It Began With a Whisper…

Yeah, so while I’d love to be the next Martha, it ain’t happening.  Now, you might be thinking, well NOONE could be Martha Stewart, she has a full staff and gobs of money!! But that’s not who I am talking about.  I’m talking about THIS “Martha”. Yeah, she’s pretty awesome. I wish I’d realized it 8 or so years ago when I first met her, cause there was some quality snark time I missed out on there. Anyway, moving on.

TNM has a thing about Halloween.  No, wait, I don’t think you understand… she has a THING about Halloween.  It’s humbling, impressive, amusing, a bit intimidating, and I am accepting that I won’t ever have enough free time or mental stamina (or skill with a compound miter saw) to do all that. And it’s OK.  But she does inspire me to be creative, do what I can, and enjoy the process.  She’s probably reading this right now going “Whaaaaat? I didn’t do that! Did I do that? WOW!”

I never really had big Halloween parties before I met her, through her husband.  He invited me to their house for Halloween one year, many moons ago. I remember being in AWE, and giggling like a little kid as we tip-toed through their front yard cemetery. After a few years of watching their display grow, and having a blast at their parties, I knew I wanted to start having annual Halloween parties of my own. Those parties started about the time they slowed down on their own party circuit, cause c’mon, I wasn’t going to miss their party for any lame-ass thing I had going on.  And so it begins…

I’ve been having parties for about 5 years now in the various places I have lived, thanks in part to a husband who humors my 13-year-old-on-pixie-stix enthusiasm for Halloween.  We had parties in both of his apartments, as well as a few in my little condo.  They were always fun but my options were limited in terms of ghastly décor given my limited space.  But this year…muwahahaha.  Now we have a big, 101 year old, prairie-style home in Oak Park. This year, I am hoping to outdo myself!  The house is just perfect for making creepy, and it has cobwebs and creaks all it’s own, 365 days a year.

I’ll be adding another post soon, and show off some of the great tricks I came up with using spray paint and Dollar Tree and thrift store finds to mimic those $1,500 Pottery Barn displays.  Cause really, if any of you pays Pottery Barn $9 for a box of cheap spider webs, or $15 for a small bag of Spanish moss, we can’t be friends anymore.

Here are some pictures from last year’s Halloween, our first in the house and not my best. The previous month I’d lost my father to cancer, so understandably my heart just wasn’t in it.  Hoping to really step it up a notch this year, but I’m no TNM.

This room looked awesome, but needed more creep. I have ideas…

 

The mantle was mostly just cute, but I have some cool ideas here too. Definitely doing the glow stick flames in the fireplace again!

Front of house was more cute… But we redid the landscaping and I plan to leverage the empty rocking chair on the front porch. “Oh Mother….”

My cob web application skills suck, and we did this the afternoon of the party in a rush, so just kinda flung stuff everywhere.  Plan to do WAY better this year.

What Halloween party would be complete without the Mad Hatter spinning tunes! And yes, of COURSE we had lots of fog machines going, and a laser show, duh!