Monday, January 23rd, 2012 in How-To
Put these one your mantel along with your Valentine’s Day garland. You’ll hardly be able to stand all the love.
Grab a couple of the “Words of Love” cylinder vases from Dollar Tree. A steal for a dollar each.
You could put anything in these. I opted for some shredded foil and some adorable plastic glittery heart picks purchased at DT.
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Tags: DIY, mantel, Valentines Day
Friday, January 20th, 2012 in How-To
I love a well decorated mantel. It sets the mood for an entire room, and you can really do it up.
Today I’m going to show you how I made a very cheap garland. Everything was purchased from Dollar Tree and cost about ONE DOLLAR AND SIX CENTS TO MAKE. Yup, $1.06!
I purchased:
Doilies – $2 (I used 8 out of 60)… 14¢
Ribbon – $1 (I used about 6 feet out of 9)… 67¢
Table Scatter – $1 (I used 7 out of a zillion or so pieces)… negligible
Glitter Stickers – $1 (I used 8 out of 32)… 25¢
Gluesticks (a negligible amount)
I made this garland to sit straight across the front of the mantel mostly due to the flimsy nature of the paper doilies. I’m sure you could double or triple them if you wanted something a bit more heavy.
I measured how much ribbon I needed, left a bit extra just in case.
Next I pulled out 8 doilies, 4 in white and 4 in red. I marked my center of the ribbon and just threaded the hearts on through the lacey edges. I had to fold the ribbon in half to get it thin enough. They went on really easy, actually.
At this point I attached the garland to the mantel to finish off the detail work. Affix both ends and move the doily hearts as needed. Then put 8 of the glitter stickers onto the doily hearts!
Now get your glue stick ready cause we’re gonna add the table scatter.
I pulled out a few different ones and just carefully glued them onto the ribbon, in between each doily.
Yes, and that’s all. A tiny bit of creativity and a trip to Dollar Tree and you’re set. I hope this will at least provide you with a little inspiration for your own Valentine’s mantel. I’ll be adding a couple other Valentine’s themed crafts in the next few days, too!
1 Ghouslish Gasp
Tags: DIY, mantel, Valentines Day
Monday, November 28th, 2011 in Christmas, Photoshop Goodies
No registration required to download these Photoshop brushes, free for personal use! Dress up your Christmas projects with these genuine vintage Santa faces. In abr format.
Free download, Christmas theme gradients!
Download, then either save or open. Will open/load in Photoshop automatically.
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Tags: Christmas, free, gradients, Photoshop
Monday, November 28th, 2011 in Christmas, Photoshop Goodies
Enjoy some reds, greens, golds and silvers in these free Christmas gradients. A set of 12, free for personal use! NO REGISTRATION required. In GRD format.
Free download, Christmas theme gradients!
Download, then either save or open. Will open/load in Photoshop automatically.
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Tags: Christmas, free, gradients, Photoshop
Tuesday, October 18th, 2011 in Humor
There’s always something that seemed like an awesome idea for my home haunt. Seemed being the key word. I’m going to highlight some of those here, my top 5 flops of yard haunting.
But first, a little background: We’ve been putting on the show here in Euclid, Ohio since 2003. Before that I lived in 2 other places and put on the haunt yearly, really since 1999. Aside from the collecting of Halloween things and anything else I blog about, I’m also a huge yard haunter. I love it, dressing up, giving the kids a thrill and getting compliments from the neighbors. I love it when people in the middle of summer ask about Boo. It’s an awesome feeling to do something for our neighbors, just because we ALL enjoy it.
I got the wild hair the year after I graduated. Got all these ideas in my head. It has exploded from there.
It all started with the Monsterlist, which if you’re any sort of haunter or extreme decorator, you have been to. It’s the resource for Halloween tutorials and it’s been there since forever. I love it.
Over the years, as my skills have increased along with Guy’s, we’ve really put together an impressive little setup we are quite proud of. The byproduct of success, of course, is the occasional “what the hell was that?” We’ve all got them and here they are. I’ve rounded up my top five. Learn from my mistakes.
Fail 1: 2009's "welcome" banner
I wanted something to clearly mark off the entrance, even though there was no alternate way in. This was my lazy replacement for pillars, which I always sort of wanted to make.
I’m a woman, I improvise! I cut out felt (yes, the flimsy felt that kindergarteners make things out of), printed letters, cut those letters out and then used the printer paper as stencils. Painted on the letters (probably with oil paint so I would surely be sticky for 3 solid weeks) and sewed a pocket into the back of the felt. Slipped rope through and hung it from the garage to a pole. Center supports are for the weak.
Guess what happened next! Not only did it look nothing like I thought it would look, it actually drooped and sagged and looked pathetic. Check out the gap like that often found in a fat mans pants.
I don’t even know where it ended up. I hope it’s in the trash somewhere, thinking about what it’s done.
This baby looked great in the tutorial I found. They did a beautiful job and I was completely chomping at the bit to make my own. I wouldn’t say we jumped into this one without the right materials, but we had to use shiny paint (for stone?) and butchered some Tupperware in the making.
Fail 2: This bleeding tombstone scares ME.
It looks ok… not at all the stunning piece I was hoping for. Now the fun parts: the pump jammed all the time. Our flower box base that acted as the water reservoir was too big and we were stuffing odd bits of foam and plexiglass in there (HAY WHYS THE PUMP JAMMING LOL). And of course it never felt the desire to actually stand up, and even though floppy tombstones are always so effective, we tied it to a tree. HOW SPOOKY.
The best part is yet to come: no matter where we placed this thing, surrounded by lights like some 17-year-old starlet, nobody ever noticed.
In the spirit of the tombstone, we also decided to make a haunted TV.
Actually, we saw a huge console on the curb down the street, so we walked down there and rolled it back during mid afternoon traffic.
Guy gutted it, we put the fake screen in, which was nothing more than some shimmery fabric that had somehow avoided the 80′s/being turned into spandex. Add a foam head and none other than a Saturn windshield wiper motor and voilà! a haunted television.
Fail 3: This here boob tube.
This prop was less problematic than the tombstone, it wasn’t tied to anything but it got the same result: no one ever even looked at it.
I kind of blame being outside for this one. Maybe.
Fail 4: Peter did not die for your sins.
This one would have been fine, really, if someone hadn’t come along with their panties in a bunch. Let me explain:
I wanted a cheap scarecrow for 2004, just for the atmospheric element of one. So we grabbed 2 pieces of scrap paneling, nailed them together, stuffed a dummy and gave him a pumpkin head.
That was it, I promise.
Setting up Halloween day, a woman stops her car (I live on a very busy road) and gets out, starts gnawing on my ear about Peter. Can you guess what her issue was?
“[Her] Savior died on a cross…”
This conversation between us went down in flames before it really had a chance to get going as I had a million things to do and also, IT’S A FUCKING PUMPKIN NOT JESUS.
She then gave us window clings for the local Christian Cleveland station 99.5 the Fish. One was stuck to the stop sign on the corner of my house until some time around 2007.
5: I wish the electric chair was real
I can’t recall if this idea was ganked or pure genius. I can’t even remember who thought this would be a great idea. Which is fine as no one has to pay if I can’t prove who birthed this idea: A car horn triggered by a board that’s pushed when someone sits in the electric chair.
The kids took a half a millionth of a nanosecond to figure out this made noise – and a lot of it – and take full advantage.
Fail 5: Don't toot your own horn.
Do you know what it’s like to want to start tossing other people’s children in a fit of horn-induced rage?
I think Guy may have pulled the power to the horn between the tricking or treating 2005 was even a thing of the past.
I have a couple of others that could have really deserved an honorable mention. It’s a delicate balance that must be struck when you’re limited by storage space and cash flow whilst still having to make things that scare children in an out-of-doors environment, large and attention-getting without being physically interactive.
This is why when we hit on a good idea, we share 
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Tags: home haunting, lol
Sunday, October 16th, 2011 in Photoshop Goodies
I just got finished whipping up some lovely gradients, a set of 10, free for personal use! Use these for tweaking the skies and trees, give them a little more punch. In GRD format.
Free download, Halloween gradients inspired by autumn skies!
Download, then either save or open. Will open/load in Photoshop automatically.
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Tags: free, gradients, Photoshop
Friday, October 14th, 2011 in How-To, Pumpkin Carving
Below is a great list of pumpkin carving resources that I have found. All of these are free, no CC info, no liking on Facebook (unless you want to, you always were such a social butterfly), just click, print and get to carving!
I’ll be adding to this list as I find other sites to add, so come back often!
The Internet’s Premier Pumpkin Pattern Site
Traditional, classic jacks, movies, superheroes, sports, video games, words
DLTK’s pumpkin carving patterns
Aliens, Angry Birds, ghosts, cats, cartoons as well as classics
Martha Stewart Halloween pumpkin-carving patterns
Leaves, spiders, cats, many unique faces, words, Victorian and Gothic
The Pumpkin Wizard*
Traditional, cartoon, monsters, movies, tv, music, celebs, politicians, sports
Better Homes and Gardens free printable stencils
Traditional, designer, TXT, fall, cat, dog breed, paint accented
Disney Family Fun Pumpkin-Carving Ideas
Faces, animals, skeleton, evil fish, pumpkin on pumpkin
Celebratinghalloween.com free stencils
Faces, words, scene, Angry Birds, Transformers, fairies
Paper Pumpkins stencils
LOTS of faces, dog breeds, Japanese and cultural, tiki, snowflake
Extreme Pumpkins free stencils
Faces, Batman, Jason, Obama, McCain, Skellinton, flaming, Che, Satan, mummy
Hershey’s stencils arranged by difficulty
Dracula, pirate, Reese’s, cauldorn, tree, BOO, grim reaper
Colonial Williamsburg themed pumpkin carving patterns
Windmill, Cresset, cannon, Washington, Jefferson, Capitol, Liberty or Death Gallows
Feeling particular ambitious? Make your photo into a pumpkin carving stencil.
*These resources also offer paid options, but their selection of free was so good, they deserved a mention.
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Tags: carving templates, jack o lantern, pumpkin
Thursday, October 13th, 2011 in Food, Halloween Party, Vintage
We set out to have a kick ass Halloween party – one that blended our love for spooky lighting and modern horror and that classic, chilling wonder of Halloween that happened 90 years ago.
We pulled it off quite well I think, and everyone had a great time. Here I’m going to share with you some tips and ideas – This time it’s our Hallowe’en of Yesteryear menu.
The 1915 Bogie Book gives some suggestions for both a formal sort of dinner and a buffet. We stayed on that track and added in a few modern goodies from our own childhood, because after all, a Halloween party is supposed to be a good time!
Here’s some suggestions from the 1915 Bogie for a Halloween supper menu:
The 1915 Buffet suggestions are just as, erm, interesting:
Those are some rather unique choices to make. I don’t know how well salmon sandwiches go with caramel apple shots, so these are our inspired edible choices:
The Euclidboo.com Halloween Supper/Buffet Menu
For dipping we made 2 sauces, a honey mustard and another sauce, mixing some of the honey mustard in with raspberry jam. Try it, it’s very good.
Friends brought whatever they wanted – delicious blue cheese dip made an appearance. It still all had a throwback feeling to it while not being too strange on the palette, was easy to prepare and store and clean up was practically non-existent.
On the table were 3 jars with labels I printed affixed – candy corn, candy corn and mallowcreme pumpkins and peanut butter candies. Everyone put in a guess on how many corns were in the small jar – and the winner took it home! Cute and I hate candy corn, so win-win.
We also served vanilla ice cream, but that was part of a game, which I will get to another day.
I think the most crucial thing is to not over think a menu like this. People are coming for the games, the fun, the entertainment, even to see how decked out your house is. Putting out a basic variety of food and snacks that can be left out makes for an easy and fulfilling table.
*A brown bread sandwich was made by using a can of brown bread. Cream cheese, peanut butter & chopped dates acted as a filling.
Tuesday, October 11th, 2011 in Halloween Specials
Here it is, the second installment of our retro Halloween specials! This time it’s 1985′s Garfield’s Halloween Adventure, which was originally called Garfield in Disguise.
Aired on network television for the first time in October 1985, this is a special that ran pretty regularly, but of course, they just don’t air them anymore.
Not sure why. Too much awesome for kids nowadays?
I betcha.
Honestly? I don’t now who was scarier when I first saw this at the tender age of 5, the pirate ghosts or the man in the chair. Seriously.
Garfield's Halloween Adventure
Garfield's Halloween Adventure: Blinky let's Garfield know what's up with Halloween. Garfield, being a fatty, is all about it.
Garfield is just finding out about Halloween for the first time. It’s not so much the holiday he’s into, it’s the free candy. Naturally.
Garfield's Halloween Adventure: Odie might have a semblance of a brain?
Well you know two sacks have got to be better than one… so he gives Odie some story about dogs helping cats and since Odie’s dumb, he’s completely on board.
Garfield's Halloween Adventure: Impressive costume.
I enjoy going through my Halloween stuff this much, too…
Garfield's Halloween Adventure: Odie the Stupid.
The most lulz-worthy line in the entire thing. Especially if you’re 5 and named Jen.
Garfield's Halloween Adventure: The one thing he's not is a scaredy cat.
TOT’ing is going pretty well, Garfield threatens a nice lady into giving them more candy, and everyone under their costumes is really a terrifying ghoul. You know, pretty normal.
Garfield's Halloween Adventure: The scary old man!!!
So they decide they aren’t getting a good enough loot collection and see some houses across the way. They take a boat, find a house and well, let the real terror begin!
Garfield's Halloween Adventure: NO SPOILERS HERE.
Nice headwear.
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Tags: Garfields Halloween Adventure, Halloween Specials
Monday, October 10th, 2011 in Compy Stuff
Because I love you so much and because I think everything around Halloween should be appropriately themed, I give you a nice alternative to your boring desktop with the Terror Carolers Windows 7 Theme!
*Note that you must have Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise, or Ultimate editions of Windows 7… and of course, Windows 7 itself. Duh.
Download the free Windows 7 Theme Terror Carolers from here.
Save it to a place you can find it. Your desktop is usually a good place.
It will look something like this. Double click it.
Let the file finish downloading.
Now go look wherever you saved it and double click the themepack file.
(hint, if it’s your desktop you saved the file on, mouse over to the bottom right of your screen… see a little rectangle near the clock? Click it to get to your desktop in a hurry without closing any windows.)
Awesome. Onward.
From here it should take care of itself. It will automatically apply the new theme colors, sounds and backgrounds.
You can always choose another theme, and Terror Carolers will always be selectable as well.
Here’s a quick preview of the backgrounds included with the Terror Carolers Windows 7 theme. All photos are my original pictures and are taken of our homemade Terror Carolers singing choir of pumpkins. Feel free to pass it around and Happy Halloween to your and your PC!
1 Ghouslish Gasp
Tags: free, jack o lantern, pumpkin, terror carolers, windows 7 themepack
Sunday, October 9th, 2011 in Advertising, Vintage
So you’re a kid and you’re out with your friends, having the time of your lives running from house to house frantically while clinging for dear life onto that pillow sack or pumpkin pail. Awesome, isn’t it?
Then… raisins. And brief confusion.
Maybe I’m in the minority because while I do like raisins, I never thought they were a good Halloween score. I mean… they are dried fruit after all.
And good luck trading them for anything. Even pennies seemed to have a lot more bargaining power than a box of raisins.
What about you? Raisins for Halloween faze ya or not so much?
Twick or Tweet: raisins. Great for little goblins sacks but not little mes. And she’s gonna tweet all right, tweet your address so the other kids know which house to egg. Think this California Raisin Advisory Board (THE PRESTIGE OF BELONGING TO SUCH A GROUP) was the same one that like, 20 years later, would blow our dehydrated foodstuff-loving minds with the singing, dancing California Raisins?
This is pulled from a Family Circle magazine circa 196Ihavenoidea.
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Tags: advertisement, rainsins, vintage, witch
Friday, October 7th, 2011 in How-To
These Autumn pumpkin spice centerpieces are so quick, easy and cheap to make. And they can be put anywhere. I have mine on the dining room table at the moment. They help set the mood even though it’s been 80+ degrees here the last few days. Oh, and they smell great, too.
What you’ll need:
2 vases, about 6 inches tall. My vases are hurricane stem style from Dollar Tree.
4 Fall floral picks taller than your vase. My floral picks also came from Dollar Tree.
1 bag of Pumpkin Spice (or your choice) dried potpourri. Guess where mine came from?
This will make a matching set of pumpkin spice vases. Assembly is pretty easy, as you can guess. Use about half a bag of potpourri in each vase and arrange 2 picks in each vase. We refresh the scent of ours with a little pumpkin spice oil.
Pretty, scented and CHEAP. both vases cost me $5 to make, total. Think of what else you could do, too… a little ribbon always goes a long way.
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Tags: DIY
Wednesday, October 5th, 2011 in Advertising, Vintage
Nestled in this cute little booklet measuring about 6 by 3 and a half inches is all sorts of reasons why you just gotta have the gel.
Dresco Agar Piping Gel.
Their suggestion for a festive Halloween cake! Aren’t you kind of surprised it isn’t Hallowe’en? I am. A flying witch and freaked out kitties. Cute enough I suppose!
This booklet is a whole lot like a certain Alumode advertisement in that they made a cake for a few occasions and have suggestions for many others. Like Washington’s birthday. Happy birthday, buddy! Here’s a cakey cake with gel icing!
Booklet from the late 1930′s. I wonder if this gel never truly spoils…
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Tags: advertisement, black cat, cake, vintage, witch
Tuesday, October 4th, 2011 in How-To
Make a Halloween garland to hang anywhere. It has loads of potential, which I love. I’ve seen some really creative executions on this pattern.
We use 3 colors (thick construction paper) and attached it to a neutral colored yarn. I made it 2 sided so we could hang it anywhere. We’ve put it up on the mantel every year for 3 years now and it always looks awesome. I mean we throw it in a bag and every year there it is, unscathed and waiting to be hung.
The original pattern was put out there by Paper Crave. You can find the pattern download for the Halloween garland here.
2 Ghoulish Gasps
Tags: DIY, garland, mantel
Monday, October 3rd, 2011 in Halloween Specials
Here we are, our first go at Halloween Specials!
I grew up in the thick of the 1980′s and absolutely love Halloween specials. All holiday specials really. To me they meant it was full throttle time… stores weren’t putting Halloween costumes out in August then and by the time the specials aired, it was most definitely almost go time. Time to get dressed up and trick or treat.
Things have not changed much now that I’m a grown Jen. The days of young Jen, during the month of September and October, were spent thinking about what I wanted to be (a tough decision for an 8 year old, no?), how I was going to display my hulking collection of 1986 and on McDonald’s pumpkin pails, how my Bayshore cat and pumpkin looked to cars driving by in the front window and how authentic kite string “spiderweb” hung from the ceiling would feel to my innocent victims.
Nowadays I have a partner in crime, and we sit around and think of scary things to build. The costumes are already out but they aren’t as inspiring as the old boxed to me… and there is rarely a Halloween special on.
Let me slide off my soapbox and get to it, one of my favorite specials ever… The Worst Witch. This special aired on HBO a lot around Halloween. I never thought much about it but I suppose it is a girly sort of flick. Fortunately that quadruples the awesome. Read on for a summary and then I’ll give ya the goods.
The Worst Witch: There she is. The worst witch. Look at her. Jesus she can't do anything right.
To sum it up: Mildred (Fairuza Balk, adorable) is the worst witch, ever.
The Worst Witch: Tabby and friends.
She has a faithful friend who sort of believes in her. Even her cat is different.
The Worst Witch: Ms. Hardbroom is such a bitc...OHH DEAR GOD.
Her teacher is a huge bitch.
The Worst Witch: Ethel is never off her period
So is the smarter, popular girl.
Mr. Garrett is there. Some shit goes down and guess who has to save the day?
The Worst Witch: Anything can happen on Halloween. Like me molesting Tim Curry.
Oh, and Tim Curry… disco… cape… tambourine… ridiculous amounts of hot.
All 8 parts of The Worst Witch are right here: Click, watch and enjoy!
The "Boo Blog" of euclidboo.com is a repository of information, thoughts, humor, recollections and ideas related to Halloween and home haunting posted by the owners of The Haunt At Boo. Mostly maintained and updated by Jen, it displays articles written with her unique style and photographic eye and helps show off our ever-expanding collection of items being added to the haunt as well as sharing crafty and helpful projects and information for the Halloween enthusiast. Anything and everything you see here is copyright Euclidboo.com.
