I mean the Nerds candy not the geeky guys knocking on the door. Wonka Nerds have four Halloween candies each in its own test tube topped with a scary monster. The Mummy Makeover is filled with white Nerds, which are fruit punch flavored, but taste a lot like Smarties (remember Smarties?). Then there’s Werewolf Morph wildberry, Vampire Vaccine cherry, and Bat Bite Antidote grape.
They are made by Nestle and can be found in the candy or Halloween aisles. Price ranges from $.99 to $1.99 each. Nerds fans will like these.
Monster toy collectors like myself might find the toppers a little disappointing. They do not really lend themselves to easy display within a collection.
Well, I think the ole haunted bird feeder is finally complete (mostly). I have a few finishing touches still, but for all intents and purposes it is pretty much done at this point. I addedd the mini strobe to the interior that I had talk about in a previous post and added a bunch of black light (UV) LEDs to the exterior to bring out all the cool glowy parts. Adding those gave me a chance to dig out my soldering iron.
I really had fun puting this thing together and it really was pretty easy. Why not try making your own. All you need is the bird feeder, some paint, sculpy and the optional lighting. Go have fun with your birdies.
Here’s a 360 degree look at the finished thing with both the strobe and black lights turned on.
Folks in West Chester are still a little jumpy after the bomb scare yesterday. Apparently another suspicious bag was found near a park bench today.
Turned out to be a bag of clothing, but you never know. Better safe than sorry right?
Makes me a little leery of shopping at Radio Shack. Just yesterday I stopped buy and bought wire and soldering resin. Hey if someone stumbled on that bag they could get the wrong idea. (Oh by the way all I was building was a string of UV led lights for my haunted bird feeder I have been working on all month. It is almost complete and I will post more pictures and one more video sometime soon.)
A little while ago I shared a post about a little Halloween project I had been working on. I had customized a haunted bird feeder. I am still tweeking it a little bit. One thing that I still need to do is to add some UV LEDs one the outside of the house to make the glow-in-the dark parts (eyes looking out of windows, spider’s web and beware of cat sign) all stand out more.
The other day, while at Target, I picked up an LED strobe light ($2.50 from the front of the store) and thought I would just replace the white with UV LEDs (and I still might). I stuck the strobe inside the house and I really liked it, but to get it inside it will take some work so in the meantime I threw in two purple and green Pet Blinkers (which were also bought at CatToys.com like the bird feeder). They look good too. I might have to keep them inside and still have the black light LEDs on the outside of the house. Here is a video of the lights inside the haunted birdfeeder (it isn’t all that great but you’ll get the idea).
It is getting to be that time again when ones thoughts turn towards the question of what am I going to be this year? That’s right the age-old Halloween costume question. Each and every year the choices get hard, but that’s just because every year there seems to be more and more to choose from.
Are you going to go as a super hero, a monster, a movie or TV character, a historical figure or as something silly? I usually opt for the TV or movie costumes myself and then I usually stick with something from a sci-fi or horror film. In the past I have been Freddy Kruger, a Borg, a frozen victim of the Titanic, the Skipper from Gilligan’s Island, Dracula, Spock, Captain Picard, Jack the Ripper, and Winnie the Pooh (nothing too scary there).
I am still trying to figure out this year’s outfit, but I am I just don’t know if I am going to be on my own (if that’s the case I’ll get that cool Predator costume pictured above) or if we are doing the couple thing again this year. If we do the couple costumes thing, I guess my other half could be an Alien and we could reenact AVP.
If I could talk a few friends into it we would get the Rocky Horror Picture Show costumes I found at Halloween Adventure. I just don’t know who I could convince to be Frank-n-furter so that is probably out. Back in the day when we were going every week to see RHPS we would have loved to have had ready made halloween costumes to buy.
Halloween Adventure has a costume for you. Head over to their site to read their blog ( http://blog.halloweenadventure.com ) for news and information about the costume industry. Go buy your costumes before October 10th, 2008 and get 5% off when you use Coupon Code: PPP05BLOG2008. Happy Halloween everyone.
My Mom just loved my original haunted bird feeder and requested one of her own. I hadn’t really thought I would ever make another one, but heck it is Mom afterall. She wanted a smaller version. Something she could sit on her window sill then she added two story. So I picked up a Pet Zone Pop-up Finch Feeder to haunt for her. Even though I knew she wasn’t going to be using it as a bird feeder I made sure to leave the window area for seed retrieval open just in case. I also added the “BEWARE OF CAT” sign I had on mine. I pretty much fashioned hers after the haunted bird feeder v1. I started when I got home from work and worked straight through until about 1:30 am.
I had this pretty nice bird feeder (it is a Colonial Bird Feeder from Pet Zone), but the one window was broken out so the bird feed would not stay in the feeder. I thought, “what do you do with a broken window”. You board it up. So I set to work. First, I repaired the window by hot gluing a piece of plastic over the open window then I dry brushed the entire house to give it a weathered look. After taht I added scuply boards and other creepy decorations. Viola, a haunted bird feeder! Not sure yet if I will be using it as a bird feeder or if I will just use it as a decoration. All in all this project took me about two weeks to complete. (kind of explains where I have been doesn’t it?)
I stopped by Michael’s today to pick up some stuff for my yet unannounced project and I saw they have most of their Halloween stuff out already. Loads of new haunted houses from Lemax. These are similar to The Dept. 56 houses just not as good or as expensive. We have been collecting these for several years now. The haunted village gets set up on years we don’t have our big Halloween blow out.
Nothing really thrills me this year, which is good as I can use the money for something else. I did pick up a Crypt for my mini cemetery and a set of light up tombstones. Normally, I stay away from the figures but this year they had a Zombie dog chasing a Zombie cat that I just had to get.
Now that the light up stones are out of the package I am not too sure about them. I will wait a see what B has to say. If I get approval I will keep them if not back they go. If I can find pictures of last years display I will post them here.
The Dollar Tree has their Halloween stuff starting to hit the shelves; I just got a couple of gargoyles and tabletop tombstones. Not bad for only a buck apiece.
They are made of some type of ceramic or plaster so you have to watch out for chips. The gargoyles will be out all the time. If I had my way the little tombstones would be out year round too.
I’m currently on the look out for one or two free straight back chairs for yet another project I want to try, I saw this DIY Halloween project posted over at Halloweenhotlist.blogspot.com and I want some. So first step is to find the chairs, which could take a while. So until the chairs are in my possession I’m not going to worry about not having a jigsaw (I think my Dad has one I could use). I’ll worry about that once this project is under way.
There’s this guy that is doing amazing Halloween displays. His main medium is papier mache. I stumbled across his site the other day, Stolloween.com, This guy’s work is amazing.
I wish I had half his talent. If I did, I would be armpit deep in papier mache right now. Once I get a few things planned out for my displays this year I might have to try out some of these techniques he shows off. If mine work out I will certainly post them here. If they don’t I’ll just make mention of my failures.
It is only July and we are already getting back-to-school and Halloween being shoved down our little retail throats. Halloween I don’t mind, school I could live without (and I don’t even take classes any more - it is just that to me back-to-school means the beginning of the end). The only thing good about Fall are the beautiful leaves and Halloween. Halloween is my favorite holiday.
We used to have a great big party every year then every other year because it just got to be too much work. Now we aren’t sure if we are doing it again at all, but with the latest wave of catalogs hitting we are getting in the spirit. Even if we don’t have a party we might do some decorating for our trick-or-treaters. I have been doing some online research for ideas and it is getting my spooky, creative juices flowing. I may even try my hand at some DlY animatronics stuff. I have already placed an order for a motor at Monster Guts (I’ll post more as I work on the project) and I have another little project in the works too. Plus I found a DIY talking skull I want to try.
I mean the Nerds candy not the geeky guys knocking on the door. Wonka Nerds have four Halloween candies each in its own test tube topped with a scary monster. The Mummy Makeover is filled with white Nerds, which are fruit punch flavored, but taste a lot like Smarties (remember Smarties?). Then there’s Werewolf Morph wildberry, Vampire Vaccine cherry, and Bat Bite Antidote grape.
