Hot coals made with fire string lights and spray foam.

Portrait hallway

Jungle bathroom

Another homemade book out of dollar store materials.  This one is a tutorial on renting out condos.

More of the jungle bathroom

Aaaand another homemade book.

Dementors!

Overall, I would rate this as kind of a boring entry, and those pictures are terribly out of order, but not much you can do about it now, you're at the end.  Special thanks to cousin Herm for taking these pictures, you are the best.

DIY drippy candles, fragrance: melty hair

After three years of churning out obsessive Halloween parties, I fancied myself a bit of a halloween expert.  That is, until I went online and discovered that I'm not an expert at all, other people are and I suck.  Seriously, there are some incredible creations out there, and I will be the first to admit that I just do not have the patience nor talent to replicate them.  One thing is for sure, I most definitely do NOT scroll through Pinterest and cry myself to sleep every night, calling for Pan to come cuddle with me.  That would just be sad, so I only do that on Thursdays.

From halloweenforum.com

However, this DIY is one that I have seen a few different takes on, and actually looks doable, based on my criteria for laziness.  Every good haunter knows that candles make or break a place, and after our unfortunate first year in which we lit 2 tables and myself on fire, we stick to mostly electric candles, which typically look ugly as sin:

The DIY ones are from PVC pipes, which unfortunately did not fit my criteria because I would have to put effort into cutting the pipes, and that just ain't happenin.  So I found a tutorial for ones that use paper towel rolls and TP rolls, which definitely fit my criteria for free, plus I got the added bonus of getting to dig through the trash (why do I like doing this?  Because I feel like a hobo, and sometimes it's very freeing to act like a hobo, until you get hungry).  Win win!

Here is what I started with:

I would list everything, but I don't wanna.

Basically, I taped the bottom of the roll, stuck some pebbles in it to weigh it down (just about a half inch or so), then jammed it full of scrap paper.

Then comes the fun part of hot gluing the s%$* out of it.  It's not actually fun, but it helps if you tell yourself it is.  My one recommendation -- tie your hair back.  For the love of God, I should know this by now, but I didn't and I glued my hair together.  Oh, and don't put your hands on the roll.  I know you want to, but just don't, because you will get an instant second degree burn and scare the s%$* out of your cat with your hollering.

Also, ripping the top part up a bit helps it look more authentic.  

Then comes the painting.  Everyone said to use spray paint, but like an a-hole, I decided to not listen because I don't have any spray paint.  So, here is what happened:

What?  This is so ugly.  Not to mention the ridiculous looking seams running up the rolls.

So yeah, it turns out that if I had read the directions I would have known cover the rolls up with paper mache or something before I did this, but I don't like to read directions.  So then, instead of redoing the project like a normal person, I decided to run out to the hardware store and get these fancy fluorescent bulb covers that one other DIYer had recommended.  Yes, this involved actual effort and money, but I was pretty miffed at the TP tubes for jacking up my project so I needed to make them feel inferior.

It was only a couple of bucks, and created about 11 various sized candles.

Cutting was kind of a bitch, and I didn't really think through the part that my cuts weren't perfect, shockingly, so I had to even out quite a few of them.  

Follow the same process, tape, pebbles, paper.  I want the tealight to be all the way inside so you don't see that uggo fake flame tip, just the flickering light.

Glue it, paint it, and roll it in dirt.  Les voila!

My candles, which actually look really crappy when you compare them to the ones at the top.

Some tips -- pick off the small strands of glue before you paint it, because no matter how many times you try to convince yourself, they do not look good.  Also, don't get glue in the tube because then you can't fit the candle in.  Overall, I'm still feeling some pretty low self esteem because the pictures I see online look AMAZING and mine look kind of, eh, but either way they will look way better than the crappy plastic ones, and they are cheaper to boot.  On the plus side, I have decided to mostly forgive the candles made of TP and paper towel rolls, and will paint them black and stick them in the far corner of the graveyard.   Where they belong, ingrates.

It's officially time for things to get weird.

This is what Pan will look like this year, except 400% larger and 200% more pissed.

Every year, we throw a Halloween party, and every year, when I'm cleaning ivy out of our stairwell or finding plastic spiders in our food or even worse, finding a real spider and thinking it's plastic and oh my god that is a mistake I will never make again, I decide that I never want to do Halloween ever again.   Spring comes and I am like F*&% no.  Summer will roll around and I will be like, nu uh this is not happening, then sometime in August or September I will see something creepy and BAM I am in full-fledged Halloween crazy mode.  This year, I can thankfully attribute my Halloween mania to the crafty wonder that is Pinterest, a gigantic 4 foot owl from Home goods, and being unemployed.

I thought this was on the outside of our window, but then I got up really close to it to take a picture and it was actually on the inside of the window and that was the worst.  Just the worst.  And LOML still refuses to put it outside.

And so it begins -- I will chronicle my descent into madness for the next 2 months.  Or at least try to on a somewhat consistent basis.  Today began with me getting pissed at LOML for not thinking albino bats are f*&%ing incredible, nearly peeing my pants in the Spirit Halloween store, and while I say that jokingly, I can assure you it came really close once or twice, and desperately wishing that my friend Jen was coming up for Halloween because I think that she would actually pee her pants with one of the props LOML wants to attempt to make.

So far, nothing much to report:  I have been trying to talk LOML out of turning the basement into a dungeon because A) that is a lot of work that I don't wanna do and B)  I would like to be able to do my laundry without crying.  I'll let you know how progress goes, but I'm counting on his laziness to turn the tides my way.

Instead of boring you with more rambling, here are some random pictures, including some of our dollar store finds and my beginning attempts to paint them into something that doesn't look like it came from the dollar store (the whole unemployed thing is really throwing a cramp in my style):

This was seriously at the dollar store, and would you believe that LOML did not want it?  Why would anyone not want this? 

Clearance!  This picture shakes back and forth.  I seriously cannot wait.

Dollar store.  These are our filler tombstones so the awesome ones don't look so lonely.  Good God that sentence makes me sound like a loser.

Fricking amazing dollar store spiders.  They are bigger than they look.  I wish I could be including some albino bats in these pictures but SOMEONE thinks they are gimmicky and not real.  But they are real, because I just googled it.  So there.

I saw this at an antique shop last year and thought it would be amazing to put a skeleton in it and why oh why didn't I buy this?

Right.  That's why.

Saw this in a mall last year and I have plans to make this my ceiling.

How could I pass this up at the store?   Turns out, Witch Hunt is a crappy beer.  Lesson learned.  Well, not really because I'll probably buy it again because I'm a sucker for witch themes.

Aaand that about wraps up tonight's installment of my crazy.  Come back next week for more.  Unless I get lazy.