HALLOWEEN DO'S

This a-hole took my pun'kins!

All Hallows' Eve is upon us, my little ghouls and boys.  In just a matter of hours, all of the little ghosts, goblins, and me, dressed up with a mask and body-concealing costume pretending to be an oversized 8-year-old will take to the streets to trick-or-treat and maybe jack a few bags from unsuspecting, unchaperoned children.  Are you ready?  I'm not. You know why? Because Wal-Mart has no pumpkins. I repeat, Wal-Mart has no pumpkins. And even worse, those sick bastards had all of their Christmas stuff out.  I heard a little musical tree playing Jingle Bells and almost Exorcist-style vomited.  Sadly, we are living in a world where November 1st is no longer a suitable date to put out the Christmas displays. These people are obviously not familiar with the old proverb, "Every time an early Christmas bell rings, a slutty angel loses her wings." Anyway, I proceeded to drive around for 3 hours last night looking high and low at every grocery store, roadside stand, and darkened porch for a pumpkin and found not a one. The only thing I can imagine that happened was that all of those girls who obsessively talk about pumpkin flavored stuff on Facebook ransacked them all and are keeping them as sex slaves in their basements - "You're all mine pumpkins!  You're all mine!"  So I will venture out again tonight in search of "The Great Pumpkin" or as I like to call it, "Whatever Crappy-Ass Pumpkin Is Left."  And while I'm at it, I may throw a few last minute decorations around the yard and download some chainsaw noises to my iPod.  Which brings me to today's topic:  Halloween Do's.  The following are a few ideas I deem acceptable (because my opinion is the greatest) for your Halloween decor. If you stay within these guidelines, I might not smash your pumpkin, roll your trees, spray paint the word "skank" in your driveway and fork your yard this year.  I said might.

DO use bird cages and moss to make some creepy/chic decor.

DO make a disgusting, inedible looking meatloaf that no one
else will want to eat and you can have all to yourself.

DO put together a mad doctor's apothecary of "poison" treats.

DO answer the door wearing this mask and tell your
neighbors, "Oh I just had this lying around" and they
will never ask you to babysit again.  

DO put some gorgeously scary chicken wire dresses in your yard.
Play a creepy old waltz on repeat for added fright.

Slasher cake.  It's a DO.  It's always a DO.
This is actually from my wedding.

DO make some eerie terrariums.

Homemade body bag.  Consider it a DO.  Plus you can throw it in your
trunk later on and use it to mess with the bag boy at the grocery store.
"Oh, what on earth is that doing in there?"

DO play around with some black mirrors.  Scary chic!

Soulless baby doll heads on springs.
They're not just for birthdays & Bar Mitzvahs anymore.
They're a DO.

DO put a beautifully scary wreath on your door.  

DO put some glow-in-the-dark flamingos in your yard.
Glow-in-the-dark trailer trash people sold separately.

DO spray your pumpkins with metallic paint.
Love the address # stenciled on the pumpkin.

DO put some terrifying silhouettes in the windows.
If you're feeling ambitious, do a moving display inspired by
90's decorator du jour, Kevin from Home Alone.

DO make a DIY Silence of the Lambs inspired head jar.
DO eat it with some fava beans and a nice Chianti (pronounced Kee-ant-ee).

Horrifying baby-head garland is a major DO.
Basically, anything that involves creepy babydolls is a DO.

Unless you're an adult who keeps hundreds of them in cradles in your bedroom,
and you refer to them as "My little dears" and you breastfeed them,
and read them bedtime stories and then kiss them goodnight.

DO put a Medusa inspired wreath on your door.  

Cheesecloth ghosts.  A DO.  For an added creepy
touch, tell trick-or-treaters you modeled the faces off
of the family tied up in your basement.  

Good news: You can finally pull Crazy Aunt Sally's Christmas gift
from last year out of the attic and put it to good use.  DO it.

BORED GAMES: CLUE

The Greatest F*ckin' Game Ever

Whenever I take a moment to reflect on my childhood, some of the greatest memories, in one way or another, almost always revolved around a board game.  Some of my first recollections are of me crying and hitting my sisters because I was mad over not having all the marbles in Hungry Hungry Hippo and finding other random balls around the house and trying to pass them off as Hungry Hungry Hippo balls and my sisters being like "That shit ain't gonna fly" and me crying some more.  We briefly dabbled in Chutes and Ladders and Candyland, but as we got older, our tastes graduated to much more refined games like Girl Talk (nothing says "lady" like putting red stickers on your face and pretending they're zits) and of course the obligatory board game of any respectable 80's girl, Sweet Valley High (I always got stuck as shitty Enid Rollins).  We didn't have time for juvenile games like Operation or Connect Four.  That mindless shit was for amateurs and those in search of a quick, cheap thrill.  Fake electrocution was not our forte.  We were of a different more selective breed of gamers, and found ourselves in search of  "thinking" games.  Games with a plot. Games with a purpose.  

The game board we played on

Not to say that all we did was sit around and play board games.  My two sisters and I were very creative when it came to entertaining ourselves, so we came up with cool fantasy games to play outside: "Kidnapping" where we'd search for a pretend kidnapped kid in the neighborhood - P.S.- we never found that little bastard, "Evidence" where we would collect useless litter from the street and formulate some sort of murder/kidnapping scenario (A sock and a cigarette butt? Someone must be dead!), which would then lead us to "Murder On The Street" a whodunit game where we'd use our meaningless clues to pin a pretend murder on one of our poor, innocent neighbors (Their shutters are crooked!  Guilty!).  It was safe to say we had a morbid preoccupation with murder and death.  We had watched one too many Unsolved Mysteries (cue the scary song) and it was starting to make itself very obvious.  So when the game Clue was introduced into our lives, it was like a godsent.  Death and murder, wrapped up in one beautiful little box?  Say it ain't so!  We would play 30 times in a row and my heart would still beat out of my chest every time that magical envelope was opened revealing the killer.  Mrs. Peacock, in the ballroom, with the rope.  The sound of those words were more beautiful than angels wings gently tapping against baby cherub buttcheeks.  My parents would tease us because we couldn't even pronounce Colonel correctly. Instead of "kernel" we were pronouncing it "call-oh-nell" Mustard. We didn't give a rat's ass how it was pronounced.  We were on a Clue jag, not showering for days, solvin' mysteries right and left, and ridin' dirty like some badass P.I.'s. Then the cases got cold. The suspects got boring.  And we were on to other endeavors. We liked the  movie, but it wasn't enough to get us back into the game.  And life, sadly, moved on.  

Which brings us to today.  And with all those great memories of Clue rolling around in my head, I thought I'd relive my childhood for a sec and give Clue a total revamp.  Why not take all of those stale rooms from the game board and give them some real life (and real decor and style)?  And while we're at it, let's pretend there is going to be a movie remake with a darker modern-day take on the story and someone awesome like Christopher Nolan is directing?  What say you? Cast the roles with awesome actors and give the characters new backstories? Why yes, yes I will accept your challenge!  Plus I desperately need something to do because I tried playing "Murder on the Street" but our neighbor didn't appreciate it when I furiously rang her doorbell, held up an old Coke can and a crumpled newspaper, pointed my finger in her face and cried, "Murderer!!!!!  Murrrrrrderrrrrrerrrrrrrrr!!!!!!"    

THE VICTIM

DR. BLACK

An Oxford educated doctor who inherited his father's billions, Richard Black quit the profession and transformed from a continent-hopping playboy to an eccentric Gatsby-like recluse.  His manse is filled with exotic collectibles from around the world, which he acquires to mask the pain of his childhood and his family's dark secret.  His extravagant parties are the stuff of legend to the lucky hundred or so he calls friends, and even to a few that he doesn't.  And now he’s dead.

THE SUSPECTS

PROFESSOR PLUM

Dr. Black's best friend and confidant.  Stephen Plum was a sociology professor at Oxford who was popular with the students because of his good looks and unorthodox teaching methods, but he was dismissed after a scandalous "social experiment" he performed with some of his students.  

COLONEL MUSTARD

A longtime friend of Dr. Black's family and a dishonorably discharged military colonel for the British Army. Col. John Mustard is more than slightly unhinged.  He can always be found in full uniform because, well, he thinks he's still in the army, after all.  Oh, and he has an unhealthy obsession with his guns.

MRS. PEACOCK

The neighbor of the Black family, Virginia Peacock is the snooty widow of a British aristocrat, whose husband died under very mysterious circumstances. She became like a surrogate mother to Black after his mother died.  Come to think of it, his mother died mysteriously too.  

MISS SCARLETT

She was poor white Alabama trash who escaped her abusive home at 17, went out West, changed her name to Sarah Scarlett and ended up as the biggest showgirl in Vegas.  She's also the mistress (and rumored hitwoman) of Vegas kingpin, Mr. Green.

MRS. WHITE

Theodora White is the mysterious curator of Dr. Black's collections. No one knows her past.  It's probably better that way.

MR. GREEN

Having first befriended Dr. Black back in his playboy days on the Vegas strip, Marco Green is a mafioso don turned casino entrepreneur and the most powerful man in Vegas.  He owns five of the biggest casinos  and he's currently hooked on his latest eye-candy, Miss Scarlett.  And he occasionally kills people.  

THE MANSION

Now that you know the characters, step inside...

(Yes, I'm about to take it too far - time on my hands, people)

And you can't have a movie without a poster, especially a poster with the beautifully creepy Tilda Swinton.  

MONDAY, BLOODY MONDAY

Can we all agree that this is the worst Monday ever? Everyone I know is having an awful terrible no good very bad day, including me. And since my pain and misery is way more important than anyone else's pain and misery, let me tell you all about it. First of all, I don't feel good, I'm half asleep, it's rainy and cold outside, I let my hair air dry this morning, my outfit looks like it was handpicked by a drunk Rosie O'Donnell, and the cherry on top is literally a cherry on top: I have a huge zit on my forehead. The closest thing I can compare myself to is Kirstie Alley on the cover of one of those "Stars Without Their Makeup" editions of Star or the National Enquirer.  That actually does me too much justice.  I would say on the National Enquirer scale of hideousness, I'm probably more of a heroin-addicted Macaulay Culkin. Okay, okay, even that's a stretch.  Gollum.  Final answer. Oh and I was attacked by a roach on my way out the door this morning, who probably just saw the way I looked and was trying to keep me from walking out the door. I swear I even heard him say "Get it together homegirl!" as he was doing the Raid induced death rattle. The only way I've made it through the day was by getting lost in some lush Pinterest gorgeousness.  My life feels so gray today, I think it just needed some green.  And what better way to get my green fix than with some happy little terrariums?  They're like your own little Bio-Dome, minus that pesky Stephen Baldwin.  Let's take a look at some kickass terrariums. Calgon, take me away!

And check out some neat terrarium tutorials here, here, here and here (this last one uses an old light fixture!  Cool!)

INSPIRED BY: 90'S GRUNGE EDITION

Have you ever imagined what your house would look like if Kurt Cobain and Courtney Love (circa 1992) came and squatted for a week?  What if Pearl Jam were actually interior designers?  What if Soundgarden came and redecorated your bedroom while you were trying to sleep and scared the bejesus out of you? No? Yeah, me neither. These are really shitty analogies and I would not let any of these people near my house let alone touch any of my things. Except maybe Courtney Love, but only because it would be funny as hell to watch her get drunk and pop pills and try to feng shui your house and trip all over your stuff and leave her old bras that she used as ashtrays everywhere and make muumuus out of your sheets and talk to your house plants and then they mysteriously die the next day.  Instead why don't you just imagine all of the coolest concepts from the 90's inside of your house, and that's where we get our latest "Inspired By" inspiration.  So cue the Collective Soul, hop into my Honda CRX and let's take a ride back to the 1990's.  Shall we?

Let your painted Dr. Martens lead the way.  
Wouldn't this look cool on a bookshelf?

Your mantra.

Queer Eye guys or Stone Temple Pilots?
Those crocodile shoes beg to differ.  

The way we were...
Nirvana's sarongs are your inspiration.

90's grungy "Pre-Jolie" Brad Pitt is your inspiration too.  
If you can't picture him sitting in your room, smoking a Marlboro 
and playing a shitty song on his guitar, then it ain't meant to be.  

Nothing says "I don't give a f*ck" 90's grunge like a couch so dilapidated that it's cool.

Throw in a coffee table that looks like a guitar case that toured around the world.  

That old couch could use some flannel!  Couldn't everything?  

Guitars, an amp and black walls.  That's grungy, yall.  

Photo wallpaper collage, red velvet couch, old-school quilts.  

Don't forget to get that old Pearl Jam concert poster framed.

It's supposed to look dirty.  That's why we call it grunge.

Go ahead, just stack those old magazines in the corner.  

The Lilith Fair.  
Did someone say Lilith?

MHV - Must have velvet.  
And throw a creepy baby doll on top in honor of Courtney.

Setting for a weird REM video or awesome room?  I think it's both.  

Messy Dirty Chic.  That's the idea.  
A Minnie Mouse head is the cherry on top.

Rug Prerequisite: Must look like a Baja.

Bring the Nirvana MTV Unplugged set into your bathroom!

If it doesn't look like Lollapalooza 1994 happened in your house,
you're doing something wrong.

Oh and did I mention flannel?

Now get to decorating, and make your mother proud.