Not Scared? You Should Be!

It might not be the kind of scare you associate with Halloween, but our finds are so awful  that they should scare you.  We spend all year looking at Halloween stuff because it’s the most wonderful time of the year for us.  Kathy’s house could be a Halloween showcase if she had the time or energy to get it all out.  For me, there are only two times of the year that I might be bothered to decorate, and Halloween is one of them.

One of our local thrift stores starts putting out Halloween merchandise in late August/early September:

We think that they sell a lot of costume pieces for the Tour de Fat, a craft beer festival put on by New Belgium Brewery.  People dress up in the strangest costumes you’ve ever seen, ride their bikes in a parade, and then go to the brewery to drink beer.  It’s a lot of fun to watch; if you participate, you miss a lot of the costumes and tricked-out bikes.  It would not surprise me a bit to see someone in this costume pedaling down the street on Tour de Fat day.

I’m not sure what this kitty has to smile about:

Maybe he’s in love and has stars in his eyes, literally.  I think that he is a poor copy of one of those primitive pieces of folk art.  As much as I love Pinterest, they sure do encourage the untalented to try out craft projects.  I wish he had a witchy friend to keep him company and scare that goofy grin off his face.  Kitty really isn’t Halloweeny, unless you consider bad crafts scary.

Now, this is frightening:

Frighteningly bad.  Thank God that it didn’t have batteries so we didn’t have to watch it dancing, because of course we tried to turn it on—that’s how we roll.  I could see this skeleton dancing to U Can’t Touch This (And why would I want to?), I Want to Dance with Somebody (I bet!), or even Single Ladies (Duh).  Any one of those songs would at least inject some much-needed humor.  There were a whole bunch of these things on the shelves, which doesn’t surprise me a bit!  They will probably be there for a while with their $9.99 price tags.

Someone out there is truly committed to their crafting vision:

This macrame witch was pretty darn big.  Okay, I have to admit that I kind of like her and admire that nose!  It must have taken some tricky knotting to make that part of the pattern work.  Although, I have to lower the grade just a bit for using a feather duster as a broom.  She was big enough that the maker could have made a broom, or just used a kid’s play broom.

I do not like this witch:

Man, for $10 you should get a blow mold with a little more pizzazz. The picture is crap, but the witch wasn’t anything to write home about either.  I wonder if you could paint a blow mold to give it a spark?  Right now, she’s a washed-out mess.  I DO like the cauldron with the bone and lights.  It probably looks cool when plugged in.

This could have been awesome:

It all went wrong with the yellow rickrack outlining the eyes, nose, and mouth.  I had never considered doing one of those balloon, glue, and string crafts for a pumpkin—cool idea.  But, they should have used ribbon or something flat to outline the openings.  I would probably have used black too, since they’re being creepy with the spiders.  Also, please yank out that plastic grocery bag.

We weren’t too impressed with this wreath, either:

Hey, crafter, you spent a bunch of money on all those tiny plastic pumpkins.  I would have skipped a few pumpkins and bought some ribbon, leaves, ghosts, or something else to keep this from being an uncreative eyesore.  If you want to make a Halloween wreath, look no further than this Pinterest idea:

Oh dear God, how I hated wearing those masks.  As a kid with clunky glasses, it was a miracle that I wasn’t run over on a dark night—I couldn’t see a thing.  This is a much safer use for them.  It would be cool to do a Batman mask wreath with black ribbon and a Bat-Signal.

Speaking of costumes:

All we could think of when we saw this, was that we wished we could mail it to The Big Bang Theory for Cinnamon, Raj’s Yorkie.  She is already a princess on that show; might as well make it official.

We found this mixture of cartoon stars in one bin:

My favorite is Snoopula, followed by Witchy Woodstock.  Charlie Brown is not all that well done, and Mickey is cute, but I just like the other two better.  I might have taken Snoopy home (he was only 99¢) but my decorating closet is pretty full and I’m holding out for something vintage.

This blow-up skeleton cracked us up:

Imagine the mess of feeding a skeleton baby.  Every thing would fall out of his rib cage and onto the floor, as opposed to 50% landing on the floor with your typical kid.  We have to give the people setting up this garage sale props for this display.

They also had this blow up:

Too bad these blow ups are of a thinner, lighter-weight plastic.  They wouldn’t last outside for more than a season, and maybe not even that if the wind were blowing.  If you had Halloween parties, or were a teacher, the skeleton and spider would be fun decorations, and would store flat!

If you want to see some cool vintage Halloween swag, take a look at our Pinterest Halloween Board.  It has something for everyone.

Here’s hoping that all of your Halloween candy is chocolate.