Countdown to Halloween Day 24: And all through the House...

So today I'm going to take you on a tour of the decorations we have up around the Goodwill Geek's residence. We decorated late this year for various reasons, one being that I got sick early in October and had a small island of healthiness before getting sick again just last week. Long story short (TOO LATE!)  it became a sort of slapdash affair that we've been kind of fine-tuning ever since. So even after these pictures are posted, there will be tweaks and changes made probably right up until the day when I take everything down again and squirrel it away back up in the attic.

Let us begin the tour outside the house, and we'll work our way in. These two foam-rubber creatures with hydrocephalus hang from the tree by the road and greet passers-by. My daughter has referred to the skeleton as "my baby" since we bought it over 7 years ago. The vampire joined the family shortly after that.

My wife has a set of window clings for most seasons. Halloween and Fall get some special attention. This is technically our "front door" but it's really just the door that no one really uses.

Here's the door to the kitchen, our real house entrance. A series of lanterns and various hanging signs that my wife likes all out in full force.

This orange and black owl flag takes the place of the "Skully" cardboard decoration I have from the 80's. Skully doesn't mind being replaced. He lives full time in the Geek Cave now, and this window gets pretty wet from condensation this time of year, so he doesn't have to worry now about melting into a pulpy pile of mush on the kitchen floor. 

I forgot to turn these lights on for the big porch-picture above, but these eyeball lights hang in the window to the right of the front door (if you're outside looking in) and look really nice. 

No room is truly safe when it comes to Halloween decorations. This is our bathroom mirror. My wife thinks it is HILARIOUS to dangle skeleton lights over this mirror every single year. I don't argue with her, I just love that she gets into the season. 

There is a shelf in the living room that pretty much spends the entire year dressed in orange and black colors, and has owls sitting on top and witch-balls hanging from below (the glass kind with the stringy glass inside, you pervert), so it already feels kind of Halloweeny. To this we added a small assortment of gargoyles and creepy plaster monster busts. 

This lantern also hangs in one of the entryways to the living room. 

It's not until you go into the dining room that the real Halloween onslaught begins. This entryway goes from the living room into the dining room, and you can see we have some lovely, rustic-looking lanterns hanging above.

The window looking out onto the porch has skeletons and home-made decorations by my talented children.

We have some big, beautiful hanging paper lanterns in this entry to the kitchen, and  a smaller shelf up on the wall off to the right there...

With a disorderly little pile of Halloween decorations looking down on us from above. 

Our giant picture window looking out on the leafy backyard is full og other lovely items, like our aluminum haunted house, my son's "Thriller" pumpkin and some other characters here and there. There's my new top-hatted blowmold jack o' lantern, and a dia los muertos couple I picked up at Walgreens this year.

We always decorate the chandelier over the dinner table to suit the season as well, and this year we stuck with the decorative leaves,

... and the Halloween bell characters that we have collected over the years.

This witch hangs by herself on one side of the door that leads to the Geek Cave off the dining room.

The main feature, or the "focal point" of the dining room if you will (if you watch HGTV) is the bookcase next to my Geek Cave Door. Here's a quick side-angled shot to show off some of the items hanging on the end... 

And here's the full-on shot to show the different shelves. We used to have a theme for every shelf, but this year the theme was mostly just "get the decorations up before Halloween actually gets here" this year. I did preserve the shelf dedicated to the Halloween village pieces, and the bottom shelves are all just trick or treat buckets this time around. The very top shelf is for dishes that can easily be seen from the narrow, high-up shelf, and my leg-dangling shelf sitter characters I got a couple years back. The two shelves below that, above the Halloween village... is all just jumbled chaos. But it looks pretty good either way. 

I think my favorite flair of decorating this year was in remembering to include my Monsters Vs. Aliens toys in the pumpkin patch portion of the Halloween village. This Halloween special is one of my all-time favorites at this point, and being able to reenact parts of it with action figures and Halloween decorations is just too cool.

Well that's it kids! I'll be back with some Gaunt Goodwill Goodies soon enough! Until then Happy Haunting!

Remember, I'm doing this countdown as a part of the official Countdown to Halloween, so be sure to pop over there and look and see who else is participating this year.