New Stuff Halloween 2024 Frosty Frights

Something actually 'new, new' are these little nuggets from Wendy's kid's meals.  I thought they were most precious.  I particularly wanted the three on the far right. At the time of posting you can quite possibly still pick them up.  There are 11 of them in total but several are fruit loop colored so I didn't collect those.

Spooky Season!

 Yay!  Spooky Season is here!  It's been unofficially here since the summer with all the massively early Halloween merch released back in June.  I certainly don't have a problem with that as it helps curb my summer seasonal depression.  Summer can go back to hell from whence it came! However this year, while I appreciate all Halloween efforts, I have been severely displeased with the lackluster garbage presented.  And there was definitely an obvious, rather offensive trend, puking up the atmosphere and the vibe that is the true gloriousness that is Halloween, the culprits:  Pastels, disco balls, and florals.  

Nope.  Just nope.  This isn't a baby shower, it's not New Year's Eve, and Spring hasn't sprung.  The people who came up with these themes, the best I can fathom, hate Halloween, loathe Halloween, completely don't get it nor care too as they need to get to their Jr. League meetings and refill "Mommy's sippy cup" with a fourth helping of whatever pretentious wine that the other botox injected bimbos are raving about this week.  Or a bunch of 10 year old girls designed it.  Either way it's ridiculous.  But I have to not let the dickwads get me down.  Hidden among the garbage were some black and gothic spooky stuff tucked here and there.  I never thought the day would come that Halloween would be so disrespected though.   All I know is when Easter rolls around, everything better be black and covered in skulls and blood.

Anyway, I shouldn't bitch too much, I rarely buy much new Halloween merch anyhow.  I just go for the ambiance of it all.  I typically keep my eye peeled at thrift stores or estate sales for the rare vintage mid century piece to come along.  Last week I stopped in at a thrift that is only opened extremely limited hours and picked up this massive sized Gurley JOL candle for one buck!  He's got a bit of a booboo crease across his face but it makes him look like he survived a slasher attack! 

September Back To School Frito Kid and Coconut Cut- up Cake Party

I've been sporadically working my way through making all the monthly themed vintage coconut cut-up cakes and Frito Kid party ideas for a few years now.  I am juuust about there!  For this round I decided to double up and combine September's since they are both Back to School themed.  

Here is the vintage Cut-up cake inspo:

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from this little 1956 booklet:

Here's my take on "Ding Dong":

I am pretty sure it's suppose to be a school house but it's really a stretch of the imagination.

Now let's add in some 1954 Frito goodness:

The refreshments miss the opportunity for some Frito additions but I surely didn't!

Ice cream with Fritos is the BEST!

Did you know Circus Animal Cookies/Crackers don't come in the fun little boxes anymore?!

So I had to take it upon myself to fake some.  I turned a couple of mac and cheese boxes inside out, glued down a printed image I found out in internetland of the box front, and added my own little string handle.  I didn't buy any cookies out of principle due to the boring ass plastic bags they now come in.

 And lastly soda... I picked apple soda since that seemed most schooly inspired.

Here is the spread:

This puts me at finally making all the Coconut cakes except the god awful ones (May and June) that I just refuse to do.

I now just have Frito Kid November lastly left.  Because, spoiler alert, I did the December one last year after Christmas already and have it tucked back for this upcoming season.

Here are all of the themes collected together for your viewing perusal:

For the past Frito Party Goodness check out the below posts:

Frito Kid October Halloween Party

Frito Kid August Back Yard Barbeque

Frito Kid July 4th Party

Frito Kid June Cowboy Party

Frito Kid May Flowers and Fairies Party.

Frito Kid April Easter Party

Frito Kid March St. Patrick's Party

Frito Kid February Valentine Party

Frito Kid January Circus Party

and all the Coconut Cut-up Cakes corralled:

January Mr. Snowman Cake

February Ever-Lovin' Heart Cake

March Coco The Nutty Clown Cake

April Quick-A-Bunny Cake

July American Eaglet Cake

August Sailin' Down the Bay Cake

October Hallo Witch Cake

November Gobble-Gobble Gobbler Cake

December Dear Santa Cake

Zine Lovin'

 

I love magazines. They are full of all kinds of neatness, useful and useless. I used to have subscriptions to several magazines many years ago while I was able to get them from Coke Points Rewards.  I should clarify.... I like free magazines.  I ain't paying those high dollar magazine prices when the dentist office has a nice stack awaiting my perusal dating from 2014.  

One of my most favorite was Real Simple.  It's got all kinds of organizing solutions porn, crisp clean rooms, and 101 ways to reuse an old coffee pod.  Within the pages was another feature that wasn't usually boasted on the front cover which was an essay written about someone's personal life experiences.  There were a few stories that I could relate to along with some presenting situations that I haven't ever thought of, all were very enlightening.  Still to this day some of these essays pop into my head and I thought I would talk about them today.  They are like little glimpses into the future that in the moment you just don't see it.

The first one I can't remember what the prime topic was.  I think it may have been the loss of tradition and family.  I only remember one line but it struck me.  

"I remember when my grandmother stopped putting up a Christmas tree." 

  I was just dumbfounded.  I thought how could a grandmother not put up a Christmas tree??!  Isn't that one of their absolute deals?!  As years rolled past from reading the essay I started noticing my own grandmother shrinking her Christmas decorating footprint to the point where in 2020 while we were sitting outside celebrating the holiday 6 feet apart she asked if I wanted to see her tree.  I didn't want to go inside and us be next to each other in an enclosed space but she then said 'Oh, I can bring it out here!"  It turned out to be this 6 inch tall spirally metal little tree that she decorated by shoving colorful pom poms into it.  She was pretty proud of it.  It now has me thinking of the reasons with the lessening in general.  There's the practical one that I can attest to and that's holiday decorating is a lot of work.  I can also attest to when you start having physical/balance issues where getting on a step ladder ends in you hitting the ground (been there 3 times over the last few months).  And there's the emotional aspect where all the littles are grown ass adults and not as fun anymore. And again, I am easing into that with having an adult child.  It's just something to ponder is all.  The seasons of life and it's celebrations.

Another essay I have always held onto was written by a adult daughter who found herself caring for her mother who had Alzheimer's.  She and her mother had never gotten along throughout their lives.  The mother was actually quite mean and overbearing when she was in her right mind.  However when she lost her mind, for the lack of a better phrase, she became a sweet docile person.  The daughter grew closer to her mother and this end of life season became something unexpected.  Talk about a terrible situation being turned into a oddly lovely one.  This is one of those stories that I'm not there yet in my own life.  I hope I never am to be quite frank whether it be a loved one inflicted or myself.  Time will tell I guess.

The last essay I read was on something fun but still my brain at the point of reading was like "What?What?!" It was about a couple that had become empty nesters.  Basically this couple were thrilled and loving life now that they don't have to set anymore good examples.  They talked about when their adult kids visit and mom's making cereal for dinner... for herself.  The kids can make their own damn bowl.  The parents were now free to cuss and stay up late.  Watch any garbage they want on TV.  They had been pretending to be upstanding adults to be good role models for their kids, now they could forget all that nonsense.  I'm telling you my mind was blown.  I had an eight year old at the time of reading this so I was deep into the 'be a good role model' that I couldn't even understand.  Now I'm realizing how exhausting it has been setting that example for years. I'm so there wanting to let that 'job description' go.  I'll say that over the past few years I've been quickly transitioning to this along with me truthfully always being a bit more of an edgy parent anyhow so who knows, maybe I wasn't the good role model I was trying so hard to be.  Regardless, I look forward to spending my weekends watching murder shows and eating Cinnamon Toast Crunch.

You don't say?!

You're all going to be noticing some changes around here on MHICTy..maybe you already have.For the past four years my family and I have had traumatic event after horrific devastation.  On a "good day" it's just a massive ordeal.  We've had deaths and losses that will never heal along with salt and battery acid being rubbed in the wounds.  And I'm not exaggerating, I wish I was. I can tell you this, that old adage of "What doesn't kill you makes you stronger" is a load of BS.  I plugged forward with my MHiCTY posts anyway thinking that working on creative projects would be helpful and be a good distraction.  I have presented some well photographed and creative presentations but the writing was lackluster because I'm not in a comical mood.  Over the past several months I have been spending a good amount of time outside in nature (well, my yard while working on the exterior of the house) and thinking things through.  I now am realizing I have not allowed myself time to attempt to heal or at the very least the grace of understanding just how much I have been through.
Right now I am doing my best to cut back on anything that adds extra work. maintenance, financial commitments, or mental stress. I have also been doing the "inner work" of positive thought (that's hard for a sour ball such as myself) , focusing on the current day, gratitude and Stoic teachings of letting go and caring less.  I've cut out keeping up with all the drama and bad news of the world.  All of this has been helping however we are now into Summer which causes me seasonal depression since it's impossible to go out and enjoy outdoors, even at night.  I have gratitude for air conditioning and early releases of Halloween stuff during this season.
So like I mentioned earlier, changes around here are going to be...I don't even know.  Less posts or less posts that involve multiple layers of work.  I may start leaning more into life essays and opinions.  Rants and venting only if I think they will be comical because I'm staying away from negativity.  I don't need to purposefully bring it into my life, it's got no problem seeking me out on its' own (that was a joke?!).
I do expect to be all systems firing for Halloween though! 

Preheating

photo credit: Camerique/Getty Images

 Right now Florida is just "preheating"... and it's already miserable out there with us hitting the low 90s. We'll be really feeling the burn, and I mean that literally, July thru September.  I noticed it was like a switch got flipped from cool and comfortable on April 30 to humid and horrid on May 1.  However I have been seeing reports of northern states that typically get to enjoy decent spring type weather are having temps higher than we have in Florida.  I say good!  Those northern states are the ones that whine about Winter and how much they love Summer so here you go..... Have some Summer, enjoy your climb into a 500 degree oven!

 

Tormented

For Nightmare Theatre's season 4 finale with the film offering of 1960's Tormented I made us a themed cake for the viewing.  Since a certain friend is still going hard at his diet of no sugar, I made a sugar free cake with sugar free icing.  It's all from a mix/tub so no recipe is needed. 

I tried to make it look like a sandy beach with seaweed.  The sand is the domed top of the cake cut away and crumbled.  I made a lighthouse cake topper from trash (plastic cups, foam board, scrap paper), put a print of the movie poster on it along with floating disembodied heads of the Mittens, Sapo, and the Baron. 

Sugar free cake isn't all that bad and it saves you about 60 calories per slice.

Of coarse the main person that this cake was made for had to be sure to let me know afterwards that sugar free cake gives him gas.....

Here is a brief synopsis of the episode:

A jazz pianist is haunted by the ghost of his ex-girlfriend, whom he watched fall to her death on the eve of his wedding to another woman in this Bert I. Gordon sleezeball from 1960. Back at the NMTV studios, cable access investigative journalist Dr Lester W. Sinclair is convinced that Sapo is an escaped convict, and launches a campaign to bring him to justice.

 And here is Nightmare Theatre, season four's finale, Tormented!

House scraping, sanding, repairing, wood puttying, priming, painting.....ugh.

 

I thought I would show some of the long, hard, and laborious work I have been doing over the past few months.  These images are showing most of the work up to the priming stage.  I have since gotten all of this painted but I haven't taken photos of it yet since I still need to paint all the window trims and a set of shutters need to be painted and rehung.

Most all of this has had to be done up on a ten foot ladder or even climbing on the roof, which I do not enjoy doing.

Since the heat is horrible right now I am trying to squeeze in all of the last bits here and there in the afternoons if it hasn't rained or isn't going to rain.  I still have a big chuck of the back side of the house that needs everything done to it but that's going to have to wait til next season.

Here is what the house looks like when it doesn't appear to be covered in zinc:

High Maintenance

I'm going to be on hiatus for quite a bit so I can get a handle on the high maintenance of the exterior house wood rot/painting and invasive weeds before the searing sun and sweltering heat take over and make it inhabitable for human life to venture beyond air conditioning.

How I wish my house had 'Carefree Clapboard'!

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Snow Day Freezer Case

My last offering for Snow Day this year is my display case theme which is "Ice Box".

 It's comprised of vintage freezer owner manuals, recipe booklets, metal ice cube trays, freezer food boxes, paper snow flakes, mini igloos that were bases to novelty drink glasses, plastic icicles,  mini plastic penguins, fake frost, and fake ice cubes.  I made the ice cubes from a big pound block of clear glycerin soap meant for crafting small bars of soap which I picked up at an estate sale.  I just cut them into chucks.  The penguins are from a game PB has had forever called Penguin Pile Up.  The game is suppose to be for little kids where they balance the penguins on a plastic ice pyramid but it's cruel and damn near next to impossible to do as all the ledges are sloped and slippery.  We have only kept it all these years because of the agony it causes.

Snow Day Crafties

To celebrate the sadly short amount of time we have that resembles Winter here in Florida I have been doing a "Snow Day" theme here on MHiCTy for the past couple of years.

This year's offerings are gonna be short too because frankly Winter has been over for us for the past 2 weeks.  I damn that groundhog to hell... and that's the temps we are gonna be having here in the near future....hell fire degrees.  Blah. 

Anyway, the first Snow Day bit I have for you all are like 'snow globes in a box' from recycled materials.

The idea is from a children's magazine from 1948:

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The upper snowman I made is crafted close to the original idea.

I then decided to try out a few varieties:

A print of two snow people from a vintage greeting card with bits of silver glitter.

A background featuring a snowy paint-by-number print.

And The Cure building a snowman.

My clear plastic boxes originally held mini Halloween bottle brush trees that I picked up from Target on clearance last season.  I also sponged on white acrylic paint to the fronts of the boxes to encapsulate the image in Winter.

All of the images i used and then some are in my Pinterest Snow Day Board

And you can check out all the past Snow Day posts by clicking on "Snow Day" seen in the lower left corner below.

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Lightfoot Loves Petunia

For last week's Nightmare Theatre premier of the 1974 bomb 'Shriek of the Mutilated" I made a (spoiler alert) wedding cake for two of the characters, Leroy "Lightfoot" Spivey and Petunia.

 The cake topper is made from paper, pipe cleaners, and wood grain contact paper.  I used the black lids from SToK coffee cold brew bottles as the cake layer lifts.  They actually have a nice form to them and I use them all the time for random things.

Since all of us around here are still holding tight to a resemblance of a diet I tried out making a sugar free cake mix and sugar free tub icing by Pillsbury.  It's still not really diet friendly with all the other carbs from the flour and the oil and fat from the icing but hey, it cut some of the calories!  The cake was pretty good and didn't taste like it was loaded up with cancer causing sugar substitutes at all!  For extra "health" I sprinkled around the base of the cake and the tops some crumbled shredded wheat which I thought looked like something you would find out around the dirt road leading to the Spivey love shack.

Here is the episode in full and a brief synopsis:

This 1974 shlocker, which ostensibly is about a group of college students on a Yeti-hunting expedition that evolves into something far worse, inspires the Baron to dress Sapo up in an old bigfoot costume to pull off a Patterson-Gimlin scam - with sadly predictable results.

Attack of the Giant Leeches Snacks!

 

Here's another diet friendly movie snack I put together for our weekly movie night with Lucy and Ricky.  

This week is the infamous "Attack of the Giant Leeches".... Nightmare Theatre style of course.

I made some edible "leeches" out of turkey sausage links with green olive suckers with a side of "blood" siracha sauce (not shown).

Make yourself up a batch and check out the episode:

Nachos Flanders Style!

Howdilly diddily doodily!  

It's that time of year where we all think about dropping those 30 pounds we put on over the last 3 years!

Or is that just me?

Every Saturday night I go to Lucy and Ricky's house to view the new episodes of our show Nightmare Theatre (now in season 4).  As a side note last week's offering of the abominable movie "Don't Look In The Basement" featured me shuffling around like a Nuthouse Granny.  The episode isn't loaded yet on the PBS site so I can't link it for you....Rats!!  Rats! Rats! Rats!

So not only am I cutting out all delicious foods, Lucy and Ricky are on the band wagon too.  This causes quite the dilemma when it comes to bringing a fun snack for us all to share because diet food isn't fun.  You don't make friends with salad!  There are no appetizers or desserts I can sculpt from diet food that will taste good.  Highly annoyed by this my brain scanned my internal rolodex of snark and food and it landed on Nachos Flanders Style! 

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It's just plain cottage cheese on plain sliced cucumbers.

Oh boy.  We're having ourselves a time now.

I did offer an alternative version of these by spicing the hell-o diddily out of the cottage cheese to the point it was orange but it was of little help.

Here is the scene all set and how it went down for us:

On another side note I came across this super fun site The Joy of Cooking Milhouse where they make a ton of the foods seen on The Simpsons.  I'll be spending some hours perusing all of the fun, indeedily-doodily hoodily!

"It might be my last Christmas...."

To end out this season of Stressmas I bring you a little craft I did early on in December as an "Art Therapy" project to help me face the upcoming bullshit.

I told you all a bit about my MIL a couple of years back as part of  2021 Stressmas Wrap Up.  Every year she pulls the same BS about it being her last Christmas and that's why we should all bend to her will and whims.  This year she has started in with every holiday is her last now.  It may be her last Thanksgiving..  It may be her last Mother's Day....It may be her last Arbor Day. 

The thing is that it could be any of our last New Year's Day.

So since she seems to love to proclaim it's her last Christmas so much I decided she needed a sweatshirt for the special occasion...kinda like Baby's First Christmas but for an adult sized whiny self centered baby.

I included on the back of the sweatshirt several years marked out since the "last" doesn't ever play out.  I only started with 2018 because of the size of my stencils but this "last" shit has been going on far longer than 2018.

 

My plan was once she said her "it may be my last Christmas" line I was going to say "Oh! Speaking of that, I forgot I have another gift for you." and present her with this sweatshirt.  

She doesn't have much of a sense of humor when someone calls out her BS so everyone else would have enjoyed the laugh and benefited from the therapy of it.

On Christmas Day after having to sit there and have her talk at us for several hours I was all zoned out as we were packing up and I apparently missed THE LINE.  Well damn. 

This whole situation would be "funny" if it wasn't happening to us.   It's the stuff theatre plays are made from.  A domineering alpha female that sees herself as the matriarch of her dumpster, barking demands at everyone,  will call your phone 6 times in a row and not for an emergency but just because you didn't pick up the first time (this is why she doesn't have my phone number) and likes to leave rude, self pity comments on all of your facebook posts (again, this is why I don't have a facebook). Maybe years down the way when it has actually been her last Christmas we can begin the healing process from the nasty attitude, self absorbed, woe-is-me nonsense she puts us through. But for now I have this sweatshirt that gives me a chuckle.  Honesty she doesn't deserve this sweatshirt.  She would just ruin it by dumping a bunch of dog piss pads on it.  It's safe with me.  

The good news is that in a way it is her last Christmas, all of our last Christmases hopefully with her.  She is... knock-on-wood... going to be moving across the country by the summer to live with her daughter who must have a good hook up for the vast variety of drugs (legal and not) to deal with her on a daily basis.

Fruit Cake Cookies

For gifts this year I made everyone Fruit Cake Cookies, far better than the cake!

I packaged them in boxes that I collaged with prints showing vintage ads and mail order images of all things fruit cake. 

The recipe is actually a non-vintage one.  I didn't do much different other than I used sugared crystalized pineapple other than the candied.  I'm going to have to start sourcing my candied fruit through highly dubious ways to get around it's ungodly high prices. One thing I noticed with these cookies is that even though it is directed to drop them by the scoop onto the cookie sheet before baking I would additionally add for you to give each cookie a smash because they do not spread.

 I was pretty impressed with how the boxes turned out so here is a flat shot (above) of the tops.

These cookies are super good.  I liked that I was able to bake them several days before Christmas since they keep well.  The original recipe has that they can be frozen too so that would be handy for getting a head start a month or so before the deadline of holiday doom.

I'll eventually update this post with the entire recipe since original sources disappear from internetland  but for now you can find it here.