Meet Doug

Two of our big new props this year have been the Dragon cave and our first ever PVC static prop.

There has been a lot of back and forth, slicing, plotting, planning, etcetering on my husband's part to get them to the point where I can swoop in and use my artistic eye that I keep in a jar to fix 'em up good.

After letting the head finish setting, shaking the spider out of its eye socket and adding eyeballs I am pleased to present Doug the gravedigger.

He's still a bit shy because he doesn't have any hands yet.

It wasn't until I snapped a picture that I realized holy hell Doug looks just like The Silence.

That's why he's keeping the hat on from now on. *shudder* I don't have time to make a trip to the moon.

Now to figure out how to get Doug some hands, stick on a shovel and make an open grave for him to be toiling in and we're good to go.

I shot the sheriff

Being the hermits in training my husband and I are (give it a few more years and I'll have a nice guttural growl behind my cry of "unclean!") we devote most of our brain power to things that people can look at without ever having to see us.

This means that most of Halloween brain power is typically devoted to props, decorations and things that go bump in the night. If a costume is contemplated it's in a last minute throw something together maybe add a bit of eye liner kind of deal.

But this year I have an excuse to play, I mean I need to learn some new techniques for the Costume Charity Ball we're working like crazy towards.

Part of my husband's costume involves a gunshot wound to the forehead but I've never done any latex appliances (those are the scars and wounds and random office supplies jammed into your head you can buy and not say a wobbly toaster).

Over the weekend our Halloween club met together and we did a makeup play and make a mess. We learned a few skills, some pretty easy stuff anyone can do, and then I went home and tried to make a bullet hole.

First thing I did was use spirit gum to glue the bullet hole to my husbands head (and you really don't need to buy the spirit gum remover, it's just isopropyl alcohol). Then I added a few layer of liquid latex around the outside to try and help it blend better. It didn't really work and took forever to dry. I have a different plan for next time.

Now all you really need is an Injury stack, which is not some kind of Rube Goldberg device that involves piles of rusty chainsaws.

It's this:

You can make bruised, scabbed, inflamed or just plain not nice flesh with this bad boy. I like to start with the purple using finger tip dabs here and there. Then add yellow to make it look a bit older and red for a fresher wound. Just keep alternating back and forth for a while and eventually you'll get something like this:

Now to just add a bit of blood. You'll see a lot of things talk about stippling, this is a small sponge with lots of holes in it that looks like steel wool and feels a bit like steel wool but is not a duck.

It gives that broken capillaries look with light random drops of red here and there.

And that was how I shot my husband. Next time I'm going to use one of the thinner appliances we got in the kit (start with the worst, save the best for the night of) and try blending the latex better. I get impatient, I can't help it.

But with just a few pieces of makeup you can do just about anything you can think of ouchie wise.

For those like me that tend to go so subtle there's a good chance no one can see it unless they are on top of you I wanted to show off this Collodion.

It smells like an old lab and is unnaturally cool to the touch and it does something rather interesting when placed upon skin. As it dries it will pucker the skin in giving a cut or scar look without having to mess with latex or trying to draw it on which never really works right.

Here you can see the puckering. I went in with a Q-tip and some of my purple injury stack to give it a bit of dept then lightly rubbed red on the outside for shading but for the most part it just looks like an old scar.

Since it really does pull the skin in any angle looks slightly disturbing.

All you do is keep adding layers of the collodion and waiting for it to dry. More layers more puckering deeper scar, soon you can sit in a large chair petting a white cat and cackling about Bond dying.

And that's my sort of make up tutorial that's so easy even a cave hermit could do it.

Dagger Dagger Gun

When I am bored and have some downtime my mouse inevitably finds its way to a Halloween store and my first stop is always to check out the weapons. Generally it's to laugh at the shoddy $2.99 roman sword that would possibly scare off a chipmunk with a fear of guys in leather skirts.

But on occasion I come across something with a good sturdy handle, interesting but not so elaborate designs that it makes Orcs laugh with the sheer stupidity of how one goes about holding it without poking their own eye out for a pretty good price.

To go with my costume this year I needed a set of daggers and while there are plenty of not quite long enough to be swords but too long to be daggers flimsy shiny plastic bits out there true daggers were a bit of a hide and seek game. Until I came across this one.

There's actual heft in the handle, the blade isn't extremely stupid but oh that death's face on the hilt is just screaming "goth kid in the basement pretending to do witchcraft with an old popcorn bowl and a packet of kool-aid."

Luckily I have a way of fixing things.

Taking out my trusty wall joint compound that I use to fill cracks in the pieces of styrofoam when making tombstones I spackled over death's rather unbecoming grimace. I decided to leave the hands as is assuming once they were painted it would be hard to tell exactly what they once were.

Let the stuff dry, add a coat of black latex paint (semigloss for that shiny new coffin look) and I got some cheap gems from Michaels to complete the illusion.

I can understand why the pitting with black works on some old axes and hammers but it just looks stupid on the blade of these daggers so falling back on my old piles and piles of silver paint I updated them to look a bit less like I pulled these things out of the mud and more stabbity stab stab.

When I wasn't making cool daggers I also took a crack at making the cap pistol my husband got for his Captain Jack (Harkness, not the pirate) costume look a bit less shiny.

Have I mentioned how much I love the plastic fusion spray paint? Because I'd marry it if I could.

I've added a bit more black to bring out the details in the barrel and then some acrylic coating to make it shiny again but otherwise she's pretty much ready to go with a good dose of silver and brown spray paint.

Oh and one more thing, if you ever suddenly wake up one day and want a 5' skeleton you must head to Walgreens quickly. Last night we picked up this guy for only $30.

All of the joints move and while the plastic is pretty thin, especially around the ribs, that is an amazing deal. To compare, the more traditional haunters Bucky would cost at least $90-$100 for a 5' skeleton.

But get there fast, Walgreens always sells out of the good stuff really quickly.

Spaghetti Squash and Scampi Scallops

Last nights dinner was like something born from an OCD vampire hooked up on some hamburger bun topping location.

But aside from the rather rampant use of the letter S and its obsessive need to have you look at it LOOK AT IT! the meal was actually rather tasty and a good way to use up two random ingredients I selected from the store on a whim.

Squash and I have a long history trailing back to when Lewis and Clark were bickering over just how the hell so many of their damn oxen keep drowning and I lobbed an acorn squash at their heads to get them to shut up. Our relationship has remained lukewarm at best.

This is perhaps most evident in the near superhuman struggle it puts up as I try to slice it up and scoop out the gamete infused innards.

But with a lot of grunting, cursing, shaking of my fist, and threatening with explorers eventually I get the squash split in half.

Remove all the nasty bitter stuff in the middle with a sharp spoon to teach that squash who's boss.

Then roast her in a 350 oven for 45 minutes. This is a good time to check on the laundry and make sure it didn't mutate into some kind of horrible fabric monster while hiding downstairs alone for so long.

About 10 minutes before your squash is done slice up about 4 cloves of garlic (I suspect I don't have a single recipe that doesn't involve this step. You should really try my chocolate garlic cake).

In a sauce pan melt 1/4 cup of butter and add your garlic toasting for 1-2 minutes. Once that's nice and aromatic add your scallops (I had around 8-12 ounces but shrimp would work just as well okay probably better actually), 1/3 cup of white wine, 2 tbsps of lemon juice and a dash or two of paprika.

Let that bubble, bubble toil and trouble for about three minutes.

In the mean time dig out the tasty squash strands that like to think they're spaghetti but really aren't, poseurs.

Put that onto a plate and then top with your scallops. Spoon generously over the butter scampi broth.

I topped with some more paprika and a dash of dill (because I had no idea where the hell my parsley'd buggered off to) for a pretty fancy appearance.

Tada, my anal S meal. It was actually really good and a nice generally little labor intensive way to have squash and seafood.

Tomorrow Fancy Fricassee Frogs and Fried Falafels.

Hello Autumn my old friend

Apparently someone got the message to Summer to get his lazy ass the hell out because Autumn's in the house and she's shutting off the heat and kicking the trees pretty hard.

Labor day is always our little signal that says "Okay, you can stop pretending you're normal for the neighbors and bring out the big guns."

Let the Halloweening commence!

I always like to start with the mantle, a nice microcosm of what the rest of the house will look like come late October.

With all students finally back in school, most stores have finally started to trade the notebooks and pencils for skulls and bleeding hearts. Which means it's that time of year when my husband and I do an unholy amount of shopping hitting every store we could possibly imagine would have anything ghoulish or macabre (You wouldn't believe the weird shit Jiffy Lube gets up to).

First order of business was to get a head finally for our gravedigger who shall henceforth be known as Doug.

I used the always neighbor friendly trick of duct taping up a halloween mask, hanging it on the line and filling it with spray insulation foam. It's probably a very good thing we have a privacy fence or I imagine there would be a revolving cop policy.

As I must post this disclaimer each time I make a head: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD DO NOT PLAY WITH SPRAY INSULATION FOAM! If you can't get out of it then hire a gorilla or something, I'm still picking bits of flesh off and every time I think the head is done it oozes a bit more and my hands are covered again.

While my husband transformed various bits of PVC pipe into legs and an upper torso:

I made eyeballs for Doug. And since it's a skeleton mask they have to be blue.

But that wasn't the end of my body part painting for the weekend. I got some latex ears for my costume and of course they needed a bit of help to not only match my skin tone but also look like they had an ounce of realism somewhere in the back.

Now we come to the portion where I just show off things we found. First up, from the Martha Stewart Halloween collection (which still feels weird as hell to say but damn does she have some interesting quality shit).
The skeleton is old but I found this moon with bats and just had to have it. It's a moon silhouette!

Finally, because we own an insane dog who we're fairly certain would pass herself off Chicken Boo style as a person loves wearing sweaters. So we got her a new one to blend in with the season:

And that was my Labor day "Piss off Summer" extravaganza.