For My Last Couple of Days...

Have been on pins and needles lately...literally.  I was working on my corpse head and the knife blade snapped...through my thumb.  I traipsed myself to the doc-in-da-box and got stitches.

It wasn't bad...except for the anesthesia...that HURT LIKE A MUTHA! The nurse brings in a quart Mason jar syringe with a steel turkey baster needle tip on it and says so cheerfully, "It's just going to be a little bug bite." Her 'little bug bite' must have meant sticking my hand into a hornet's nest and flipping them off!  My thumb in the picture isn't that size normally, I have slender fingers, that's the quart of fluid she pumped into it!  I got feeling back 15 HOURS later this morning!

Before then, I went to the Pig...with the iPhone...

You're welcome.

And WTF does anyone use chicken feet for?!  Ms. M tried to dry some in a dehydrator a few years back for a Hallowe'en costume and they never would go rigor mortise, they just kind of turned a gray and rubbery.  She threw away the dehydrator after that.

I had to go to Birmingham on some errands today and while driving, I ran across this house...

I hope that they were used to people staring because I stayed there for several minutes just snapping away and admiring their work.  Actually I was stalking but we will let that be our little secret.

Happy Hallowe'en Ya'll!

What Would The Frog Queen Do With A Custom Banner?

Just ask her because she's the recipient for one!  Thanks to the generosity of UPrinting.com, she can put up her custom "WARNING, ZOMBIE AHEAD" banner and leave it up until the police or HOA (Home Owner's Association) makes her take it down!

Congratulations Frog Queen from UPrinting.com and Mr. Macabre!

No Hallowe'en For Me...

I have been watching the weather flip flop for the past several days from partly cloudy and nice to nasty.

Nasty won, meaning that I can't decorate the yard because all of my props are weather-sensitive (in other words, very non-UL listed for outdoor use and would probably fry you if you got too close in the rain, and everything would more or less be destroyed if they got soaked).



Pootie!  Oh well, there's always next year. 

No Shame

Give me a couple of glue sticks and watch me go! This was before art class the other day.  Sausage got her camera as I permanently elongated my nostrils.

Why?  I often ask myself this question.

Sad, so, so so sad.

Weep for the future, weep bitter tears...
For some reason this looks like a soul's awakening or something. Again, this is a cry for help.

Post Cards Galore! A Fantastic Giveaway from UPrinting!

Postcards are fun.  Face it, you probably go and buy some cheesy cards on vacation, usually they're corny or just doesn't say what you want.  How about if you could make 100 of your own CUSTOM 4 x 6 post cards in  full color printing...ON BOTH SIDES!  You could make invitations, thank you's, note cards, reminders, anything that you want...for free!  What will I do with my 100 cards that I receive from UPrinting for hosting this giveaway?  I'm going to make promotional cards to send to local businesses in hopes to get a haunt sponsor for next year (this haunting thing is killer on the budget, I need someone to share the love [or at least the cold hard cash] with!).  How would you use a set?  To enter, just tell me in the comments section by October 28 and you're entered!  How easy is that?!  Don't forget and do it now before you forget, you can't win if you don't enter!

• Giveaway Prize: 100 Postcards for One Lucky Winner

• Size:  4x6; Paper:  14pt Cardstock Gloss; Printing: Full color both sides  

• Shipping: FREE UPS Ground Shipping in the US (Canadian residents pay only shipping and taxes)

• Winner will receive a coupon code by email on November 6 2009 (plenty of time to make holiday postcards if you'd like!!!)

To get an idea of all the options, head on over to UPrinting's Postcard Site and see all the different things you can do! 

The great people of UPrinting.com graciously allow me to make these giveaways available to you, so please give them a chance if you have any printing needs.  I have received several custom courtesy products from them and I can attest that they are the highest quality and quick turn around time!

Good luck!!!

My First Blog Rant--a revisitation of Trunk or Treat

I saw it the other day, a sign promoting Trunk or Treat.  I blew a fuse, again.  I looked back and found my first blog rant and I can say that my feelings have only grown stronger...In case you might not know what Trunk or &$%@# Treat is, or my thoughts on it, here you go...

Ok, I'm strong, I can do this without cussing. No I can't.
Trunk or treat is a fairly new concept in which people go to a parking lot either in a church or a shopping center and open the trunks to their cars, decorate them, usually cute or (shudder) educational, and provide a safe, well-lit area for children to come, heavily supervised, to get candy.
Whew, I did it, I really got through an explanation of THAT @$%&# ABOMINATION THAT IS AS STUPID AS IT IS LAME!!!
Looks like I didn't get through it after all but I don't care!  I despise the concept and the underlying watering down of Hallowe'en, I have seen one where everyone's cars were lined up and each trunk was an educational thing on different countries.  You learned about the country and got a treat that was respresentative of the country.  GOOD LORD PEOPLE, THESE KIDS GO TO SCHOOL ALL THE TIME, AT LEAST LET THEM HAVE A LITTLE INANE FUN FOR A #@%&# CHANGE!!!  I would have had Australia and given the little nippers Vegemite (being a terribly salty and yeasty spread from Australia, had it once, tasted like boiled down brown beer) and told them, "Now, you learn from this, trick or treating means sugar and chocolate, trick or @$#^%& trunking or whatever the #@&*$ this is, means learning more crap and getting lousy crap to eat.  Now go be a little @%#$% until your mom and dad lets you go to a couple of doors and get something to rot out your teeth and don't let me catch you near a car trunk again. Happy *%#@$% Hallowe'en kid".
Do I make myself crystal clear?  I don't like Trunk or Treat.
The other thing is Fall Festivals, Harvest Festivals, Family Festivals, and the like. I grew up going to a Hallowe'en Carnival at my elementary school, Crestmont Elementary.  You could tell when it was October 1, advertisement signs were hung in the lunchroom from strings like garland. We got to wear our Hallowe'en costumes on Hallowe'en and I believe the Friday night before we had the Halloween carnival. Every classroom had an event and you bought tickets to each event. You could go fishing in which you cast your line over a movable blackboard with cutout fish adorning the front and when your line gave a tug, you reeled in a toy!  Or you could visit the witches' house and feel a bowlful of worms (cold spaghetti), dead men's eyes (peeled grapes) or bowl of blood (ketchup).  Maybe you had the hankering to find out what the future held by visiting the fortune teller (who looked suspiciously like one of the fourth grade teachers) or walk through the haunted house (ignoring the Patch the Pony posters and desks lined up to make a path through horrors of volunteers jumping out with rubber masks in the blacklight).  I fail to see where I am, or anyone else that went to our school has been mentally scarred or turned out to be a Satanic priest because of Hallowe'en carnivals.
Then came the 80's where suddenly Hallowe'en was suddenly the devil's birthday and the grand and glorious crusade of imposed rightousness stripped us of Scream in the Dark put on by Campus Life Ministries, Savage House Haunted Hayride hosted by Gordo Methodist Youth and a host of other VERY good quality haunted houses.  Lies permeated about Hallowe'en and the deep evil that it imposed on our children that we must protect.  And I bought into it, for about 1 year and I was miserable that year.
Never, ever, ever again.

Countdown To Hallowe'en--Sweet Potato Bread Recipe

This recipe was the first one that I posted on the blog nearly a year ago.   I made a loaf of this breakfast/coffee time/pig-out time bread last night and it simply tastes like fall. 

Sweet Potato Pecan Bread (Courtesy Martha White Flour, with my alterations)
1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
2 teaspoons baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1 tablespoon cinnamon
1 teaspoon nutmeg
1/2 cup brown sugar
1/2 cup white sugar
2 eggs, lightly beaten
1/2 cup vegetable oil
1 tablespoon vanilla
2 tablespoons milk
1 cup cooked and mashed sweet potatoes
1 1/2 cups chopped pecans
1 cup golden raisins
Preheat oven to 325.  Spray Pam into bottom of a bread pan liberally.  Combine all dry ingredients.  Combine oil, eggs, milk and vanilla and stir into dry ingredients. Stir in sweet potatoes, pecans and raisins, mix well.   Pour into loaf pan and bake until toothpick comes clean, around an hour or so.  Cool in pan for at least 15 minutes before removing and cooling on wire rack.  Bread is moist but crumbly but oh so good.

Closeup of the crumbly goodness.

Hallowe'en Countdown--15 Days and Counting....

I...I...I'm speechless...They're all so...beautiful....

 

 

 

 

via Geekologie.com

This Is Going To Be An Uber Cool Giveaway--250 Custom Stickers!!!

Howdy Fiends!

Stickers are cool.  Personalized stickers are uber cool.  How would you like to have 250 custom stickers that are unique as you are?  Well, thanks to UPrinting.com and me, Mr. Macabre, one lucky winner is going to have that chance!  What will you do with yours?  Promote a business?  Announce or promote an event?  Say what's on your mind?  Whatever you can dream up, UPrinting.com can do it for you (within reason of course; they as well as I would frown upon copyright infringement or anything that might be considered obscene).  As a host of this giveaway, I will be receiving a set in which I will promote my graveyard, The Final Unresting Place Cemetery to give out to promote my haunted attraction.  Head on over to see the many different  sticker printing options that are available to you!

Giveaway Prize Details
250 Stickers/Labels for One (1) lucky winner
Sizes:  2” x 3.5”, 2” x 4”, or 3” x 3”
Paper:  70 lb Label Matte
Specifications: Full color front, blank back; 4 Business Day printing

How do you go about getting your own set of stickers?  Very easy!

• Tell me in the comments how you would use the stickers.  UPrinting.com is interested in how people use their products in creative and diverse ways.

• Want an extra chance?  Just blog about this giveaway in your blog and you have another chance!

• Drawing by Random.org will be held October 29, coupon code will be sent via email November 6

• Drawing is open to US and Canadian residents; Free UPS Ground shipping in the USA (Canadian residents only pay shipping and taxes)

• 
  

Good Luck from UPrinting.com and Mr. Macabre!

Someone is going to be making their own personal greeting cards!

Throwing everything into the random.org machine,  Mr. Macabre and UPrinting.com is happy to announce that Stephanie D. of Walks By Night is the recipient of 250 custom greeting cards!  She is going to get a head start on next year's Hallowe'en invitations!  Congratulations to Stephanie D. from UPrinting.com and Mr. Macabre!

Haunted Video Review Thursday--Make Your Own Scratch Built Corpse

Make Your Own Scratch Built Corpse

Author: Christian Hanson of Monstercloset.com

Seldom do you get a DVD that is both informative and entertaining in the cheesy sort of way.  Taking common materials that you can find in most any town, you can whip up a full fairly convincing corpse pretty easily from the top of the decaying head to the bottom of the decomposing toes. How fun!  Between segments is a troupe of horror characters that lack of acting ability is only surpassed by their cheesiness.  And it's a lot of fun.  The instructional segments are clear, concise and easy to follow.

This DVD would be very good for the beginning corpser (if that's even a word), or the corpser that would like to make a legion of the dead for very cheap.  It's well worth buying to add to the arsenal of scare.

Hallowe'en Countdown--Day -17 Days--Pullin' Out the Big Guns

This little gem is part of a show that scared the %#$@& out of everyone that saw it back in 1975.  All the stars and the planets lined up when they made this one.

First Part...


Second Part...


I have a copy of the Zuni warrior doll.  It literally gives me the creeps still.

I gots me an award!

Moriah of M L B Studios bestowed upon me the Kreativ Blogger award!  Thank you so much, I very appreciate it very much!

Someone To Lay Your Money Down To...Mexicansugarskull.com

I got an order from Mexican Sugar Skull  the other day...if you aren't familiar with the Mexican Dia De Los Muertos or Day of the Dead celebration, HERE is a fascinating and beautiful summary of the Day of the Dead tradition. 

Now, back to my goodies...

Going around I got a set of two sugar skull cookie cutters (I have a thing for cookie cutters, these may not look like much right now but after you decorate the cookies like skulls, they become works of art), a handmade skull pin with little black leather wings ( I'm guessing that this might mean a soul's flight), the recipe pamphlet that went with the cookie cutters (haven't tried them yet but the recipe looks like it would be wonderful) and a really cool skull tea light holder (one can never have too many).  I have purchased a lot of candy molds in the past and sugar skull molds but they now have added jewelry, clothing (the tee shirts are to die for!), and tons of other fun things pertaining to skulls and the Day of the Dead celebration (I knew I loved Mexico for a good reason!).

Bottom line...fast shipping, excellent quality unique merchandise that I haven't run across anywhere else.  Click over there and take a look, you'll be glad you did!

Coming back from the dead

Gasp, I missed several days of blogging, especially for the Countdown to Hallowe'en.  Thursday night I was eating and  something just didn't feel right in my stomach.  I was ok until food or drink was just about to go into my stomach and WHO THE HEDOUBLEHOCKEYSTICKS STABBED ME IN THE GUT?!!!  It had gotten excruciatingly worse and I finally went to the doctor...it's either an ulcer or a perforation in the esophagus.  He gave me some medicine to start with the healing so hopefully I'll be fine...but in the meantime I'm on a liquid diet.

Bla.

Otherwise, I'm doing great...blood pressure is perfect, cholesterol has lowered the past 3 times I've had it checked, arthritis is behaving itself, all due to better living through higher chemistry:

That ain't all of them, I take 4 more at different times!

I swear I'm not a hypochondriac, all my diseases are real I tell you!  They're real!  Why doesn't anyone believe me?!



Ahem, back to scaring...

Corpsing Class

Class was fun and we started to put the dead skin on our lovely corpse heads.

Then I showed them how to make a bloody band-aid from latex.

Then I got showed up by Vienna...he made a popped blister on his hand.  Wonderfully gross!

A creepy shot of the works in progress.

Hallowe'en Countdown--24 Days and Counting

Midnight Dance
The music is the Danse Macabe.  This is visually mesmerizing, humorous at times and darkly beautiful...



Via Tiny Sepuku

Hallowe'en Countdown--25 Days and Counting!

Via signgenerator.org

Hallowe'en Countdown--26 Days and Counting--Vintage Film Strips on Hallowe'en!

Via Tiny Sepuku (one of my favorite comic strips too, love this person's work and advice!).





Love the way that they emphasize how "silly" it is to believe in witches and superstitions.

SPOOKHOUSE DAVE! A MUST SEE!

I have just been alerted to the wonderful adventures of Spookhouse Dave! It's the adventures of a young boy being raised by a family of monsters in an old castle and there's a new episode everyday for the month of October!

And I have a thing for Hagatha, so back off people, she's mine!

Hallowe'en Countdown Day -27/School Days

One lesser known fact about Mr. Macabre is that he used to be an art teacher at a Catholic school for a short time. Trouble is, God never showed up but Beelzebub always arrived 10 minutes early each time. Now Mr. Macabre is teaching art to a class of home schooled younguns and this months lesson is making a corpse head.

Yes, I am teaching America's youth how to corpse a skull.

We're actually making nightstand skulls with electric candles coming out of the cranium. I'm letting the kids have free reign with this project, they can do whatever they want.

Showing the kids how to play 'Lobotomy'

And we played 'Orthodontist' too!

This is some more of our little 'Lobotomy' game

And showing the children how to test and see if the glue gun is ready or not.

I-I-I'm not crying, I just have something in my eyes...

A Primer on Candy Corn

Just remember...

Yes!

Yes!

NO!!!

I got hold of some 'chocolate' candy corn in a variety bag. NASTY!

Poor Man's Payday

Ms. M taught me this Hallowe'en trick some years ago and I still remember it:

Take a few kernels of candy corn and pop them in your mouth with about the same amount of roasted or parched peanuts...

Voila! It tastes just like a Payday candy bar!

A Hallowe'en Giveaway...

I almost forgot, I did say that I was going to do a Hallowe'en giveaway. I'm giving away 1 Mr. Macabre Prize Pack which the main prizes are:

A Pot Full O' Trouble complete with battery operated tea light.

Glow in the dark Skeleton Keys (glow caps you put on your keys)

Incense, candles and some surprises to boot!

How may you compete for this box of Hallowe'en goodness?  Well, we'll play The Price is Right...

What you see is my Hallowe'en money stash.  I throw all my dollar bills and loose change from my pockets daily into a big pot (actually a ceramic pumpkin in my room) and twice a year (my birthday and Hallowe'en)  I can be a totally selfish jerk and spend it on myself. The bills in the bottom photo are just straightened out and put into stacks, I didn't count them and there's no rhyme or reason to them, I just put the fronts facing the same way to help the bank teller.  Tell me the total dollar and change amount without going over and you win the prize pack. Each person gets 1 guess but you can change your guess at any time with a new guess but your latest guess will be the one that counts.

Winner is chosen on Friday October 16.

Good luck!

Halloween Countdown Day 28--Broomstick Bunny

My favorite part has to be the black cat at 1:01.

Hallowe'en Countdown--Day -29/ Do You Believe in Ghosts?

Would you like to?

My business cards came in from UPrinting.com.  They are beautiful, the quality is gorgeous!  All my personal information is on the back...

I are real happy!

Hallowe'en Countdown--Day -30/ One of the Unofficial Fruits of Hallowe'en

I would like to nominate the muscadine grape as one of the official fruits of Hallowe'en.  Some would argue the apple is #1 and I would not disagree but the muscadine (pronounced "musky-dine" by most here) has to be up there somewhere.  The large Southern grape grows wild on large vines has been cultivated and grown commercially for a number of years.  The fruit is deep purple to almost black with tiny specks of white like stars on a Hallowe'en night.  The strong, dark, heady scent of the muscadine is deep and smells like a mysterious Hallowe'en perfume, almost intoxicating.

Unfortunately, they are usually only found in the Southern states but to my Northern friends, I would encourage you to try a jar of muscadine preserves or a bottle of muscadine wine, both can be found online.  I bought a couple of baskets from a curbside market today and am going to make homemade jelly from them.