This time of year, Halloween decorations are plastered everywhere. While I am all about the season, I am NOT all about some of the grisly items some folks deem as decorations. I mean, yes! Go for haunted, creepy, forlorn but you do not have to do gory. It may be ok if the only ones to see it are adults but little ones do not need to be exposed to gruesome things while they are out trick-or-treating. At least, cordon off the ugliness and make one section kid friendly. That said, I am not against having skeletons, ghosts, mummies, witches, Jack-O-Lanterns, black cats, bats etc...but it goes too far to see bloody body parts, torn out eyeballs and dolls made over to be zombies. Folks expose their tykes to this mess then wonder why in the world the kiddo is afraid of the dark! There is enough evil in this old world already. We do not need to smack our little ones with it on a holiday meant for them. Leave it be, folks. Leave it be.
Like I said, I am not against Halloween decorations. In fact, I decorate...or over decorate. The difference is, I use a lot of what I call "Implied Creep". Lighting, a few dusty antiques and..yes...plastic skulls or skeletons. It is just enough to make things creepy yet not gory. The clue hunts each year allow me to have fun with decorating. This year's theme is a murder at a masquerade ball. Elegance is needed...albeit creepy elegance. That said, the greenhouse is now an aviary/conservatory complete with tons of birds, plants and our resident hostess of the ball, Lady DeadMadam. She is attired in her lovely ball gown as she awaits her invited guests. In a way, the Lady DeadMadam looks quite demure as she coyly peers from behind her butterfly mask. I am not sure that anyone could possibly be frightened by our hostess. Although she has seen better days, she is still rather elegant.
So, folks, please consider the little kids that come to your door and set up a none gory spot for them. It can be full of fun decorations but not gory, bloody body parts that will leave a bad lasting impression on their young minds. Let them be tykes as long as they can.
I had to laugh during the recent clue hunt that we held here on the Bayou. One of the biggest hits among the props was a plague doctor's mask that held one of the clues. With the theme of the hunt being works of Edgar Allan Poe, it seemed only natural to include his "The Masque of the Red Death". Although this was inspired by Poe's wife's death from Turberculosis, in his story he writes of it as the Red Death or plague. I figured that I needed a plague doctor's mask. Once again, creativity came into action. The mask started out as egg cartons. Yep, the cardboard type of cartons lent themselves to be recycled into a fine material for making the mask. After tearing them into small pieces, I threw them in the blender (yep, my blender is used for everything!) with a good amount of water. This made a big, ole, gooey mess! Perfect! Next, I need a form for that odd shape of a mask. Ha! Another recyclable material met the need. Inside the box of canned catfood, there are cardboard dividers. These were cut, shaped and taped together to make that weird duckbill shaped mask. The egg carton goop was plastered over this and allowed to dry. Now I had a mask. It was horrible but I had a mask. What to do, what to do? Ok, it needed some definite work. I covered it with brown paper that was recycled from a packing box. It was still ugly as can be!
Ugly crafts can usually be salvaged with a bit of paint so that came next. My niece had given me a bottle of copper colored paint that she had leftover from a home repair project. So...my mask became copper. It still looked like some very deformed duck. About that time, Elizabeth came up with the idea of doing "Steampunk Poe". All of our props were to be steampunked! This meant I could cover the ugly blob of a mask with any doodad that I could find....and I did just that. A broken belt became the straps, clock springs, keys, cords, a clock face, springs, gears and a fly-tier's magnifier soon were added to the mask. Ok, now I was beginning to like this thing a bit better. The more I added, the better I liked it. I guess applying all of that junk sort of covered up the mask a bit!
The final product seemed to be an interesting tidbit to most everyone who came to the hunt and also to those who just happened to be at the Little Bayou House before the hunt started. I had no idea that this monstrosity would ever be such a hit! More people tried on the mask and some even begged to take it home. Why? Who knows? I am still in a quandary about that! Sure, it looks a lot better than just a fat, copper duckbill but, my goodness, it is still ugly! Interesting but ugly!
