Happy Halloween From Camp Crystal Lake!

This is the first time in about twenty years (since I lived at home with my parents as a teenager) that I've been looking forward to passing out candy for neighborhood trick-or-treaters.

Living in the city--in multi-unit apartment and loft buildings--means rarely, if ever, getting costumed kids knocking at your door. But this year, it's all going to change!

Yes, I know that there's a 110% chance that it's going to rain every second of Halloween this year, but I don't care. Repeat: I don't care. I am so excited it's stupid. I've spent about a month preparing the house for Halloween tricksters and treatsters. Let me show you how it'll be done for the first Power family Halloween at Camp Crystal Lake.

First, because of where we live, we had to be prepared to answer the door like this:

But before we could answer any doors, we had to prepare the house. So I started making decorations.

Spooky crafting supplies

Zombie hands I cut out and put in the garage windows

My absolutely amazingly fantastic new zombie garden gnome from RevenantFX

Cheesecloth ghost

spooooooooky!

Hi.

When I get out of here, I'm giving you a big hug.

I've put some spiders and skulls around the house, and tonight I made a headless man (or woman, since it's wearing my jeans and hiking boots and it's stuffed with my thermals and tee shirts [way to ruin the magic, I know]).

Stuffed man materials

Missing feet & hands. But no big.

He can still watch t.v.

Anyone seen my head? Oh. Here it is. In my LAP!

And you might be wondering where that carved pumpkin came from. Well, last weekend our friends Jayson and Cristen came up from South Bend, IN (Jayson--he teaches photography at Notre Dame) and Chicago (Cristen--she's a video artist and photo assistant/producer). We did some Halloweeny things together, which included carving pumpkins,

Our gourds, before they went under the knife (knives)

Carving party!

Our finished pumpkins--from left, J's, C.'s, mine, and T.'s

and going to a Halloween party.

Trevor's Costume = Old Style Delivery Guy

Cristen as Jason Voorhees

Jayson as "Tape Face"--a new and terrifying monster

And surprise, surprise: I am a zombie

We also watched Halloween (at least a little of it until some of us [me] fell asleep), and ate pizza. To answer your question, yes, eating pizza is a very Halloweeny thing to do. 

And now, we're pretty much ready! I still have a creepy baby doll whose eyes I need to paint black, and I should pick up a few more candles. But T.'s brother Sean sent us a bunch of files for a fantastically spooky Halloween soundtrack, so I'll be piping out scary sounds and songs to the back porch where the kids will come for candy. Or, at least, the one kid who's in a Morton Salt girl costume.

Happy Halloweeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeen!

And watch out for werewolves!