15 Piece Cemetery Kit

When people think of Halloween, they often think of scary, dark and foggy places just like the cemetery. Re-create your home to look like a ghoulish cemetery where the dead haven’t rested for a hundred years with this 15-piece cemetery set. It’s got tombstones, skulls, crosses, markers, moss and skeletons. It’s the perfect cemetery set that is sure to frighten trick or treaters!

15 Piece Cemetery Kit

Situate this cemetery kit in front of your doorstep or on your front lawn. Carve a few pumpkins out and put them all around the cemetery set to complete your cemetery-themed lawn. If you want a wider looking cemetery, get two of these sets and get crazy with your decorations!

3′ Ghostly Group Lawn Set (3 count)

Another great addition to make your lawn an even scarier sight is to add put a few ghost decor around your lawn. If you put ghosts in a circular formation, it would look like you’ve invited a bunch of ghosts to your party. You could use these ghostly group set along with your cemetery kit and you’d have the perfect cemetery scene.

3' Ghostly Group Lawn Set (3 count)

This ghostly group set comes with 3 ghosts that come with 3 stakes. The stakes and posts are made of plastic so you might want to strengthen the posts by using wood or by pounding the stake into soft ground.

Halloween Lawn Signs

Not a fan of scary Halloweens? If you’re inviting kids to your Halloween party, you might want to lighten up your Halloween dector up a notch; and that would mean, no scary looking ghouls or Gortraits on your party. Instead of scary cemetery sets or ghosts on your lawn, you might want to use funny Halloween signs instead.

Halloween Lawn Signs

Since this set is intended to give Halloween a lighter and less nightmarish meaning for kids, you won’t be seeing angry facial expressions on these pumpkins and ghosts. What you’ll get instead, are happy, smiling faces so young trick or treaters won’t think of Halloween as something to be scared about, but an event one could celebrate with friends.

Reaper Group (3 count)

On the other hand, if you won’t be accommodating kids to your party, these reaper group posts make good alternatives to the Ghostly group. Like the ghostly group, you will have to pin them into the ground as safely as you could since their posts are made of plastic but once they’re planted safely on your lawn, you will have come up with the most bada** lawn decor in the neighborhood.

Reaper Group (3 count)

Complete the grim reaper decor with a cemetery kit to resemble a haunted cemetery setting. Don’t forget to carve out as many pumpkins as you can!

Welcome But Beware Fence Post (2 count)

Although Halloween is all about scaring people, it’s also about making your home ready for huge, fun parties and what better way to give your house a scary and welcoming feel than with this “Welcome but Beware fence post”. Made of stable material, this fence post  set features one post with ‘Welcome’ engraved neatly onto it and another with ‘Beware’ on it.

Welcome But Beware Fence Post (2 count)

Put this post set in front of y0ur door or better yet, get at least 6 and surround your front yard with them. Get crazy with the decorations, Halloween comes once a year!

But just because Halloween parties could get ugly once they’re through doesn’t mean you should call off your parties this year. Lively parties are priceless compared to what you spend to make the party a success in the first place. Gathering all your friends together just to hang out with them is one huge investment you won’t be able to make anywhere else. Building relationships and strengthening them is one of the many reasons why people, most especially, offices hold Halloween parties.

If you are holding a party for kids, you need not worry about getting beer stains on your couch, curtains, or carpet, but what you’d have to prepare for is the overflowing of leftover food. You’ll be seeing lots of it after Halloween parties! Unlike adults, kids do not consume much as adults do. You might find leftover cakes, pastries and candies after the event and even if you expected everyone to finish off everything, you might have to dispose of these leftover goodies, one way or another.

And one way to do isn’t through the trash bin.

At a time when saving up on even the littlest of things is common, you might want to recycle leftover Halloween treats instead of throwing them down the garbage. Not only is it is the most practical thing to do but you won’t have to worry about running out of treats even after the Halloween season.

You won’t be needing baking know-how if you want to turn your leftover Halloween candies into something else more delicious and interesting, but you need to be very attentive to recipe instructions.

Let’s assume you still have a kilo’s worth of candies lying around the kitchen, untouched and entirely fresh out of the package. It would be such a waste if you let all of those candies go. Here are just a few simple things you could do with leftover candies:

1. Bake them into cakes and pastries. Most moms actually do this. After Halloween, they bake a cake of their choosing and while mixing eggs, flour and all the other ingredients into a bowl, they drop candies in to make a Halloween Candy Cake. The main flavor of the cake obviously comes from the candies.

2. You could also bake a Halloween Candy Pie. For those who don’t know what a Halloween Candy Pie, it is simply a fruit pie with candies and other treats on its crust. All candies are assorted, mixed into one pile and they become part of the Halloween Candy Pie. Aside from pies, you could also make Halloween Candy Brownies using the same instructions.

3. Save it for some other event. Is your best friend’s birthday coming up? If so, you could use the candies you’ve gathered on Hallow’s Eve as gifts to your friend.

4. Make recipes of your own using leftover candies.There are so many pastry recipes on the internet. One way to reuse leftover candies is by using them as toppings for these pastries. Make sure you segregate flavors from one another though– for example, if you don’t want a minty-topped cake, make sure none of the candies which are being used for topics are mints or anything close to that flavor.

5. Hand them out to your visitors. If you have nary the time for baking, simply gather all these leftovers in one plate and put them on your living room table. Chances are,visitors who might drop by your house after Halloween might slowly taste the candies you have prepared for them. Since candies don’t perish or go stale immediately, you could have them on your living room table even up to Christmas. It’s the slowest way of losing these candies but you know they won’t go to waste.

BONUS: Repack and resell them! If you think what you have are candies still good for reselling, make a little money of f of them and sell them to kids or your friends for really cheap prices per pack. You could also tell your kids to set up a little store in your yard and sell lemonade as well as candies.

Last year, Michael Jackson and Balloon Boy were among the top news or pop-culture-related Halloween costume choices; this year, perhaps, popular costumes will be Lady Gaga’s meat dress or, as this article describes, the gulf oil spill. Are you planning to dress up in costume this Halloween? If so, are you considering a costume inspired by current events, or one that references someone or something from pop culture? What will you wear and why?

In “Political Masks Are So 2009,” Damien Cave writes:

Lady Gaga is likely to become this Halloween’s hottest celebrity — Madonna with meat, as one costume salesman described it — but when it comes to message-minded get-ups, political ghouls like Barackula are out and corporate horror is in… click the link below to read more.

via Will Your Halloween Costume Comment on the News or Pop Culture? – NYTimes.com.

Also, you can send you in your photos!

Tell us what costume ideas you’re considering for Halloween this year. Even if you’re not considering wearing something inspired by current events or pop culture yourself, what do you imagine will be the most popular topical costume choices this year? Why?

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The New York Times is inviting readers to share photos of their Halloween costumes — whether this year’s, or favorites from years past. Send yours in if you’re interested.

Using the previously made forms as a basis to work up from, you must then decide what you would like to create.  Do you want to be a cat?  A bird?  A tattooed pirate?  Your imagination and your skill are the only limits to what you can make.  By gluing a thin line of glitter around the eye holes of a mask, then carefully gluing fancy feathers to the mask starting in the center and working your way out, you can make a peacock, an owl, a canary.  Feathers are again a common item at craft stores and in the craft section of many department stores.  

Buy fake white fur.  Cut it to match the form of the mask, then use a fabric ink pen to mark the fur with cat patterns.  Or, if you like, purchase a base paint and a good grade of high gloss art enamels, and create a painted mask marked like a leopard or a tiger.

Base paint and high gloss enamel are also superb for fantasy masks.  Painting the mask with spirals, stars, ribbons of color, gluing on sprinkles of glitter and tiny ribbon bows, you can make a delightful mask for a princess, an enchantress, or your favorite little fairy.

The same methods can be turned to more dramatic use if your fairy prefers to be a pirate.  A black patch, a bandana (glued firmly at the forehead to prevent it from escaping during trick-or-treat fun) and a big black handlebar moustache painted on over the lip can give a girl or boy a great pirate face.

For zombies, ghouls, ghosts, and vampires it may be best to let the kids free to play with their own ideas.  For their protection use safe tempera paints rather than enamels, and be sure to have plenty of red and green…they go fast when you’re designing your own monster!

Provide good “nasties”  and a secure glue, too: frizzled yard for hair (and for unknown mutilations), fake bugs, worms — you would be amazed what creepy crawly things and bits of scrap fabric can be used for when the child is going for a serious case of “ICK!”

Another form of mask entirely can be based on a simple ski mask.  These don’t take glue well, or paint, but they do take fabric ink pens and they are great to sew onto.  A ragdoll mop of yarn hair, a couple chain stitch red circles for shiny doll cheeks, and you have a ragdoll in very little time.  Again, the ski mask can make a very good base for sewn on monster ingredients.  You can add dropping fleece jowls, flopping fleece ears, and soft fleece wrinkles to make a perfectly huggable basset hound pup.  A set of tidy embroidered whiskers and pink felt ears can present you with a kitten in less than half an hour.

For more ideas check online and in the crafts section of your library.  Yes, it can be fun to buy masks already designed and crafted, but it is much more fun to make you own at home!

Many treats are not made so much as gathered together and packaged.  The modern preference for trick-or-treats or for party favors tends to be based on packaged, wrapped candies in any case.  Many parents feel comforted and safe knowing that the treats their children receive when trick-or-treating or even at parties with trusted friends and associates will be presented in unbroken packaging.

For this sort of treat all that is necessary is to purchase several bags of pre-wrapped mini candies, sort them into groups containing one or two packages of each sort, and then wrap them in bright fabric or wrapping paper, or put them in decorated favor bags.  Favor bags can be made at home by decorating small paper sandwich bags, or they can often be purchased previously decorated at events stores.

If you want to actually make a treat from scratch consider making a cake or cupcakes that can use standard recipes and mixes, standard baking pans, but which are made special through themed Halloween decorations.  A cake iced with orange icing, with an arching cat and flying bat silhouetted against the orange cake moon makes an impressive Halloween treat for a party.  Cupcakes decorated as spiders, with black icing, red cinnamon eyes, and black pipe cleaner legs arching out to tickle the table are classic Halloween treats.

Many people make candy apples and caramel corn.  These are made by melting cinnamon candies and candy caramels down.  Apples are spiked on popsicle sticks and dipped in both cinnamon and caramel candy, and popcorn in a bowl is drizzled with melted caramel, then rolled into balls glued together by all the sticky candy.  Both are set on no-stick cookie sheets to cool and firm, and then wrapped in clear cellophane and tied with black and orange ribbons.  Precise recipes are available in cookbooks, online, and often on the backs of cinnamon candy and caramel packages.

A final traditional Halloween treat is for drinking, not eating.  Hot spiced cider is standard fare in regions with cool nights in fall.  Cider is poured into a large soup pot or a large slow cooker.  One teaspoon cinnamon, one quarter teaspoon of clove, and a quarter teaspoon of ginger are added per gallon of cider, and the entire recipe is brought to a low but steaming temperature.  Served in mugs or heat proof Styrofoam cups there are few things more pleasant as party fare on a cold Halloween evening.

For some it remains a day of religious significance of course.  Both Christian and neo-pagans find holiness and meaning in a day that marks the recognition of the dead, and of supernatural forces.  Many Latinos and Latinas celebrate Halloween as part of the lead-up to Dia de los Muertos, the Day of the Dead, celebrated after All Saint’s and All Soul’s, on November 2.  For those who group the holidays in this block Halloween can be a light, joyful punctuation in the midst of more somber religious themes.  

Most of us however can’t claim to be celebrating for such serious reasons.  The truth is Halloween may be the one holiday we celebrate for the pure joy of the event.  Our culture can be very tiresome.  Even children are expected to give up much of imaginative play at a very young age, and adults often feel obliged to behave as though they never played at all.

In a life of early-to-bed and early-to-rise, when good sensible people stay home at night and maybe do a bit of accounting or bring home some work from the office, Halloween is a glorious excuse to play.  Children and adults alike race into Halloween with a whoop and a grin.

Like Mardi Gras, Halloween is seen as a holiday when normal life is set aside.  Unlike Mardi Gras the rule breaking is expected to be mild, child-safe, and centered around home, family and friends.  Costumes, magic, a bit of mystery and imaginary horror, a touch of night shadow and autumn frost: it all comes together in a cascade of shimmering jack-o-lanterns, masquerade parties, and giggling mobs of kids out collecting a year’s worth of candy.  We celebrate Halloween because it mixes just enough fear, just enough rebellion, just enough enchantment, with more than enough party, laughter, and play.

There are many sober holidays and many profoundly meaningful religious celebrates.  For those whose faith and tradition see Halloween as part of a great cycle of faith based celebrations the day can remain a holy event.  But for the thousands of more secular celebrants the night of Halloween is celebrated because it is good, sweet, joyful fun.

It is something remembered from childhood, and passed on to new generations.  It is a bat flying across a harvest moon, the scent of bonfires, a cat arching on a fence, and maybe a ghost story told at midnight…with candy and costumes and jack-o-lanterns thrown in.  For most of us that is more than enough reason to celebrate Halloween.

For Catholics the holiday is tied to All Saint’s Day and All Soul’s Day.  Halloween night falls between the two celebrations, one of the saints in heaven, one of the dead not yet in heaven and not of the status of saints.  Halloween was originally Hallowed Evening for those who celebrated the event: the Holy Evening between the two holy days, when the spirits of the departed saints and those of other people were close in heart and mind, and the spirits of evil lurked nearby in reaction to all the holiness.  For these olden days Catholics the “meaning”  of Halloween was a meaning of respect for the saints and the dead and protection against the lurking threat of evil, Satan, and the dead who had found no peace.

For older pagan tradition the connection with the dead also was present.  Samhain, as Halloween was called in Celtic culture, was a time when the livestock was slaughtered for the coming winter, the fodder for the beasts reckoned up, and the last of the grain and produce was harvested.  At the same time the sweet time of the year ended and the “dark” of the year began.  As Catholic Christians also did, the pagans saw the time as a magical transitional point, when spirits lurked close and death needed to be remembered.

The Celts put out the fires of their homes, lit “bonefires” that burned the bones of slaughtered stock, and relit all the fires of the community from the main bonefire.  It marked the beginning of the year, and the start of great events.  In this tradition Halloween meant both joy and fear, beginnings and endings: it was one of the “gates” of the year when powers came through and acted on the common world.  A dangerous time, yet also a necessary and joyful time, filled with bounty and hope.

These two traditions mingled in Ireland, and eventually were brought to America during the Great Potato Famine.  Here we dropped most of the religious beliefs of either tradition and kept the meaning of magic, mystery, mischief and mild mayhem.  For most Americans Halloween means only games, costumes, trick-or-treat and a sort of innocent freedom for both children and adults: a time when we can play at ghosts and magic, set aside our dignity, run around in the dark and eat much too much candy.

Halloween is a holiday created by the blending of traditions.  A mix of old northern European pagan rites and celebrations, Christian beliefs, and modern imagination Halloween has many roots.

The pagan traditions are largely Irish, tied to celebrations of Samhain.  A celebration of the end of harvest it was also a time of recognizing the presence of the spirits of the dead. Some scholars think this connection has to do with the nature of the harvest, with the killing of livestock and the cutting of produce.  Some think it may indicate that Samhain was the start of the Celtic pagan year.

The ancient celebrations included the burning of the bones of slaughtered livestock in a “bone fire”  (now reduced to being a common, wood based bonfire).  The village would extinguish all household fires and relight them fresh from the bone fire, marking a new beginning in preparation for the coming winter.  As a time marking the presence of the dead and the power of the supernatural Samhain included many of the fortune telling rituals, ghostly themes, and spooky-shivery atmosphere we now associate with Halloween.

The holiday was tied to Christian All Saints’ and All Souls’ celebrations.  This created a stronger tie with the elements of the dead, and set up a still-present conflict between Christian theology, pagan rituals, and people’s ideas of good and evil. For many traditional Christians the pagan elements that remain in Halloween make it an unholy celebration.  For many neo-pagans structuring a faith on the old pagan traditions it is an especially holy time.  Both groups tend to get deeply distressed by the average American’s happy involvement with Halloween as a purely secular holiday: a time of fun, play, just a touch of imaginary horror, and lots of costume play.

The purely secular holiday grew out of the already playful Irish mingling of both All Saints/All Souls celebrations and the remaining elements of bonfires, magic, mischievous haunts (in costume, of course), jack-o-lanterns made of turnips rather than American pumpkins, and door to door begging.

On coming to the States during the Great Potato Famine the Irish immigrants kept their old customs, which quickly spread to communities beyond.  Who could resist the costumes, the trick-or-treats, the fun hiding behind the masks and shadows?  But the traditional celebration was adopted without the entire religious and cultural framework.  As a result American Halloween is, for most people, a joyful child’s holiday that adults are allowed to enjoy too…and nothing more.

Paul Venturella’s Halloween obsession began with a simple pumpkin on the porch about 15 years ago.
It’s been a downward slide ever since for the Provo resident.
He now spends much of the year preparing Halloween decorations and props for his yard with a 70-member Utah group called the Rocky Mountain Haunters (www.rockymountainhaunters.com).
Venturella’s obsession is so extreme that storing the tombstones, ghosts, ghouls and skeletons takes up his entire garage and much of his attic, a sore point with his wife.
“Cars have never seen the inside of the garage,” he said.

And his home on the west side of Provo (he asked that his exact address not be published because he can barely handle the crowds as it is) has become a major Halloween destination.
Last year, on Halloween night, he hosted about 1,300 kids. In the past, Venturella has spent almost $500 on full-size candy bars and hot chocolate for his trick-or-treaters. He’s thinking he might have to cut down a bit on the treats.
The Provo home features about 20 or 30 tombstones enhanced by fog machines to create atmosphere. There are a number of animated props, some operated with windshield-wiper motors, and more sophisticated ones using pneumatic air compressors that allow a skeleton to sit up in a coffin

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For Rocky Mountain Haunters, Halloween is more than a hobby – Salt Lake Tribune

Ooooh,, Ghost Hunters is going to do another live ghost investigation this Halloween.  It’s going to be a 7 hour long investigation!

Brace yourself this Halloween when TAPS takes you on the ultimate ghost hunt. The team returns to the Fort Delaware scene of this season’s most jolting and revealing episode.