Happy Halloween!

 

There wasn't a lot of magic happening this Halloween where we live but we tried to make the best of it anyway. Fireworks were very popular, not that anyone has actually stopped shooting them off since they first started back on Memorial Day. Still, it was festive.

Trick or Treat was still on and we were well prepared.  

It was strange to have this rather pathetic, pandemic treats table instead of answering the door but the kitties were a lot less stressed out. No one minded helping themselves in the least, ha! The weather was nice too, although it was very windy so there a lot of people out. We have no leftovers!

The Skeleton Crew decided to double up on the masks and slip away for some fun. Only Burt would think of dressing up as a Plague Doctor during a pandemic.

His Madness and I stayed home to keep and eye on the candy situation.

The wind blew out a couple of the candles in the jack o'lanterns but everything mostly stayed lit,

HM and I decided to end the evening with a movie and some snacks. We put together a charcuterie board since someday we may entertain friends and family again and we needed the practice.  

  

Then we settled in with the original Frankenstein and too much wine.

Then sacrificed a chocolate witch.

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!

Thanks for stopping by, don't forget to turn your clocks back.

Stay spooky, see you soon!

Pumpkin Carving

Now it's really, really close!

Tomorrow is Halloween, so it's about time to get these pumpkins carved into jack o'lanterns!

Burt volunteered to gut all of the pumpkins this year and that made Ivy very happy.

Kibitz is always there to offer his advice.

Ivy got right to work on her pumpkin but Burt had to think about what to do with his.

Kibitz felt the need to inspect their high tech tools.

It looks like Ivy's finished first, not that it's a competition.

 Burt wasn't far behind. Good job guys but there's still two more pumpkins to go!

Thanks for stopping by, see you on Halloween!  

National Cat Day Decorations

We're rounding the corner!

Today is National Cat Day and I'm pretty sure our cats could care less. Isn't every day supposed to be their day? When I first saw this package I thought the cat was coughing up a hairball!

Since it was so nice here today, His Madness and I decided to get out of the house and see what sort of outside Halloween decorating was happening around town. After Stewart and Spenser were given their treats of course.

Since we are currently experiencing some of the highest rates of coronavirus cases and are to blame for Trump becoming president (along with Michigan and Pennsylvania), there is a lot of politicking about. Hey, I believe in science. 

Yeah, we have a lot to be ashamed of. Hopefully, those Wisconsinites who didn't think they needed to vote in 2016 will get to the polls this time around. If you need help voting, leave me a comment. 

The parks are full of geese this time of year, they stop by for awhile as they make their way south, hope they don't fly into a hurricane. This lighthearted trip around town was getting pretty dark.  

 

Onto more silliness! You can't go wrong with a front lawn filled with skeletons!

Or one giant ghost!

The geese could have picked up a quick snack here. Is that Burt back by the jack o'lanterns? Actually, that Scarecrow is kind of classy.

Finally, in honor of National Cat Day we came across this giant black cat with a great smile. I'm very inspired by all the great decorations we saw today, maybe next year . . .  or better yet, tomorrow!  

Thanks for stopping by, see you soon!

Not Seeing the Light!

It's getting closer. 

It seems our City Council is sticking to the usual Trick or Treat schedule, so I guess it's still happening. I've got a plan, we'll see how it works, ha! Anyway, the Halloween lights should have gone up last week but between the non-stop rain, snow and cold it just didn't get done.

It's nothing elaborate, just a few lights and garlands and some jack o'lanterns.

These eyeball lights are always a favorite with the Trick of Treat crowd.

My, what big eyes you have Ms. Praying Mantis. 

Once Ivy determined the lights were still okay, Burt got to work putting them up. 

He finished off by adding the last of the lights to the yews and then discovered there was no electricity! Ugh! Those eyeballs say it all. Hopefully, we won't need an electrician and they will all be working by Halloween!

While Burt was trying to locate the problem with the electricity, I noticed that, totally by accident, the entire spectrum was represented on the front of the house. Now, I do love color but not all of it at once, unless it's a rainbow. How could that be? I had just pulled out the blue-violet petunias from the window boxes this morning, so there went indigo! Except, there are lots of purple pansies in the urns, oops. Still, there was nothing blue. 

Except the turquoise front door.

Maybe it's a good thing we can't turn on the lights.

Thanks for stopping by, see you tomorrow!

(Hopefully, with lights!)

Movie Night - The Bride of Frankenstein

Only four days until Halloween and a week until the election.

Don't forget to vote! 

After watching Young Frankenstein, we decided it might be fun to see some of the actual classic monsters movies. Since our streaming can be unreliable we went shopping online and discovered that almost everything from that era is available. After placing an order and we got a notification that it would ship in November! Fortunately, HM kept on looking and found a copy of The Bride of Frankenstein at the public library, duh! The last place we thought to look. 

This week, Burt and Kibitz are in charge of getting the drinks and snacks ready for movie night, although it seems like they are more interested in playing with the decorations. 

Ivy decided that a microscope would be something Dr. Frankenstein might have in his laboratory so she added this vintage one to the Halloween decorations. Since it still works, she attached a slide of a section of a house fly's leg as a creepy detail. Burt and Kibitz couldn't get enough of that! Maybe for our next movie night we should try to find a copy of The Fly?

Once their scientific curiosity was satisfied, they got to work and added more lights and pumpkins.

We definitely didn't plan very well for this movie night, ha! All we had on hand for snacks was caramel corn, pretzels, and candy corn. There is a cocktail called the Bride of Frankenstein that's made with Chambord, sparkling wine and pineapple juice. Oddly enough, we had all the ingredients but it got terrible reviews, so we stuck to the usual beer and wine. Crepes of Wrath suggested pairing bourbon, neat on the rocks, with caramel corn. Now that might be something to try.

As for the movie, it was actually quite good!   

It's not really scary, but there are a lot of complicated ideas running through the plot. It will definitely become one of the Halloween movies we watch every year.

As for the poor monster, I can't wait to see if he gets a better ending in the next sequel.

Thanks for stopping by, see you tomorrow!

Halloween Surprises

Mother Nature dumped quite a bit of white stuff on us yesterday and even more overnight. So my plans to spiff up the front porch and light it all up have been postponed until it disappears. While waiting for the snow to melt I thought it might be helpful to take a look at some of the good and not so good surprises I have encountered during the spooky season this year. Some of them were due to the common perils of online shopping but others were the result of not paying attention to dimensions or flat out mistakes. After trying to figure out what went wrong, I decided they fell into just four categories, they were either Surprisingly Large, Surprisingly Small, Surprisingly Weird or Just Right.

In the Surprisingly Large category is this Pottery Barn Metal Jack O'Lantern Candle Holder. 

It's 12" tall with a 14" diameter, which is roughly the same size as a large pumpkin! I was expecting something that was called a candle holder to be smaller, ha! It's good to have an extra jack o'lantern though and will fit right in on the front steps on Halloween night.

Another item in the Surprisingly Large classification are these mugs. The pumpkin is the only one I actually wanted but it was sold out everywhere except in the sets of four. That was ok, the more the merrier, right? They are cute but they hold almost two pints! Maybe we will have to use them for beer!

Moving on to the one item that was Surprisingly Smaller, the Spider Lamp. Honestly, the price of this should've given me a clue that it wasn't very big. It does fit nicely in the curio cabinet and will probably be there permanently to make my great-grandmother's things just a little more creepy.

Last August, I discovered Michael's had a lot of their Halloween decorations online. I ordered a few things and then somehow checked the box for in-store pick-up instead of having it sent to my home. That wasn't a bad thing because I did do a lot more shopping once I got to the store however, these pillows were already sold out so I didn't see them in person until I got home. Wow, they didn't look anything like this online! They're not so bad but they're not exactly subtle either. They go in the Surprising Weird category, obviously. I do like them and they will work somewhere and now I've learned to look at my pick-up orders before I leave the store.

The last addition to the Surprisingly Weird category is that His Madness and I thought it would be interesting to go on a Cemetery Walk, in the rain, during a pandemic. I can't recommend it.

On a similar but brighter note, I did find some very classy pumpkins to go with the print of the Venetian Plague Doctors! They fall into the Just Right group.

Another in the Just Right category are these containers from Target Dollar Spot. I don't know what they are actually for, (possibly kitchen sponges or those things you use to scrub pots and pans?) but they're great for coffee pods and hold exactly a sleeve of ten. It's taken me three years to get these three, they sell out fast, ha! The Bat on the left is full of decaf, the pumpkin holds caramel and the Cat keeps the expresso. 

The final addition to the Just Right group are these Wiccan Lace dinner plates made by 222 Fifth. For a couple of years I have been haunting Home Goods hoping to find four of the Royal Stafford dinner plates in the skeleton design. They never had more than one or two, so I gave up. Then one day,  these popped up on eBay while I was searching for the Royal Stafford ones and they were very silly and just right, ha! 

   Thanks for stopping by, see you tomorrow!