Haunted library

I think I wrote on this last year. A library in the system I work in did a haunted library (a few rooms) last year and it was great. I think they did an even better job this year. Keep in mind that teen volunteers did a lot of the planning and assembling of this along with several librarians. I thought they did a great job. This past Saturday we took the kids to trick or treating in the town, then got in the long line for the haunted library. By the time that was done it was only about half an hour until the parade so went and found spots for that. Trick or treating was cool, the haunted library was great but for the parade although good there were far less entries than last year. Still a great evening. We went to my son’s scout Halloween party and truck or treat last year and that was good. The Truck or treat ended right before it rained. Our last big event is this Friday the party at a local fire hall that we have been going to for years. Here are picks from the haunted library.

Not far off

Halloween is less than four months away. The beginning of my Halloween Hootenanny will start even before that. I’m hoping to start with reviews of Halloween and scary related TV shows in mid-September and run it through to the big holiday in October 31st. I’m currently making lists of shows to include and narrowing it down. Hope you stop by for the festivities! Bring you own candy corn.

Halloween decorations

Halloween decorations have become more elaborate over the years. From lights to inflatables to cover your yard these decorations have became a big business. Having grown up in the 70’s my earliest memories of Halloween decorations are largely small paper things people hand on their walls and plastic pumpkins too. Even though the formats have changed the themes are still similar. So black cats, bats, witches, skeletons and pumpkins still get their images slapped on decorations for you put them all around your house both inside and out. Since it’s my favorite holiday I certainly approved of Halloween decorations. Like most people who like the holdiay I spend too much of decorations although I pull out my favorite older decorations as well.

 

***What kind of Halloween decorations do you like?

 

It’s the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown

1966

Linus and Lucy steal a pumpkin and race it off to their house. Linus who would seem to be around 6-8 has apparently lived under a rock and has never seen anyone pull it’s seeds before as he acts like a loon when Lucy does this. Linus then tries telling everyone they should sit out in a cold, wet pumpkin patch on Halloween night and wait for this Great Pumpkin to pop up and give them treats. Sound like he just wiped out all the smart things he said at the Christmas special. Sally believes him, but we know she not the sharpest knife in the drawer either. Everyone else prepares for trick or treating. Charlie Brown can’t cut very well or grow hair or keep his clothes on at a baseball game. Oh but that not cutting so well thing gets him a crap costume which may or may not have been the reason he gets a bunch of rocks instead of candy while trick or treating. All the normal kids get candy even nasty old Lucy although she does ask for candy for her brother because he’s out being a lunkhead and sitting in the pumpkin patch. Eventually they all go a to a Halloween party where Lucy kisses Snoopy by way of an apple. Ew, yuck Lucy germs! Then Snoopy goes off in a big fantasy/WWI flying ace thingie complete with weird music. Eventually Snoopy rises up out of the pumpkin patch. Linus thinks it’s Great Pumpkin and falls over. Sally gets some sense and yells at him before storming off. Silly Linus falls asleep out there alone and dies a horrible death oh no wait Lucy came and got him and took him before the death part. Charlie Brown regrets having a rotten holiday while Linus says he was not wrong and he will show everyone next year as he goes off on a lunatic rant while the credits roll.

The negatives-Not so much except for the depressing part on how bad Halloween stunk for Charlie Brown. Maybe he needed to move to a town where the adults weren’t so cruel as to give rocks to kids on Halloween.

The positives-A holiday classic. We watch it every year and had it in while we carved the pumpkin on Halloween this year.

Haunted Tent

As promised here are some pics from the haunted tent both during the day and at night with lights. Hope it looks like something. It was fun to do.

Trust me Baby Alive looked a lot creepier at night with a minimum of light on her.

The creepy doll and the body parts table.

Enter if you dare

Zombie at the entrance.

The tent and outside lights and other pieces.

The evil doll, body part table and the bat cage to the side.

The phantom in the dead flower bed-a $2 mask, old sweatshirt, graduation gown and a broken lamp with shade.

The kids getting a sneak peak.

Zombie entrance greeter in daylight-$1 mask plus old clothes and some lights.

Zombie guy further away and cobwebs.

Creepy camper-sleeping bag, lantern, plastic rats in front of him and the camper is made from the body of swamp monster costume my son had when he was like five plus an old pumpkin mask. The body is stuffed with clothes while the head is filled with plastic bags. I used a box and a brick to prop him up, you know real state of the art stuff.

Same guy at night.

Old Baby Alive doll with an old piece of black cloth on plus $2 skull and lots of rubber and plastic body parts off on the parts table including eyes, fingers, hands and also some cockroaches and other bugs as well. The bat cage on the side was a hamper with two bats one a puppet and one rubber with both batsstrung up inside and a mini-strobe light under neath. Yes, it was done on the cheap, but fun and turned out pretty well for just a couple hours of work including setting up the tent.

Halloween and the day after

Oh November 1st one of my least favorite days of the year because the big holiday has come and gone. Candy corn hangovers set in and the once glorious jack o lantern starts to droop a little . Plus all the stores are already pushing to start setting up for Christmas and they whisk Halloween stuff off their shelves. So bye bye rubber masks and plastic skulls. However it was a great Halloween. I set up haunted tent for the kids (pics coming some time soon), we carved the pumpkin and watched the Great Pumpkin. I used to get real down on this day because Halloween was over, but now I just look forward to next year and right away start watching all the horror movies I intended to watch in October but didn’t.

The haunted tent-The plan

In a previous post I mentioned that my kids wanted a haunted room to walk through. I suggested doing a haunted tent so between now and Friday night I have to get it set up so are I have been digging out stuff we have, bought some things and been thinking of a plan.

So here are the items I already had…

tent, sleeping bag, bed sheets and clothespins for making walls, old clothing for making monster bodies, flashlights , extension cords, various string lights-red and yellow, mason jars and lids, duct tape, rope, string, large mesh hamper, small tables, wooden benches (already outside), CD player and I’ll likely burn a CD of selected tracks from the sound effects discs I have on the computer.

Stuff I found in the kid’s rooms or the basement-

plastic skull, rubber bats, rubber bugs, jack o lantern mask, foam sword, glowing eyeballs, rubber hand, five plastic trick or treating pumpkins, two metal candle holder lanterns just right for battery tea lights.

Stuff I bought at the Dollar Tree-

battery run tea light candles, mini strobe lights, rubber cockroaches, plastic severed fingers, plastic severed hand, Caution plastic strip,Beware hanging sign, cheap zombie mask, creepy cloth-like a shredded curtain, rubber bat, big plastic rat, spider on a web-the web is about basketball size.

Things I need to make-

Monsters made out of zombie mask, jack o lantern mask and old clothes.

I have these giant googly eyes that just scream to be put on a big monster. I was thinking a big spider made out of garbage bags but I’ll see how hard that will be to make.

I have also been considering a ghost, but don’t have any white bed sheets so I’d have to cut up and old white shirt-maybe I have one.

The plan-

I’ll have extension cords out to the tent and a power strip. I’ll use that for any electric lighting and the CD player. I’ll have a bench outside the tent with one the masked monsters and some pumpkins on it. Whatever monster I make with the googly eyes will likely be attached to the top of the tent. I hope to use sheets to separate the tent into three section and the kids will enter on the left go around in a circle and exit the same way. So for the three sections I am thinking the first will be covered with body parts-severed hand and the eyeballs and fingers in jars. The second section will have animals-the spider web, rat, rubber insects and the biggest piece will be the mesh hamper with rubber bats hanging in it-this will either be on a table or maybe hung from the ceiling. The last section will be the sleeping bag with a monster with one of the masks on hopefully sitting up in the bag. I have three mini-strobe lights so I can use one of those for each section and I have a hanging battery powered lantern and maybe a dozen battery tea lights to light things up as well where needed.

Suggestions? I have never done anything like this before so if you have let me know of any ideas you have.

Halloween activities

Friday we went to the Halloween party we have been going to for years that’s at a local Fire Hall. They have a costume contest, a magic show, pizza and treat bags. It was awesome as always. My kids went as a chimp and a ninja this year.

Yesterday the largest town in our county had trick or treating at local stores on main street. That was followed by a Halloween parade. They have the parade every year but  always on a week day and it always seem to hit when we had something else going on, but this year we went. The trick or treating was cool and lots of shops participated. The town library did some haunted rooms for the first time and extended their hours. This is not the library that I work but it’s in the same system. The kids went through it once before the parade on once after. Wish we’d gotten some clearer pictures of the parade but here you go.

My daughter waiting for the parade to start. The local music shop across the street was blasting Halloween themed songs before the parade like Ghostbusters, Thriller and others.

One of our favorites were the three guys dressed as a gorilla, Luigi and a giant banana who were riding little motorcycles around and doing wheelies. Here’s the gorilla.

 

Lots of people entered in their homemade costumes. Here are some Lego people.

 

This picture doesn’t do this group justice. It was a baton twirling troupe of about 30 kids and a couple of instructors all dressed as Wizard of Oz characters. Note the character on the far left is Toto. Being that the Wizard is my favorite film of all time I thought this was great.

Other parade entries of note was a Zombie baton twirling troupe. There was a local high school band playing the Addams family theme and everyone in that group got to pick their own costume so they had everyone in there from Darth Vader to Waldo (of Where’s Waldo fame) to the Cookie Monster. There was a cub scout group of twenty some kids and their leaders all dress in Teenage mutant ninja turtle characters.

These above pics are from the haunted rooms at the library which was designed and put together by teen volunteers. They had a ghostly checkout desk, a body parts room, a crime scene, a really creepy doll bedroom, a giant bat, a spider web, lots of skulls, rats as well as  people dressed as Freddy Krueger and a headless guy. They did a great job.

 

What to watch on Halloween

I first started picking something to watch on Halloween in maybe the mid-1990’s and not too surprisingly it was the first Halloween. I pulled out the VHS tape oh maybe three years in a row on Halloween. Then around 1999 I switched over to watching the 1931 Dracula every years on the holiday for maybe six or seven years. Since then I have not had as much of a ritual of watching the same film every year on Halloween. I watch some kind of kid’s Halloween special like Peanuts, Garfield or something with my kids. Then once they go to bed I may put something in although some recent years I may not have seen anything due to getting the kids in bed and then needing to get in bed early to get up for work early. This year I don’t have work on Novemebr 1st, but the kids do have soccer playoffs with the first starting at the ungodly and likely frigid time of 8:00 AM-yikes. I have a number of films I’d like to watch on Halloween and a number of horror films I have but have not yet seen. So at some point I have to decide what to watch on Halloween.

***Do you watch a certain movie on Halloween? If so then what is it?

Halloween Humor