12 Days of Christmas Cassettes: 5 The Nutcracker

Welcome to the Goodwill Hunting 4 Geeks 12 Days of Christmas celebration extravaganza!!! (Don't send me messages telling me that the 12 days of Christmas actually BEGIN on Christmas and end on January 6th, with the Epiphany. I know. But I'm not celebrating that way... so let us quickly move along.)

Tonight I'm featuring only one cassette on its own. But it is arguably a collection of music that has had one of the biggest impacts on my family and how we celebrate (or at least decorate for) Christmas. It is the music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky's "The Nutcracker Suite" 

I'm a big fan of the music from the Nutcracker. The Dance of the Sugar Plum Fairy, The Chocolate Spanish Dance, The March, all of these and more are famous pieces of music that have woven their way into Christmas as naturally as Santa Claus or the star on the tree.

We used to read the storybook to my daughter when she was very young, and because of this, when she saw the nutcrackers on sale in department stores, she would get very excited. So beginning when she was just 3 years old, we began collecting Nutcrackers. We decided that every year we would add a new Nutcracker to the shelf, and so began a tradition for our family that lasts until today. We've been collecting them for a total of twelve Christmases (although there have been two years out of those twelve when two Nutcrackers have been added to the collection instead of just one) and they now take up an entire shelf (and then some) to themselves every Christmas season.

Hey. I'm a collector.

So the first Nutcracker we bought was purchased in 2003. From 2003 to 2007 the Nutcrackers were all pretty small and fairly modest (though they ranged from traditional designs to more exotic costumes like a Russian Cossack and an Irish mandolin player) when suddenly in 2008 we got a giant one riding a rocking horse. And there was no looking back. The next year we picked up a Nutcracker ballet Clara Nutcracker, HOLDING A NUTCRACKER which I find ridiculously meta and awesome.

The year after we bought Clara, 2010, was the first year we could not decide on just one nutcracker, and we brought home both a Snowman and a Penguin because both were on clearance. It was 2011 when I picked out the Nutcracker on my own and decided we would be getting a court jester Nutcracker. He is still to this day my favorite. 2012 Mrs. Claus and her tray of baked goodies came home with us. The next year, 2013, is when my two boys found a Santa Claus Nutcracker HALF THE SIZE OF MRS. CLAUS and begged and pleaded to bring him home. Despite my anal retentive tendencies and insistence that he was "the wrong scale" the Santas had it. It was this same year that I won this FABULOUS glittery and GIANT fellow at a workplace Yankee Swap:

He's too tall to actually FIT on the Nutcracker shelf, and so he sits on top of the computer directly under that shelf. His name is Captain Glitterati. Well... it is now. I just thought that up as I was writing this. But I am going to pretend that that's what I named him back when we first brought him home.

In the first picture above, and on the far left of this group shot, you can see the Nutcracker we bought this year: The Rat King! My older son was hoping for an elf Nutcracker, but we couldn't find one. And to be honest, I do wish that our Rat King had multiple heads, instead of just the one (as he is sometimes portrayed) but I'm still pretty excited to finally have one in the collection. I saw a PIRATE Nutcracker at Wal-Greens this season after we had already picked up Ratty there... but reminded myself there is always next year... and that we're going to run out of shelf space soon enough without picking up doubles EVERY year... But still... pirate... Hm. Maybe if it goes on clearance after Christmas I'll just snap it up then.

I am so insane.

But it's a tradition I'm glad we have, and when my kids are adults and they've moved away from home, I will continue to buy each of them a Nutcracker every year, to keep that tradition alive.

I'll be going right up through Christmas day itself posting, so be sure to join me back here tomorrow for more of the 12 Days of Christmas Cassettes celebration!!! Merry Christmas and Happy Hunting!

Creepmas Day 13: My Creepmas Crèche!!!

So this year I'm celebrating Creepmas! 

From the 13 Days of Creepmas website: 

"A reaction to the continuing incursion of Christmas into Autumn and Halloween, CREEPMAS is a good-natured chance for Halloween lovers to exact revenge by bringing some spooky good cheer into the holidays or, more appropriately, the Hallowdays..." Read more about the inspirations behind this 13 day celebration HERE. 

So this is it! Day 13! The big finale! I figured this one had to be special, as I will probably NOT be celebrating Creepmas again next year unless some sort of BRILLIANCE strikes and I have an awesome idea for another Creepmas celebration on the site. So... it's time for a blow-out. Back in mid-November, I posted to let anyone know who cared that I would be taking November off from blogging. In that post, I put up a picture of a crèche/nativity scene that I had done with pop-culture characters a couple years prior. 

So THIS year I figured I would do yet another crèche... but make it a Creepy Creepmas Crèche!!! So take a gander at my finished project: 

It decidedly does NOT have the same sense of grandeur that my first nativity scene had. There is not, for instance, a giant orange T-Rex trying to eat the angel. But it matters not dear readers, for I posit that in this case, it is not the largesse that makes the crèche... but the sense of story. The internal logic. The character selection. The fact that I tried to keep all of the figures relatively horror-based or at least death-based. So as you soak in your initial view of the scene, let us prepare to take a closer look... shall we?

First, we have Anubis (the taller) as my shepherd. This was a really hard role to cast as I had absolutely NO horror toys that made sense as a "shepherd". I wracked my brain. I would have killed and devoured someone's liver for a Hannibal Lecter action figure at that moment! One of the Funko minis would have been perfect (Silence of the Lambs??? Eh? EH?) but alas, I could not think of a shepherd that fit the bill. But then I thought of the role Anubis plays in the Egyptian after-life... guarding souls on their passage to their judgement much like a... a... SHEPHERD. So I went with it (-shrugs-). In this shepherd's flock, in place of sheep, or a donkey, or a cow or any sort of normal animals, I went with: Tiny Anubis. I dunno why. I just wanted another animal in there. A Hellhound from Ghostbusters and Cerebus. Because dogs. Bast... because cat? This isn't making as much sense as I write it now. The skeletal T-Rex I felt was inspired at the time... but now I just miss my massive orange T-Rex all the more. Mothra. Is... an animal I guess? And that runaway crawling zombie just made me laugh. Shepherd! Round up that flock! Ha!

Ahem. Moving on.

Next up we have the Three Wise Guys... eh? Zombie stooges are perfect for being wiseguys... and there's three of them, and they are zombies. So PERFECT. I'm also pretending that the hammer, the wrench, and Curly's missing eyeballs are the gifts for the newborn king. And Kodos? I tried to tell him I wasn't going with a "three kings" theme, but he just wouldn't listen. And just wouldn't leave. So there he is. A third wheel in a group of four. Not so wise.

Now we're up to the angels. Attending this very important birth are not one-- not two-- but THREE angels! I couldn't NOT include the skeleton with wings. It perched there so perfectly, and just WORKED. The Weeping Angel? C'mon! And Death from the Sandman just balanced it out so I had to have three. I think it works. Can you definitively say exactly how many angels should be in attendance? Especially at THIS birth? I don't think you can. 

Finally we have the royal family themselves. We have the proud Papa Jack Skellington, the glowing mum The Bride of Frankenstein's Monster, and the bouncing baby boy himself, Sam from Trick R' Treat! I don't think there could ever be a BETTER group of ghouls to represent the taking over of Christmas by the creepiness of Halloween... There's just no way to do better than The Pumpkin King, The Bride, and the guardian of Halloween himself. Plus I think the goofy jack-o'-lanterns lend a certain kind of ambiance.

I love Sam so much I even have a spare that I turned into a Christmas ornament! I love seeing this little fella staring down at me from the tree! And if there are any doubts that Sam can't be a great part of your Christmas festivities, just check out this video from Fearnet! 

So that's it kids! Happy 13 days of Creepmas! I'll be back tomorrow with the start of my 12 days of Christmas countdown, which ends on Christmas day itself! I won't spoil the surprise today by sharing what it is I'll be talking about for my Christmas Countdown, but I do want to thank you all for celebrating Creepmas with me this year! I'll be back tomorrow! Until then, Happy Hunting!

Halloween Countdown Day 29: All Through the House, All Through My Head...

The day is almost here folks... Halloween is the day after tomorrow. This fall has been a... leafy one to put it mildly:

And the colors (when it wasn't raining) have been beautiful. Crunchy leaves on the ground, covering the lawn. It will be time to collect all the toys off the lawn soon and stow them in the garage for the winter. Sigh. 

Right now, the trees still retain some of their beauty, with fiery oranges and golds overhead. 

The views around here are amazing. They make for stunning late-afternoon walks. 

Until ZOMBIES ATTACK!!!

Halloween season seems to rekindle my daughter's interest in special effects make-up every fall. It usually doesn't last very long after that... 

But... while she's hitting it... she's hitting it. 

She attempted some new stuff this year. With results she had mixed feelings about. 

I was pretty amazed by some of the results she achieved. She does most of this with toilet paper, vaseline, fake blood, and her usual cosmetics. 

This was a particular favorite. I take a lot of pride in m daughter, not because of her morbid interests... but because she's so GOOD at sharing her morbid interests. I want her to be passionate about something. She seems to really enjoy herself when she does this stuff.

We dressed up the house too. 

My wife bought rust-colored mums for the porch. The porch we had to rip apart and have rebuilt this past week, so I'm glad I got a few pictures while we could. Not having the porch to decorate properly felt like it stole some of our Halloween away.

Here's old Skully in the window of our front door. Love this guy. Soon it will be time to pull him back into the cave where he lives the other 11 months of the year. But he'll get to look out the window on the BIG NIGHT at the very least.

Here's our "Thriller" skeleton. Thriller has become my youngest son's favorite Halloween song this year. He has a speech impediment so he sings it "Cud-did-did Driller! Driller Nigh!" Which I find endlessly entertaining, even after the 20th or so time we've heard the song this season. 

More window dressings. My vintage Halloween cat cut-out is still a favorite Goodwill find. 

The bookshelves in the dining room get the most treatment inside the house (besides the shelves in my cave) with a few different little themes going on for some of the shelves: the haunted apothecary, the Halloween Cemetery/Village, the multi-colored pumpkins, etc. 

Because we moved the hutch out of the dining room area for more space, we now decorate the picture window in there instead. All kinds of fun stuff there. 

And we dressed up the chandelier in autumn leaves this season as well. These will probably stay up until the christmas decorations go up, although the skeletons, bats, eyeballs, and the like will all come down after Halloween. 

Here's a look from a different angle. 

There's more stuff like these lanterns all over the house, but I won't bore you with every last detail. That skull lantern is a favorite of mine though. 

There's even a pint-sized Dracula creeping in the trees out front by the mailbox. 

And this guy, hanging out above it all like he knows something we don't... and maybe he does?

Here's an autumn-themed cupcake-cake that my wife made for a friend's daughter. There are a bunch of cupcakes under that frosting, and the owls are cake-pops. She stresses out SO MUCH over every cake, but I love the way this one came out. 

Speaking of treats, my boys are still munching on the apples we picked from our trip out to the Treworgy Orchards and Corn Maze.

The also carved their jack-o'-lanterns. My youngest here got a lot of help from mom with the design.

My older son designed this guy all on his own, I did the cutting for him, and he helped poke out all of the pieces. 

HEre the are together, sitting next to a bowl full of pumpkin guts (which makes my older son gag to scoop out, so he does a couple of scoops and then hands the spoon over to me... slacker.)

And here they are, lit up in the night. A couple of fiery freaks!

Speaking of guts, here are the seeds, nicely toasted and ready to snack on.

We also did a lot at the library this season, with my wife volunteering to do some story-times. This was one of the crafts she had the kids do, a tissue-paper "stained-glas" pumpkin.

Here I am at the library, reading Here They Come! by David Costello, one of my absolute favorite Halloween books to read to my kids. 

Another craft they did were these leaf-collection wreaths.

And these masks for playing dress-up!

Spooky!

There was some commercialism mixed in with our homemade Halloween, oh believe me. I drank WAY more pumpkin-mocha coffee from Dunkin Donuts, and the chocolate-frosted pumpkin doughnuts were INSANELY good considering I don't usually care for their doughnuts.

My wife found this ridiculously hilarious. I found it kind of sad.

But my sadness soon burned off when I tried on this wig and glasses ensemble at Target! 

I found a rockin' wig for my wife.

Eye see you! 

NOT a look that works for my wife...

And our young son, Malachi. He says he wants me to come and Walk Behind the Rows for a moment... I'll be right back... 

Even Groot got in on the action! Here he is growing himself a Halloween costume.

And a birthday present from myself to myself consisted of these two Halloween icons. How I adore Funko. 

So, too soon the Tricking and Treating will be done with, and all of these orange and black decorations will go back to sleep in all the attics (or just get moved back into my cave for now) around the world... and the stores will dress for Christmas and we will forget the impish fun that Halloween gives us every year... until next October (who am I kidding? Next September.)

That's all I've got for tonight kiddos! We'll see what I can scrape together for tomorrow night, and then at some point I'll be back with more Gremlinesque Goodwill Goodies. Until then... Happy Haunting!