Barmy Blue's Bland Blog

So. I’ve had a busy day. Halloween is always busy for me.
I never did write up last year. I meant to. I started writing an entry at Easter but stopped because I couldn’t remember how many pumpkins I’d had and I had to find the camera to check. It took two days because we put it away for Christmas.

So this year was basically an expansion on last year. I didn’t take detailed notes so it should be short.


LAST YEAR

I wanted to make a zombie melon but ended up getting four pumpkins. A regular one, a small one and two tiny ones. So by that time getting a melon too would’ve been overkill.
I wanted to try some new ideas I’d found online. Mainly glowstick instead of candle in the pumpkin and using fake fangs for a creepy effect.
The larger one, Count Pumplekin I carved eyes and fangs and had a candle. The smaller one, Norman, was supposed to have a look of fear but just looked pretty regular for me and had a flameless tea light. The smallest, Iggy that little eyes and a slit into which I shoves plastic fangs and a little glowstick curled up inside (the kind you wear as a bracelet) and the final one, Vlad. Vlad was a nightmare. He was more textured and his skin was rock hard. I didn’t have long to carve him and I think we had some kids come before I could put the pumpkins out. In the end it was getting dangerous trying to carve him quickly so I just stabbed a hole in one side and shoved in vampire fangs sideways with no eyes. He actually looked really creepy that way so it was good. Into Vlad I also put another little glowstick. I had previously prepared little bat wings for them made from card and tapes them to the back. The ones that didn’t have a real flame could be put on the bins rather than the small wall so I was able so spread them out nicely.

I also went crazy making things in the month or so running up to Halloween. A mess of poster paint and papier-mâché. Mum had gone to the craft store and brought me back two polystyrene skulls which I loved but didn’t want to destroy or have stolen. So I used them at a base to make my own sugar skull, out of paper. I did worry about treating Day of the Dead like Halloween since it’s a separate and distinct culture from Halloween. I didn’t want to be needlessly disrespectful. But I looked into it and since it comes the day after Halloween and as long as I didn’t do too much I figured that it would not be disrespectful. Also the design of a skull is more of personal significance so as long as my skull was personal to me then it should be okay. I couldn’t get red poster paint so anything involving red had to be done with my acrylics instead but it came out nice. I tried to bear in mind some of the traditional designs but make him something to be proud of. He’s primarily covered in dots and stars. His name is Calivera because I mis-remembered the name of the Monster High character Skelita Calaveras. I did worry that is might mean something but internet searches revealed it to not be a thing so I think it’s okay. And it makes him unique.

I also made a really thin creepy hand painted grey and covered in glow in the dark paint (which doesn’t glow at all outside because we’re right next to a street light) and a big bright purple monster hand that I taped to the back of the bin. I love how cartoony it looks.

I also cur lots of eyes in kitchen rolls and put in a glow stick and put them in the hedge so it had glowing eyes. I also covered the hedge in fake spider webbing with my six spiders; Larry, Barry, Harry, Carl, Lewis and Bob. It took me an hour or so to do it. I hate when people just stretch it out so it’s still clumpy. If you spread it out super thin it looks really really good but it takes so much longer to do.
I also got a bag of fake eyes, fingers, bats and mice and I also got rubber spiders. I stuck the eyes to the letter box and bins and it kind of reminded me of Cookie Monster and I dotted the other things around. I put the witch fingers in the bowl because I didn’t want them.

At the end of the night I only had one eyeball left, the others mysteriously disappeared, along with my plastic mice and all three of my glowstick eyes. I had a pair of angry eyes, sad eyes and one with lots of tiny round eyes to resemble and insect. I was a bit annoyed with that but the mice were only cheap and the glowsticks would run out soon enough so it wasn’t really a problem.

The highlight of the night was when I heard a boy run down the street and call back to his group “LOOK AT THIS HOUSE!” and another child who had not come to us yet called back “So what? It’s just a house.” And he replied “NO IT’S NOT!”. A month of work on and off, a small fortune in glowsticks and plastic things, hours of decorating, anxiety about missing it (I actually had a dream that I’d missed Halloween that morning) or not being ready in time, rude children that don’t say thank you and grab all the sweets. All worth it just for that. Another child cried “A HALLOWEEN HOUSE!” when they saw it which came in a close second.

I got some sweets just in case but my main offering was toffee and chocolate apples. I don’t have a sugar thermometer but I could still use the cold water method to see when I’d reached the hard crack stage. I got a few different sugars and syrups because I’d read various recepies and wasn’t sure which one I’d do. I have a freezer full of liquid glucose (in place of corn syrup because we don’t really have that over here) that I never used because I went with the golden syrup recipe.
Melting the sugar was pretty easy but waiting for it to reach the hard crack stage took for ever. Thankfully I’d had the common sense to make them the night before.
They were pretty good but when I coated the top the stick started slipping out so I left a gap at the top and covered it with melted chocolate to seal in the apple. I got several varieties of apple because We rarely have more than a few children and I didn’t want apples I wouldn’t like.
Ha ha ha ha ha.
Wow. Was I ever wrong.
First I had some small children and suddenly realised that maybe really hard sugar covered apples wasn’t a wise idea for small children, and they were pretty hefty apples too.

I didn’t keep count because what I can only describe as a plague of locusts descended on us that night.
Of course, because I get sick of having left over sweets, and I know that children are greedy rude beasts and have come to accept that now, I didn’t mind them grabbing a handful of sweets because at least they’d be gone.
There was one cocky child who said “It’s my birthday today can I have two?” And proceeded to hake about five handfuls of sweets. I’m sure I’d seen that kid before (hard to be sure though because they wear masks) but I vaguely remembered hearing a child say that the previous year. My first thought was sarcastically how nice for you. But what has that got to do with me but I know better than to actually say such things.

Eventually we ran out of sweets. So I put in stuff that I’d actually gotten for myself in the year but didn’t want anymore. Usually around that time of the month, I pick up cakes and sweets and things but too much sugar is making me feel sicker quicker these days so I find them too sickly and or disappointing for me.
They didn’t seem to thrilled by this offering so when the last lot left I decided to shut Halloween down an hour early.
I usually keep things going until maybe 9-9:30 because I’m desperate to get rid of the sweets. So this was strange to me but actually quite plesant.
I got some hair chalk for one Halloween. I think it was last year but it might have been the year before. I think it was the year before actually.

So that was last year.


THIS YEAR

This year I got some hanging skeletons. Their names are Marionette, Flint, Estelle and Jim because two came in a tacky “prom queen” costume and the others were pirates. I removed the cheap costumes because I just wanted regular skeletons hanging on the wall. Unfortunately the couldn’t really be seen because I didn’t have a light on them but I’ll remember that for next year.

This year I was determined to do a Zombie melon and just get a small pumpkin. I did well. I picked my pumpkin mid-month, not too early so it would rot but not too late to get the runts of the litter. I’d get the melon the week before Halloween because melons aren’t really seasonal these days.
But then mum brought me a white “ghost” pumpkin and practically dragged me over to see them (verbally) and I did. So I got one and named her Pam. If you’ve ever seen Archer you’ll know why.
So with two pumpkins I decided not to get a melon this year either.
I made a zombie hand this year and was planning to make a skull wearing a top hat but decided to stick with the hand this year.
I made toffee apples again this year but this time I got smaller apples.
I made some new kitchen roll eyes and got a bunch of glow sticks.
I didn’t put up the spider webbing this year because it’s a lot of bother.
I made a screen of sweet wrappers to put in the window above the door because it’s very bright and I’ve always wanted to make it more interesting. I’ve collected these coloured sweet wrappers over the past 2-3 years just in case I could use them for something. I looked really good.
I checked the Met Office for the weather. It told me that it would be cloudy and that sunset would be around 4:30. I know that from 5:30ish to 6 is when we usually get children on a week day so kept this in mind. While cutting Pam open the steak knife I had (not using at the time. I use 2-3 different knives for different parts) the knife fell on the floor. I was annoyed then I saw it was broken. This knife is only a few years old, we got it when there was a promotion on knives for some reason. We got two of those steak knives they’re heavy but solid metal, a pair of kitchen scissors and a knife sharpener that we’ve never used. The blade had completely snapped clean off. Very odd. I wonder if it had corroded somehow of maybe had a factory flaw. I had to continue with one of our very old steak knives that bent at the tip.
Pam was very tough to carve, though not a tough as Vlad from last year, so I wonder if ghost pumpkins are just unripe pumpkins. The regular pumpkin, named Earnest was much easier to carve.
I put a candle in Earnest and a light in Pam.
I got a “projector” torch which is just a cheap torch with a dark cover. I used the ghost one. It’s not super bright, especially as we’re right next to a street light so I could only make it show by pointing it close to the ground taped to the back of the bin.

This time I held off on putting up my blood splatter stickers and just used regular sweets because I remembered the smaller children. In previous years when I’ve smeared fake blood everywhere the first trick-or-treater I get is a small child who’s afraid of it. I waited until the first two had gone before putting in the apples. They still ended up going to smaller children but at least I tried.
I got black and white cream makeup this year so as not to ruin my eyeshadow by spreading it all over my face again. I added a spider web pattern to my face. It looked pretty good.
I put green hair chalk in my hair this year. I got a choker and a bow this year to add to my overall Halloweenish-ness. I still need to wash it out. I need to walk the dog first so I’d better get a move on.
I didn’t use eyeliner or mascara this year because my left eye is sore an I think it’s a stye so I decided not to bother.
We had a lot of children tonight. At one point a little girl took two toffee apples. She was really little so I think she’ll regret that decision. I didn’t mind much.
A little while later a woman I use to be friends with when we were younger came with her son and warned me that a bunch of children were at the corner and about so descend on me. This was still early on so I was prepared.
At one point one boy, in a mask, requested a trick but took sweets anyway. I had no response other than “the trick is that there is no trick”. But had I had more time to process I might have debated, in my mind.

At the end a swarm of children descended and I ran out of sweets. Then again I wouldn’t have if previous chidren didn’t grab a big a handful at they can and go back a few times.
I decided not to throw in any old thing to try and satisfy the later children and have then reject it so decided to just announce that we’d run out of sweets. I felt a little bad but realistically we’d gone through 5 bags of sweets and 10 toffee apples.
After that I started taking everything down/inside and turned off the light when I wasn’t there so as not to give and wandering children false hope. I didn’t really have sweets for personal consumption lying around because I just feel too sick too quick when I eat those things now. The sweets I did have are not individually wrapped so should not be given out. In the interests of hygiene and safety you should give wrapped sweets.
I was done about 7ish. Surprisingly quick but I have no complaints.
I would feel guilty or something but we had a lot of children and I mean a lot. A lot more than we used to and they did get through 5 bags of sweets and 10 toffee apples. I don’t need to feel bad for not getting more sweets to give greedy children.
When she came home mum did suggest that she go out and buy more sweets but I refused. We have enough and if/when we run out then that’s it. It worked out last year. And it worked out this year too. Overall a very successful Halloween and I even had time to write it up. Not bad at all.

Now. I have a dog to walk.