Holy Countdown, Batman!

Can you believe there are only 120 days left til Halloween? It's not many! What is your Halloween decorating/party theme going to be this year? And WHEN are the Halloween catalogs going to finally start coming?!??

Well, folks, some news: Halloween vendors are targeting me for special discounts, so stay tuned and I will pass the Halloween savings along to you!

Interested in placing an ad on the site? Send me an email:

thequeen@creativehalloween.net

and I'll pass along our ad rates. Spook on!

Halloween fans!  My new book is finally available!

Here's the description:

Halloween’s not just for kids. Groan-ups of all ages love to get their spook on and scare up some fun. Whether you’re hosting the boo bash or attending a spooktacular soiree, this how-to Halloween party planning book offers frighteningly cool ideas for interior and exterior Halloween decor, party food and drinks, activities and atmosphere, over 100 Halloween costume ideas (plus how to hold a costume contest) and much more! Let the Queen of Halloween take you on a tour of her haunted mansion as she offers tips from her own experiences planning a decade full of totally ghoul adult Halloween parties. Enter if you dare.

And here is the Amazon link! Woo-hoo! Fun to start reading and planning for your 2009 adult Halloween party!

Enjoy!

Forget spooky moons, witches and vampires, and carved jack-o-lanterns. Halloween is really about one thing: CANDY!!!!

When you're a kid, you dutifully say 'trick or treat' at the door, hoping for a decent Reese's and not a lame butterscotch. You patiently traverse from house to house,  in uncomfortable masks, shoes, wigs or makeup, working one miniature candy bar at a time toward a full trick or treat bucket. Hard work in the name of free candy.

When I was a kid trick or treating in the (convenient!) apartment complex where I grew up, there were two apartments my brothers and sisters and I looked forward to the most. I could take you today to the location of the lady who gave out the full size candy bars. She would open the door and bend down a bit to kid level, presenting a silver tray with a selection of full size candy bars on it. We could choose. HEAVEN! There was just something about a full size candy bar- it equaled 10 small bars, not that you'd ever trade it.

The other house was decked out with spooky Halloween decorations, its owners (renters lol) decked out in costume, spooky music playing- and they gave out twist-tied goody BAGS. Wow. These people ROCKED.

As a grown-up, I have perhaps overcompensated a bit in the 'Halloween sugar' department. I bought an 1881 mansard-roof Victorian haunted mansion (that's my house in the upper right corner) which I spookify each year, inside and out (fog machines, haunted organ music, strobe lights, etc etc). A groan-up party for 100 people, and I'm visited by over 300 trick or treaters-- each gets a glow stick and their choice of, you guessed it, full size candy bars.

You could debate all day about the best brand of Halloween candy. Hershey or Milky Way? Reese's or Kit Kat? M&Ms or Snickers or Twix? Personally, my favorite has always been a Clark bar- but when I bought a few cases of those one year, the kids looked at me like I was nuts- they hadn't heard of them, plus a little girl asked me who I was supposed to be (I was wearing a Wonder Woman costume). Wow, I'm old. This year I found a variety box of full size candy bars that included a few 100 Grand bars, my 2nd favorite- and no trick or treaters will be getting that particular variety because I have already eaten them all! 

So this year once again I'll be in costume, giving stuff out, hoping to create cool Halloween memories for the neighborhood kids....and maybe when the trick-or-treaters are gone I'll hang out with Linus and wait for the Great Pumpkin.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN EVERYONE!!!! 

For those of us who go batty over Halloween, September is a busy, busy month. So here's a helpful Halloween countdown calendar to get you started with all your spooktastic planning.... read on.

     I don't wanna brag, and I know that technically Elvira (is she still alive? What does she really look like now?... a scary thought) is the official Queen of Halloween, but the neighborhood kids crowned me with the title, so I'll wear it once a year, anyway.

That's my house in the corner (and me in the pic as the Evil Queen, beside the Spells and Potions table I painstakingly recreated from Snow White). Each year, I spend about 6 months planning to deck it out in its spooktacular Halloween finery. A local artist  hand-paints the window silhouettes, I obsess over the interior and exterior decor, and I prepare for the adult Halloween party of nearly 100 guests. 

And I do mean obsess. Each year has a theme, to be honored in the party invites, decor, and often our costumes (when I say our, I mean me and my poor unsuspecting husband...). I guess it's because I do the whole full-size candy bar/lightstick/haunted trail thing on Halloween night (fog machines, haunted organ music, things peering back at you from windows) that the kids call me the Queen of Halloween. And I love it.

So move over, Elvira.