Tag Archives: halloween

New Halloween Decorations!

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I had a surprise waiting for me when I got home last week!

No, not a kitty-crayon or even a puddle of puke – and it sure wasn’t a letter from the Publisher’s Clearinghouse telling me I’d won a bazillion dollars. It was better.

Ok so not better than the Prize Patrol being on my doorstep. But since that scam game isn’t run over here, I was never in the running anyway.

It was these!

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Aren’t they great?! We had to import them from the US, but going direct to the manufacturers saved a ton over buying them from the UK. My sister got these guys last year and I fell in love – but I had no clue iDJ had remembered and planned and got them for us.

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They seem to be enjoying their new Irish environment. I know the cold and rain won’t bother them a bit! We do bring them in when it gets windy – after all, those styrofoam headstones have been found two houses over after a good blow. I was also a little worried that someone would steal them, but we are rather off the beaten track and not too many kleptomaniacs should be down at the end of our dead end road. Hopefully.

Happy Halloween!

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I’m blogging in the candlelight in front of the fireplace. Warming up after freezing my patootie off outside as it got dark out. There are candles lit everywhere, and one of iDJ’s disco lights is flashing swirls of colour across the big front window.

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We have lights up, and styrofoam headstones, and cemetery fencing, and other stuff…

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SomaFM is playing on the house stereo; Doomed channel, special Halloween mix. It’s good, have a listen.

I’m worn out after carving all seven pumpkins today. Yep, seven. iDJ found four tiny ones, then two middle sized ones, then one more middle sized one (all at different shops) and he bought every one he found. Glad he did, as they didn’t last long as they are hard to find in Ireland!

Only one small one went rotten in the weeks before today, much better than last year when two went bad, and very bad they were.

Here’s my store-bought crop:

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Huh. I just realised that I can’t count. Eight pumpkins! No wonder I’m so damn tired. Glad I took the day off! Where the hell did the fourth medium sized one come from?

Oh, sweet. While I was typing this, iDJ posted the pics of my finished carvings on FB. Now I get to go rob them for here!

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My owl. He’s got lovely red leaves stuck on like feathers. It didn’t turn out exactly as I imagined.

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Cranky baby pumpkin. Shoulda put the single snaggle-tooth on the other side.

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Skull pumpkin. I was already running low on ideas.

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Stitched-up pumpkin. Not enough oxygen gets in to keep the candle lit so his lid has to be wonky.

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Ya got me. Sort of like a pig or a bull. * shrug *

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Probably my favourite. Pretty scary!

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And, of course, a spider!

You might realise there are only seven pics. Pumpkin no. 8 was a mutant inside and I couldn’t carve it in a way that would allow a candle to light it up. I saved it to last, dithering, and what I did to it is too crappy to share!

Happy Halloween!

Don’t be scared…

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I’m sitting in a house that’s only lit by candlelight, with a scary sound effect track playing. There’s a red lightbulb lit over our door, pumpkin and ghost lights in the windows, and a big scary streamer thing covering our front door. There are two big jack-o-lanterns, four headstones, and skull-bedecked cemetery fencing in our front garden. I’m wearing a wizard hat, and iDJ has on a creepy-as-hell clown mask.

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We are ready for trick or treaters!

We’ve had one uncostumed, dare-you, ToT attempt that we rejected, and three real ones so far. Two of the first three were in traditional Samhain masks, really good to see that.

The cats are unimpressed, one has left the downstairs entirely, and one is more interested in the fact we cracked the window a little bit to run the speaker wire outside. Dog is fine until the doorbell rings. In Ireland, they shoot off (illegal) fireworks for Halloween. So far, the dog hasn’t even twitched an ear at the booms, a good thing. Unless that first little barstid comes back and tries to put one in our letterbox…

A friend on FB just pointed out that this is the only time we encourage kids to visit. Damn right, and it is only okay now because we are doing our best to make them scream, cry, or wet their pants.

Oh, here’s how we tortured the dog this week:

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She only had to be Spiderman for a few minutes. It didn’t fit right.

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Ooo, aren’t we tough in our spikes? As long as Mr Carrot is around to protect us, we are…

We had a good time on Saturday night. The plan was a house party, then to hit as many of the three pubs in town that we could. Of course, we only ever landed in one pub, as you do.

Here’s me and the KIBIS-ers at the house party:

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Don’t we look great? I’m the tall one, obviously. I tried to squish my boobage flat (ha) and wear gender-neutral or even masculine clothes. The idea being that as long as I kept my mouth shut, no one would know if I was a girl or boy. It’s nice being tall 🙂 And it worked! In the pub, I scared a good few folks just by walking up and staring at them with my arms crossed. I found it really messed with their heads if I opened my eyes really wide to make crazy-person whites glow out of the mask. Yay!

My Harley jacket gave me away, though, to people who know me – I do wear it quite often, and as I’m the only biker chick in the town, well, they aren’t eejits here. Best response to me trying to fool someone came from the publican himself – “How’s the weather in America this week?”

Now for the piece de resistance! iDJ in his costume, assembled mostly by me and makeup by me.

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Any guesses who he is? How about a close up, then?

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Yes, he is Dee Snyder from the 80’s metal band, Twisted Sister! I really wanted to utilise his long blonde hair, and came up with Dee. I think he looks great! Even though he’s in my leggings, shirt, jacket, handcuffs, scarf, bandannas… hell, the only clothes that aren’t mine are socks, jocks and boots. Nice when a couple can share their clothing…

Gearing up for Halloween!

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I’m sitting here with a smile on my face. It’s such a nice feeling. This is why I love Halloween!

iDJ and I spent about an hour this eve when he got home from work sorting through clothes for his costume. It got a little stressful, as nothing was working right. His stonewash jeans were too tight, and he needed something 80’s on his legs. What to do? Ah, trust in the resources of the SpiderQueen.

I found a pair of leggings in fabulous colors, and made him try them on. Oh, perfect! His legs look fantastic. He put on the boots he wanted to wear, and I quickly sorted out a shirt and the accessories to make a perfect 80’s costume. It says a lot about me that I actually still own clothes from 1985. Says even more that I can recreate the ‘look’ we wanted so easily. So he’s sorted, except for his hair and makeup tomorrow.

Except… for his junk.

He’s wearing tight leggings. Men are not meant to wear leggings. Especially not with just a t-shirt to cover their ‘bits.’ I told him that he was in charge of figuring out what undies to wear – he’s a boxers man – how? I don’t know. Nor do I want to see the experiments.

But! He posts this on FB:

Note: he always carries a man bag for his gear – another gender stereotype shattering difference I forgot yesterday! He has a ‘murse’; I hate handbags and refuse to carry one.

iDJ: My good lady had me play dress up earlier so my costume is sorted. Now if only I can figure out where to stash my junk…
Me: Oh my god. I can not believe you said that! Right, I’m going to have to buy you something that doesn’t show off your junk so well!
iDJ: Camera, phone, wallet with no money, hip flask, bible – that junk!
Me: Oh. Right.

Of course the facebook feed has gotten worse from there. We all knew he wasn’t talking about his iPhone! Braggart. I have no idea how to keep my pictures of tomorrow from being nearly pornographic.

To get our collective brains back into happy-land, here’s Dogzilla dressed as Spider-Man:

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I spent nearly two hours working with my mask today. It doesn’t fit well, and I have to wear a wig, too. The mask has to be glued into place, and I’ll need to blend makeup to cover the bare skin. I’m not a fan of masks, but this one is in two parts with the chin separate so my mouth will work as loudly as normal. The functional mouth was very important because I refuse to drink Guinness out of a straw. So, there was trimming, and fitting, and more trimming… and I found out that my liquid latex has gone hard and mostly unusable, so the edges of the mask will be really obvious, dammit. Also, I have clown white but no black, and I need to blend in grey makeup to match the mask. Bummer. A shopping trip that includes me is scheduled for tomorrow, but I can’t get proper professional quality makeup locally.

I’ve not even sorted my clothing yet. Uuuurgh. But really, I love Halloween!

A final note, if you’ll permit. I’m a terrible self-promoter, I couldn’t sell heaters to Eskimos. However, in keeping with the Halloween theme, I’d like to give you directions to the MP3 podcast of iDJ’s Halloween radio show. It is 2 hours, recorded live last night, and really, really, good. You’ll get my references to Glen Campbell yesterday better, too. Go here: http://bit.ly/vJS8fD and, if you want the playlist first or after listening, go here: http://bit.ly/ts8gXY

You’ll hear himself talking every half hour or so, getting progressively drunker and happier as he goes. That’s normal for his show 🙂