Helpful Halloween Hints
Issue #008 -- Hunting Time!

Hello Halloween Haunters - 

Have enough year end holidays? The new year has finally passed. Kids back to school and/or college. Back to the normal day to day?

Well, guess what time it is my happy haunters...

It's time to get things planning, building, and preparing for your next Halloween haunt! Don't you think?

I am so ready. Is it spring YET? We've had so much snow that I'm actually getting tired of it now (and I love snow). I'm here in "sunny"  (yea right) Colorado and we've have seen more than our fair share this year. It'll be months before I ever see my front yard again. Oh well, it'll be great to have warm weather again - brightens up the spirits (and ghosts).

Table of Contents

• Face Lift
• Garage Sales - Haunters' Paradise
• Spring Clearance Sales
• eBay
• Salvation Army and Other Resell Shops
• Odds and Ends

Face Lift

The website, All About Halloween, had a couple of facelifts in the last few weeks. One, the navigation bar was changed. It worked great for some viewers but not for others. Now it's changed again. Hopefully for the better.

I've also added a search feature so that if you are looking for a particular costume or idea you can go to the search page (or on the home page too) type in what you are looking for and you will be given a list of pages that will match your search. This should be very handy.

Garage Sales - Haunters' Paradise

When the weather warms up just about any corner that you turn on, there is a garage sale sign. At least it is here, hopefully where you're at too. Wonderful, glorious garage sales. Garage sales are great for your Halloween haunts with very little cost. Sometimes I just cruise and look to see if anything "strikes" me. Sometimes I am looking for a particular item.

What to look for at garage sales:

• hard bound books (I look under the cover jacket to see if the book "looks right", nice & old, sometimes stained, yellowed edged pages)
• old clothing (men's suits, wedding gowns, "granny" nightgowns, any size will do)
• children's clothing (for the old dolls below)
• old small tricycles, old red wagons (to lay about in the graveyard)
• old patio furniture (to sit on, either you or your mummy, during trick or treats time)
• old dolls (whether hair is a mess or not, mostly hard plastic dolls)
• jars or bottles (to use for your mad scientist or witch's cupboard)

Obviously, you can get all sorts of things at garage sales that would be great. Do you get the idea where I'm going with some of the items listed? Old is a key word but not a have to.

Spring Clearance Sales

Now is the time that all of our favorite stores have their spring clearance sales.

Look in the shopping carts that are filled with the past season's "junk". Go take a look at the "returns" area where some of the items might be slightly damaged or opened and is usually discounted.

If the discounts aren't very good, ask if they could discount it more. The worse that would happen is that they say no, price as is. But you may get lucky and the store will knock the price down more.

eBay

If you haven't shopped or even looked at eBay, give it a try. Great stuff at eBay. You can always look - doesn't hurt.

The bidding is fairly easy. I've bid on quite a few items, lost a few and won a few. Just got a couple of goodies in the past week. An alien-devil baby, pretty cute-cute... and a neck and shoulders chained up (no head, stumpy neck, bloody looking). Probably make a type of fountain out of this one.

Couple of things to watch for. Be wary of the bidding. You could find yourself bidding higher and higher and it get out of control especially when you really want an item. Before you know it an item ends up costing a whole lot more than you bargained for. If no one else is bidding on it, most wonderful buys - sometimes for less than $10.

Another thing to watch for is the person selling the items. Look at their "feedback" to see if they are reliable sellers. They should have good feedback, prompt delivery, and quality items.

Salvation Army and Other Resell Shops

These stores have wonderful buys. The catch to them is that sometimes you need to frequent them often. Things come and go constantly.

Odds and Ends

The best place to find items to use in your haunt is your own home. I look at "junk" in a different way now. It's "how can I use this? Save it, I might need it." Versus, "this is junk, get rid of it".

I hate to throw old wood out now. Bottles are another one. It's hard to collect bottles when it gets nearer the Halloween season.

I'm actually starting to collect now. I have some cool looking bottles. These will mostly be used for witch's cupboards or mad scientist's lab. Some will be big and others are small.

The hunting hints above should get you going with a nice stash of spooky props to be. I am dying to hear from you if want to share where you get your spooky collectables. Just contact me!

Until next time - Happy Haunting!

Your Halloween fanatic,

Sandy Love

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