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.

Countdown to Halloween Day 20: Clones, Campbell, and Costume Contests

Welcome once again to the Countdown! Day 20 marks our final descent into the bottom third of the month, leading us into the final 10 days before Halloween arrives. Since this is such an auspicious occasion I thoight I'd show you some more junk I picked up at Goodwill in order to celebrate! 

Here is the pile of loot in all its glory. Shall we tuck in and see what there is to see? Very good.

A heavy Attack of the Clones theme running through this lot of stuff, and I'll open it up with this Jango Fett mask and inflatable jetpack combo that had my boys pretty excited. They know Jango mostly from the Star Wars LEGO game, and one chapter book I read to them about Boba Fett's childhood that features Jango prominently as his dad through the first half. They know this guy is the Dad to one of the most prominent Star Wars villains of all time... and they love him for it.

Also in the mix were this Clone Trooper helmet and General Grievous mask. There were a few other offerings to be had, such as a hard plastic Anakin Skywalker mask and an incomplete rubber Cad Bane mask, both from the Clone Wars cartoon... but I decided enough was enough and picked up these four items. These were the ones I knew they'd appreciate anyway. I've never seen Attack of the Clones to be honest, and only a couple of clips from Revenge of the Sith... so I've never seen Grievous in action in the films... but I have watched some of the Clone Wars with my kids and I have to admit to like Grievous at the very least as a visual. The prequels era had some distinctive looking villains going for it, even if they were all criminally misused. Maul and Grievous, and I am a fan of the previously mentioned Cad Bane as well. Not enough to love the prequels or anything, but enough to wonder what could have been had the plot, writing, characterization, acting, and EVERYTHING been as equal to some of the awesome visuals.

I almost passed on this book, even though it's a Ramsey Campbell novel, and I have in recent years grown to appreciate his work... the cover just looks kind of dopey to me if I'm being honest. But then I read the back cover...

A horror novel based around a cursed, never-released Karloff/Lugosi film? Say what? I knew as soon as I read this that if I did not bring this home I would regret it forever. This is probably going in next year's Halloween Read Pile, if I can wait that long. 

This stinking thing is hilarious but also incredibly hard to photograph clearly. I think the two shots I have of it here are clear enough to get the point across though. This is a Best Costume trophy that features a decapitated skeleton holding its own head!

It's like a Halloween Oscar! I felt a little weird buying myself a discarded trophy... but it's just so clever that I had to have it.

And speaking of costume contests... I picked up this piece for my Halloween village! And the good news: It works perfectly! There are lights, an announcer's voice ("Featuring Our Emcee Sir Robin Graves!") introducing all three of the contestants on stage, and all three characters move on stage! The vampire and mummy pivot left to right back and forth, while the witch spins in a circle, round and round. This thing is probably the biggest piece in our Halloween village, and it really classes the whole thing up. (There'll be more of the village featured in a future post)

That's it for tonight kids, but I'll be back soon with more Gargoylesque Goodwill Goodies! 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.

Countdown to Halloween Day 6: Bendy Skeletons and Aargh!

Welcome back! It's day six of the Countdown to Halloween! Today let's take a look at a haul I brought home from the official Halloween section at Goodwill. 

Here's the usual "look at my pile" shot. But let's dig in and take a closer look, shall we?

One of the cutest finds in this lot is this lady right here. At Christmas the Goodwill Geek family likes to collect Nutcrackers. We pick up at least one new Christmas nutcracker per year. Well, we also own a Mummy nutcracker that we display for Halloween and THIS year he has a lady friend!

We also like to set up a sort of Halloween village on one of our bookshelves, and these two pieces will go very nicely in there! (Ever notice how a lot of modern Halloween decorations are basicaly just bastardized Christmas decorations? Nutcrackers? Christmas Villages? But Who Wore It Best?)

These bendy figures were MUST haves. The skeleton on the left is beautiful. He is the most absolutely perfect bendy skeleton I have ever seen. I am so happy he's mine now. And this sassy little pumpkin guy is pretty rad too. They've both got a lot of panache.

Only a couple of masks really spoke to me out of the ones available to choose from. I'm not entirely sure what the lady on the left is supposed to be exactly, but she's eerie and beautiful and sort of gypsy-ish but also kind of flapper-ish... It's probably just suposed to be some sort of unsettling "The Strangers" style mask... but I liked it. And this eye guy! Man! I love a guy with 6 eyes (or 8 if you count to two eye holes for your actual eyes)!

I found a couple of Halloween-y books in "Ghoulish Gags & Giggles" by Phil Hirsch, and "Running With the Demon" by Terry Brooks. Ghoulish Gags is the typical monster-themed joke book fare, pretty tame and mostly lame, but it did give my kids a couple of chuckles. Running is a sort of urban fantasy tale, written by the Shannara guy, it was released back in 1998 and I've been semi-pseudo-aware of it since way back then, and just never pulled the trigger.

Now! On to my two favorite finds of this trip! This guy. THIS GUY. I have been TRYING to find information about this on the internet since picking him up. I've posted pleas for information on Facebook and on Instagram. I've consulted the toy guys that know toys, the monster guys that know monsters... Aaaand nothing. This fella has a soft, stuffed body  with a bendable wire frame inside. His hands, feet, and skull are all made of hard plastic. He's carrying a Trick or Treat sack that may or may not be his originally.

I am completely willing to concede that this may be some sort of DIY handmade job from a crafting/doll-making kit... if you look closely at the neck this may very well be the case. But I'd like to know one way or another. Because I LOVE THIS THING. To me, he sums up EXACTLY what Halloween should be in every way. There's that sense of nostalgia, a little sense of creepiness, a sense of whimsy... This thing has it all baby. But as amazing as this was, it isn't my #1 find of this particular trip...

THIS IS!!! This is Aargh! from the Madballs. Madballs were a line of toys that came out in the mid-80s and rocked my world. Much like Garbage Pail Kids the Madballs were a big part of the gross-out revolution of that time. They were rude and crude and had attitude. And while you may cry fowl and try to tell me that Aargh! here is in fact not a Halloween item, I challenge you to look at these faces:

And tell me how these guys with their bulging eyes, multitude of stitches and obvious bodily trauma don't SCREAM Halloween??? I found Crackhead on the far left, at Goodwill. I Found Aargh! at Goodwill. I found Slobulus, on the far right, at a yardsale. I owned exactly NONE of these characters as a kid. My favorites were Screamin' Meemie, Dust Brain, Oculus Orbus, Skull Face, Wolf Breath, and Lock Lips. I also owned some of the Super Mad Balls. I loved the comic books! I was Mad for Madballs! And I'm so happy I have managed to bring my collection up to three now!

So that's the haul I brought back from just one exciting trip to the Goodwill Halloween section!!! I can't wait to go back! I'll be back soon with more Growling Goodwill Goodies! Until then, Happy Haunting!

 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.