Hallo Witch Cake

For our Halloween deadsert I made us this Hallow Witch cake!

It was based after the 1956 Bakers Coconut Cut Up Cake booklet offering for October.  Everyone knows that real witches have green skin!  I made the regrettable choice to give her orange tinted coconut hair which looks like shredded carrots.  I tried to give her some extra pizzazz with gumdrop warts, teeth, and a headband but ehhh... I think the original did it better even if on the drab side.

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P. B. MacReady

Last year PB came to me asking for a last minute Halloween costume where we started out with a ho-hum pirate but then elevated to P.B. Plissken (Snake Plissken from 'Escape from New York').  I was quite taken aback with how much I thought PB really looked like Kurt Russell.  Earlier in the month of October he jokingly brought it up that he should be another Kurt Russell character this year.  Since 'The Thing' is one of my favorite movies I decided that I was going to take on that challenge!

The main signature item you need is an oversized goofy hat with really long straps...

and a bottle of J&B...

Dynamite...

and then test your blood to prove you are not The Thing!

If you are lucky enough to have a flamethrower that would really do it up right but I'm fresh out at this moment.  But for those looking to make one I bet a couple of empty soda bottles could be the gas tanks and one of those long arm trash grabber deals (also known as a Kryptonite Deactivator) would work well for the long handled trigger.

That was at least my plan.

  I did however last minute come up with these 3 other props that worked out perfect:

The J&B bottle is a label printed from the nets hot glued onto an empty plastic green bottle that originally contained some nasty Dollar Tree nonalcoholic sangria.

The dynamite is an old wood broom stick Mr. Husband sawed into pieces and I painted, added waxed thread as the wick and bound together with black electrical tape.

The MacReady blood test petri dish is my favorite creative prop in this bunch.  It's the lid from a tub of icing!  You know the ones that have the bonus sprinkles? The blood is Halloween vampire blood.

The oversized hat was kind of a wonky build.  It's base is a foam cowboy hat from Dollar Tree with a large sheet of craft foam to extend the rim, I then covered it all with some brown felt which was originally a flower pot costume that we picked up from a thrift store for a buck.  I also had to glue some pipe cleaners to the back of the bent back brim to get it to hold shape.  It's a hot wonky mess and was only made for the photos.   

The photo location is the machine shop on the grounds where Mr. Husband works.  I thought it looked alot like the Outpost's interior from the movie.

I think it's really fun to make costumes and props from cheap crap and discards rather than being all pristine, precise, and overpriced about it.  

We all had a good time working on the pieces and doing the photos.  I'm glad PB still enjoys costuming even with him being older.  We'll have to see if Kurt Russell makes an appearance next year.  The 'Big Trouble in Little China' look is off the table since no respectable male over the age of 4 should be wearing a tank top. 

 

Kitsch-o-ween 2022

This year for Halloween I did things a bit different.  Instead of having both the living room and dining room be the entire cohesive vintage collection I did the living room in a more dark manor of voodoo mortuary and the dining room in the cutesy kitschy stuff.

Today I share with you the Kitsch-o-Ween Dining decor!

For the most part it's kind of the same set up.

However I did a bunch of extra flourishes!  I added in the new bottle brush trees and made some lifts for them out of canned fruit with the labels removed.  I also added a bunch of garland festooning to the blow molds and here and there.

The china cabinet in the corner is always a crappy photo due to the vast sun that blasts in but I'm still including it for a 'you get the idea' image.

This vintage plant stand is a new thing in the dining room. I filled it with more blow molds and garlands.  I had plans of making some inserts for the JOLs that looked like vintage style candies and what nots were popping out but I ran out of momentum, time, and sourcing supplies.  Just picture it in your mind.

I am pretty pleased with how all the decor turned out this year.  I am kinda planning for next time I am going to go back to my classic do up though.  I have a bunch of stuff that hasn't gotten to come out and play for several years such as all of The Simpsons stuff and all of my little vintage Halloween papery what-nots and we have been missing seeing them.

 

Tiki Voodoo Halloween Swamp Hut

This year for Halloween I decided to do something a bit different with the decor in the living room...a theme!  I thought this would be a great idea because it would save me the aguish of taking everything down from walls, shelves, and tables and having to find a place to stash them and then having to do an entire room of decorating.  I thought it might be clever and easy if I used the decor of the living room and push it toward some kind of Halloween theme.  Over the past several years I have been slowly working on decorating the living room with a Tiki Elvis Jungle room theme: panthers, peacocks, tropical plants, leopard print, Tiki doodads...just infuse a little voodoo along with a curse or two and you got a Halloween theme!

Like I said before, I thought this was an easier solution...but I was so wrong.  I don't own any Voodoo items so I wound up having to make and source a crap load of things.  However the end result turned out creepy enough that any witch doctor would be fine with shacking up in our 

Tiki Voodoo Halloween Swamp Hut!

If there was ever a shopping list for what to pick up at the Voodoo store the top item would be shrunken heads.  I made two of them to display on the main wall out of paper mache and fake hair from a toy headband from 1.25 tree.

The top shelf of the green rack.  Insert skulls, feathers, bones and creepy cloth (all from 1.25 tree) to typical Tiki doodads for effect.

Tiki Gods tending to their cauldrons.

On the bottom shelf insert snakes, moss, bones, creepy cloth and feathers.  For 2 months I saved and dried out chicken bones to add to the voodoo look.  The bones in the glass vase are real, the ones on the shelf are from 1.25 tree.

We printed out a few vintage Voodoo themed movie posters for a couple of shelves.

Soups on!

This is my favorite shelf.  The wooden African idol on the right is something that Mr. Husband bought years ago at a New Orleans voodoo shop.  I found the feather in the yard...the cat probably played a part in that.  But the craziest weird thing has to do with that set of thin carved statues on either side of the African Idol.  Those things are made out of real bones and topped with real hair and we found them at the thrift store for a buck each within the last month!

I made a couple of these cannibal skewered skull poles to flank the green rack.

Skulls and bones were plain stryofoam from 1.25 tree which I painted and jabbed with bamboo I cut from the yard.

And while you are out at the Voodoo One Stop Shop, the other top item to have on hand are Voodoo Dolls.  I made a couple of these cuties out of scrap old tee shirts and some wooden picks from 1.25 tree.

The Green rack in all it's voodoo shrine glory.

Next to the tv I did a DIY Ghoulish Garden kinda thing with some of our everyday decor.  I added a few mini skulls to the flowers and tacked on a few spiders with dental wax. 

Ohhhh!  I love this.  I mentioned to you guys last year that for Christmas I wanted one big item and this fireplace insert was it.  It has dual features being a heater or you can enjoy the look of the fire without the heat for ambience.  I have plans of finding a MCM cone fireplace to put it in but that's going to take some minutes.  In the mean time I just enjoy it as is.  I Voodooed it up skulls and moss...no heat though!

In another spot of the living room I did our regular Saturday night thing with a Morbid mortuary vibe:

The whole living room had a darker look to it.  I could not get a good photo but inside the display case I did a Bride of Frankenstein vignette and on top of the record cabinet was a Universal monsters display with some of our family Halloween photos, all kinda typical of past decorating.

So for the Voodoo stuff here is a break down of things I bought, had on hand, or crafted:

Bought:

Plastic skulls, bones, feathers, creepy cloth : 1.25 tree

Puffy moss: Joann

Green plastic moss garland: Hobby lobby

2 real voodoo carved bone idols: thrift store

Had on hand:

Spanish moss green and brown

plastic cauldrons

plastic snakes/spiders

plastic alligator

Hoo Doo game

 

Made:

Shrunken heads

Skull totem poles

Voodoo dolls

bone garlands

The thing about doing this theme is the time I thought I was saving by not packing up everything and having to find a place to stash it was taken over by crafting and still having to do a lot of decorating...and it only put off the inevitable.  I will still have to take everything down for Christmas.  No matter how clever I am there is no common holiday theme that can mesh Tiki and Christmas!

And the decorating is not all done yet folks!

In the dining room I put a good amount of our vintage and kitchy cute stuff so that post will be up next!

 

'Like Bats out of Hell' Lamp Finial

Ya'll have heard that saying right?  Example:  When the waiter told me they only had pepsi products I was out of there like a bat out of hell...meaning I swiftly beat cheeks to get out the door.

Only the more I think about the saying it doesn't add up.  I thought bats were kinda the pet version of a dog in hell so why would they want to "get the hell' out of there?

It's one for Unsolved Mysteries I guess. 

Back to on topic, I made this MCM inspired lamp finial to spook up a couple of table lamps in the living room.  It's just some long wooden toothpicks that already had the bats on them from 1.25 tree which I painted the sticks black.  I then jabbed them into a mini styrofoam ball that I painted black.  I drilled out a bit of the ball on the bottom so it would fit over the screw top of the lamp.  To temporarily secure it from tipping over I used some leftover dental wax.

 

Halloween tee shirt pillows

I have had a big stack of old t-shirts that were not wearable anymore but the image could still be put to good use in some kind of craftable way.

Here are 3 shirts that I turned into throw pillows. 

I edged them all out with some black pom pom trim.

Here they are all together hanging out with PB's Sock Skellie.

(Sock Skellie's 2012 first appearance)

 

Boo It Yourself! Vintage inspired Beistle Scarecrow Craft

 

Here is a Halloween kinda reproduction decor piece I made this year.  

It's made from some scrap book paper, washi tape, rick rack, and a few vintage buttons.

The appendages are crepe paper streamers and paper shred.

This is the vintage scarecrow that I based mine after.  The original would have had crepe paper streamer arms, not yarn.  This scarecrow was from ebay and was listed for 150 bucks!

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I printed out the face and then just did my own thing for his body.

A few years ago I made another similar reproduction type decor piece: Boo it Yourself! Vintage Inspired Paper CraftCat

New Halloween stuff 2022: Retro Style metal signs

 

So here is the last of the new stuff for this Halloween season.  These adorable vintage inspired (Biestle rip offs) metal yard stakes are from Walsmart ($6.24 each).

Sorry for the crappy photos.  The sun resides just inches from the exterior of the window.