I recently ran across the Romanti-Goth Coloring Book (A is for Absinthe, F is for Fishnets…) and Baby’s First Mythos and was inspired to put together a list of amusingly gothy books that might appeal to children. (I can vouch for most of these personally, as they’ve already been run past the Shadowspawn.)
For very young kids, try:
Halloween Countdown – A great way to teach small children their numbers: A boy with a houseful of whimsical ghosts counts them down from 10 to 1.
Mommy? – A little boy wanders through a haunted house, looking for his mommy. Rather than being frightened by the monsters he encounters, he bests them all in amusing ways.
Bats at the Beach and its sequel Bats at the Library – Cute little bats cavort in the moonlight and engage in human activities that will tickle small kids.
Beneath the Ghost Moon – A beautifully illustrated poem by SF/fantasy author Jane Yolen about mice whose costume ball is disrupted by “Crawlies.”
Goodnight Goon – A parody of the old standard “Goodnight Moon,” this involves a little werewolf getting ready for bed in his haunted castle.
There’s a Nightmare in my Closet – A little boy decides to stand up to the thing in his closet, which turns out to be frightened of him.
Bunnicula – Slightly longer than the ones mentioned above (and a proper story instead of a picture book), this classic involves a dog and cat’s quest to unmask the family’s new pet bunny as a vampire.
You will pardon me whilst I pick my jaw up off the ground. Etsy seller VonErickson offers this unbelievably gorgeous velvet-upholstered sofa in red, black, or purple. The lid even closes.
It’s $3,500 plus a variable (and presumably fairly large) amount of shipping. Sure, that’s more expensive than Ikea, but the Swedes know nothing about this kind of awesome stylishness. I’d love to make this the focal point of a dark living room.
Zombie Gelatin Mold – A crawling zombie torso made of Jell-o is just the thing for a casual get-together, don’t you think?
Six Feet Over – A mobile featuring zombie silhouettes. Which they caution is not recommended for children. It’d still look awesome over a crib.
Build an Eco-Friendly Coffin – Mother Earth News article on green funerals and plans for DIY coffins. You could make them in advance and use them as storage boxes or, y’know, “end” tables. (Hat tip to Linda)
A Real “Corpse Bride” – Article about a rural Chinese practice of which I was previously unaware.
Atlas Obscura = “A Compendium of the This Age’s Wonders, Curiosities and Esoterica.” Neat site detailing odd locations around the world.
Rockabye Baby – I thought I’d mentioned this series before, but apparently was hallucinating. It’s lullaby renditions of rock music by bands like Nirvana and Smashing Pumpkins. (Shadowboy loves his Led Zeppelin CD from this series.)
Last year I mentioned Yankee Candle’s Boney Bunch” product line, which included a skeletal bride and groom and which sold out in about 30 seconds. Check out what the awesome wildeprose recently left in the comments on that post. Spooky weddings for everybody!
Sometimes you have to invite your demons right through your front door and serve them tea and cookies, and before too long you’ll realize they aren’t giant ogres with sharp claws and blazing eyes, but frightened children that have tiny arms and feet.
— Swirly Girl
My clumsy, sweatpants-clad seduction was timed to commence with his morning wood and a Rush song. I’m not a sex kitten, I’m a sex LOL cat.
—AinsleyofAttack
Rainbows and cupcakes and dreams. All of these live in the magic world of Happy-Wonderful Land, but only one of them is edible: sugary, creamy, sinfully fudgy cupcakes. Technically, dreams would also count if you sauteed them long enough.
—Squishable ad copy
Nobody ever thinks it’s their monster that’ll end up in a burning windmill.
— hotdogsladies
The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it’s still on the list.
— Anonymous
If you like to get off by choking yourself with a rope or belt, at least have the decency to write up a “Not suicide, jerking off.” letter.
— MoorishDignity
“Better late than never” is a great motto, but a terrible start to a eulogy.
— aedison
My mother’s obsession with the good scissors always scared me a bit. It implied that somewhere in the house there lurked: the evil scissors.
— Tony Martin
What I love about the internet is if my leg fell off, I’d get a lot of messages going, “Poor you!” but at least one saying, “Can I have it?'”
— shoesonwrong
I’m oh, about four months early for this post (at least in this hemisphere), but I’m on a draft-cleaning kick and I’m tired of looking at it. Think of this as giving yourself plenty of time to plan a pretty table centerpiece involving pumpkins.
You can actually keep this look year-round if you use Funkins instead of real pumpkins, so it’s not that premature. If you squint.
Anyway. Pumpkins.
Use a medium-to-large pumpkin as a vase: Cut the top off and scoop out the guts. Cut a piece of floral foam to fit inside, soak it in water, then put it in the bottom of the pumpkin and insert the stems of fresh flowers into the foam. Alternately, place a potted plant with trailing vines (like ivy) into the pumpkin and let the vines swirl down the middle of the table.
Use miniature pumpkins as candleholders: Cut off the top and scoop out the insides, then test for steadiness. If the pumpkins are a little wobbly, cut a thin slice off the bottom to level them. Group the pumpkins in the center of the table, using a variety of candle heights for added interest. (If you’re using the same size candles you can also vary the heights by stacking two pumpkins, securing the bottom one with florist’s pins.)
There’s always the standard jack-o-lantern. In addition to festive carving you could stencil on designs, hot-glue craft jewels all over it, or make Martha Stewart’s celestial pumpkins.
Arrange a variety of pillar candles or an unmatched collection of candlesticks in the middle of the table, tallest ones in the center. Scatter fall leaves, dried gourds, Indian corn, or miniature pumpkins randomly around the bases of the candles.
Place a large glass bowl or cylindrical vase in the center of the table and fill it with miniature pumpkins. For a little contrast, add apples or small gourds.
If you’re decorating a large table, make a whole pumpkin patch: Set a large pumpkin in the center of the table and place a medium-sized pumpkin on each side, about 8″ away. Space one or two small pumpkins the same distance from the medium ones, the continue down each end with three or four mini pumpkins. Fill in the spaces between pumpkins with silk leaves in fall colors.
Arrange a collection of bell jars along the table, each one displaying a single mini pumpkin or cluster of fall leaves.
Arrange a large pumpkin or assortment of fall fruits on a pedestal cake plate. Festoon with twigs of berries, ivy strands, and fall leaves.
Notes:
If you plan to have your centerpiece in place for more than a couple of hours, it’s a good idea to put something underneath the pumpkins and any other fresh decorations to protect your tabletop. You can use plastic and hide it, or choose something like pretty ceramic plates and make them part of the decoration.
Some species of ivy can be mildly toxic. Don’t use fresh ivy in any edible decorations (like bowls of fruit).
Posted in Bad Things|Comments Off on Pumpkin Centerpieces
“Ever wish songs just sang what was happening in the music video? Well now they do.”
I…hardly know where to begin with this. The original is just about the most 80’s music video ever made, and the “reimagining” makes it a thousand times more wonderful.
(There’s a whole series, but this one is my favorite.)
Fathers Day is coming up! If you’re stumped for gifts for the goth dad in your life, here are some suggestions.
Traditional doesn’t have to be boring. These neckties at Zazzle are attractive and unique; I especially love this graveyard one. Zazzle also has a number of other products, like this Goth Dad hat and Good Mourning coffee mug, plus cute Father’s Day cards featuring skellies Bonnie and Clyde.
There are loads of ideas at Cafepress, including dad-centric T-shirts like The Gothfather, Dadthulhu, or The Anti-Parent. Searching “goth dad” will bring up many other designs.
You might also get a little more creative with clothing; perhaps getting him that top hat or fedora he’s always wanted, or maybe these awesome vampire glasses. There’s always boxer shorts as a fallback, perhaps featuring Anarchy or Skulls.
Another nice gift is the horror movie basket: A box of microwave popcorn, some jumbo candy bars, and DVDs of a couple of horror movies, all arranged attractively in a basket or box. For an extra treat, tuck in a book like the Horror Movie Survival Guide or the The Amazing, Colossal Book of Horror Trivia.
You readers who like these link dumps are in luck. I pared my Drafts folder drastically and all of those half-finished posts have got to go somewhere. There will probably be regular dumps for the next several Fridays.
Dragon Cake – Dot at Dabbled did a dragon theme for her son’s birthday this year (last year was robots), and this is the cake she made. I will now go commit seppuku from sheer cake envy. (She’s also posted a tutorial.)
Don’t Bleed on the Carpet – Cross-stitch pattern from Etsy seller radicalrags. I love the pretty antique border juxtaposed with the sentiment.
Creepy Crawler – An astoundingly detailed–and disturbing–mod to a child’s pedal car.
FACE IT – Vinyl graphics in the shape of a toothy face. I like where they chose to display their versatility.
When Vampires Fly – An amusing “vampire wedding” package currently listed on eBay.
Photo Shower Curtain – This company will print any photo you desire on a shower curtain, using a dye process they promise won’t fade or crack. How many Psycho prints do you suppose have been done already?
The Strain – io9 reviews Guillermo del Toro’s new book, calling it “the antidote to fey vampires.” I bet none of them sparkle.
London’s Benches and the Strange Case of Croy Devenish-Phibbs – TimeOut article about a peculiar hoax involving the memorial plaques on park benches in London. The fake plaques are hilarious, and I’m tempted to request in my will that somebody commission a real one for me with the same message shown in the photograph. (My will already stipulates that everybody who goes to my funeral receives a T-shirt that reads, “I went to [my name]’s funeral and all I got was this stupid T-shirt,” so this is really just the logical next step.)
I like cupcakes. They’re easy to make, easier than a cake to decorate, and if you get an assembly line going you can turn out a lot of them with relatively little effort. It’s fairly easy to find Halloween-themed cupcakes for kids, but here are a few that would also work well for an adult party.
The ones pictured above are “Murdered Cupcakes” by Craftster user Lethargic, featuring knives cleverly made out of tinted white chocolate. If you don’t feel up to making the knives, you could probably find plastic ones meant for dollhouse kitchens.
A couple that I’ve mentioned previously include cupcakes decorated as spiders and jam-filled vampire bites.
Three from Epicurious: brains (perfect for a zombie-themed party), eyeballs, and bleeding hearts (I love the “anatomical” look of these).
Wilton tends to feature designs that require their line of decorating accessories, so it always seems as though they’re a little too hard. However, these ghosts would be creepy even without the arms and legs, and this other ghost design is easy and would be effective with other “heads” besides the pumpkin. I also like the cauldrons (sans ghost), and I’m really quite taken with their “Webbed Feat” cupcake platter.
As usual, Martha Stewart knocks it out of the park with Ghosts and a variety of Creepcakes (I adore the little tentacled one).
If you aren’t afraid to work with fondant, check out these two from Flickr: witches and midnight blooms. And if you’re completely hopeless at decorating, make tombstones out of cookies: These look quite effective massed on a plate, especially if you put a little candy pumpkin or other decoration beside each tombstone.
Rats. Now I’m all hungry.
Update: A couple of days before this post was scheduled to go up, Wedding Skulls did a cupcake roundup of her own. Go check out her awesome finds as well!
Posted in Paint It Black|Comments Off on Fun Cupcake Ideas
I recently ran across the Romanti-Goth Coloring Book (A is for Absinthe, F is for Fishnets…) and Baby’s First Mythos and was inspired to put together a list of amusingly gothy books that might appeal to children. (I can vouch for most of these personally, as they’ve already been run past the Shadowspawn.)
You will pardon me whilst I pick my jaw up off the ground. Etsy seller VonErickson offers this unbelievably gorgeous velvet-upholstered sofa in red, black, or purple. The lid even closes.
Fathers Day is coming up! If you’re stumped for gifts for the goth dad in your life, here are some suggestions.
I like cupcakes. They’re easy to make, easier than a cake to decorate, and if you get an assembly line going you can turn out a lot of them with relatively little effort. It’s fairly easy to find Halloween-themed cupcakes for kids, but here are a few that would also work well for an adult party.