Halloween 2019 at Michaels

Oops, this post is a little late - but better late than never, right?! I truly meant to post this way back at the beginning of August, but since I moved from Southern California and am still searching for a new place to call my home, it kinda slipped through the cracks! I'm sure you've probably already seen everything Michaels has to offer for Halloween this year, but just in case you haven't or in case you missed something, I thought I would still share some pics that I took more than a month ago when they first started putting out Halloween!

I really dug all the vintage-inspired decor this year at Michaels; they really hit it out of the pumpkin patch! It is by far my most favorite Halloween collection I've seen in 2019. Check it out below:

Beistle's Halloween 2018 Vintage Decorations + Retro Halloween Playlist

The Beistle Company is one of the oldest manufacturers of holiday and party decorations in the United States, founded in 1900. Even if you aren't familiar with the name, once you see their Halloween decorations you will recognize them. They are known for being the innovators of holiday decorations, making high-quality decor and party supplies that regular people could buy easily and affordably. Their original vintage decorations are highly sought after today by collectors and fans. Luckily, the Beistle Company makes reproductions of their vintage Halloween decor, so you can purchase and enjoy them without having to break the bank.

I was fortunate to receive some of Beistle's vintage Halloween reproductions to share with you. I have been a big fan of their vintage reproductions for some time now, and was excited to have the opportunity to check out some of their delightful decor. Their decor is really versatile and they offer so many different kinds that you will have no problem finding what is right for you! They offer cut-outs that can be placed on walls and windows, stand-up decor that can be placed on tabletops, hanging decor, banners, plates and napkins, favor boxes, jointed decor (like skeletons and pumpkins), and so much more! I also like the idea of framing some of my favorites so I an display them year-round. If you are looking to add a vintage Halloween vibe to your decor, Beistle is exactly what you want.

In addition to sharing how I decorated with Beistle's classic Halloween decorations, I also put together a retro playlist, filled with vintage Halloween songs that will put you in the spooky spirit! Check this all out below:

Halloween 2018 at Cost Plus World Market

Cost Plus World Market is one of my favorite places to shop for Halloween goodies! They always have some great vintage-inspired decor and in the past they've carried some fantastic Universal Monsters pieces. I was excited to check out what they had in-store this Halloween season, and arrived at their store just as they were starting to put out their Halloween items. I was a bit bummed that they no longer have Universal Monsters stuff (I believe that licensing was acquired by Target), but this year they do have some Nightmare Before Christmas merchandise as well as some neat vintage-inspired pieces. I also love shopping at World Market to score some vegan Halloween food - their Halloween pasta is vegan and doesn't contain any eggs or animal-derived color. 

Check out my finds at Cost Plus World Market below:

Food Review: The Curious Confectionery Popcorn Balls

The Curious Confectionery creates handcrafted artisan popcorn balls to tickle your tastebuds and satisfy your sweet tooth. All of their creations are crafted without animal products and made with incredible ingredients. The company was started by its founder when she realized there was no tasty treat that was both sweet, crunchy and salty. That's when she realized that old-fashioned popcorn balls were what she craved! She started making these for her friends, who urged her to start selling them. Thus, The Curious Confectionery was born!

Traditions Holiday Store's Halloween Displays

Traditions is a year-round holiday store located in Canoga Park, California, just north of Los Angeles. They have a fantastic Halloween section featuring vintage-inspired decorations as well as folk art, lighted decor, ornaments, and more! I've known about this store for years now, but had never visited until this past weekend when I made the 1.5 hour drive from Orange County. The store is the middle of an industrial part of town in a large building that houses their showroom as well as a large warehouse (they have an online store - yes, you can order their Halloween goodies from their website!). On the weekend parking was easy (they have a lot in the back or there is street parking) and the store was pretty empty.

About half of the store is devoted to Halloween, the other half is mostly Christmas, with smaller displays for Thanksgiving, Easter, and Independence Day. You should have seen the huge grin on my face when I saw the Halloween section, it was awe-inspiring! Traditions carries mostly vintage replicas or vintage-inspired Halloween items, with many mass-produced Bethany Lowe products. I loved browsing around and just being immersed in the Halloween spirit! Their displays are boo-tiful! You can check out photos of the Halloween decorations in the store below:

Ben Cooper Halloween Costumes and Slashback Video Exhibits at Mystic Museum

 Ben Cooper Halloween costumes display at The Mystic Museum

Bearded Lady's Mystic Museum is a must-see haunt located in Burbank, California that regularly hosts themed art shows and exhibits as well as selling a variety of spooky goodies! They also own Bearded Lady Vintage, which just moved in to the adjoining space (they used to be a few blocks down from The Mystic Museum). I love how they are both conveniently located next to each other now!

The exhibits currently on display the months of September and October are a Ben Cooper exhibit, dedicated to the retro costumes of past years as well as artists' representations of the famous Ben Cooper masks, and then there is Slashback Video, paying homage to horror sections of VHS rental stores of the past. Besides rows and rows of VHS horror, Slashback Video also featured artists' renditions of horror movie cover art, done on VHS boxes!

Sneak Peek: Halloween 2017 at Williams Sonoma

Vintage Halloween Melamine Dinnerware Set

Halloween things are starting to pop up all over online, including Williams Sonoma! Their full Halloween collection isn't up yet, but they do have a few treats up and several caught my eye. These won't be in stores until probably late August or later, but for now you can start scheming which items you'd like to buy or just let the images inspire that Halloween spirit.

These are the Williams Sonoma Halloween items that are my favorites so far:

Vixen's Halloween Clothing Inspired by Ben Cooper's Vintage Costumes

Sneak peek at Vixen's vintage style skirts and dresses inspired by Ben Cooper's

Halloween costumes - Image from Vixen by Micheline Pitt's Facebook page!

Micheline Pitt's clothing label, Vixen, has partnered with Ben Cooper to create unique novelty prints based on the iconic Ben Cooper Halloween costumes from the 1950's to the 1970's. The prints will be featured on vintage-inspired swing dresses and skirts, sweetheart dresses, pencil skirts, and more! They are available for pre-order on Vixen's online store now, and depending on the style will be in-stock by late July or late August!

Check out the adorable Halloweenie prints below from Vixen's online store:

The Witch's Christmas

The Witch's Christmas (1986 version)

I came across this adorable children's Christmas book recently called The Witch's Christmas by Norman Bridwell, the well-loved author of the Clifford the Big Red Dog series of children's books. The Witch's Christmas is about a witch that not only puts a fun Halloween spin on Christmas, but also saves Santa when he runs into some trouble on Christmas Eve.

The Witch's Christmas originally came out in 1970 and looks like it was re-illustrated and re-released in 1986. Both versions were illustrated by Bridwell, with the later version getting some color. I've included pages from both versions below.

Both versions look frightfully fun and our witch shares a lot of the Creepmas spirit, like making it rain black snow, creating a holiday wreath from bats, singing Creepmas carols with some monster friends, and decorating a Creepmas tree with skulls, bats, and spiders! Merry Hexmas indeed!

Check out some of the pages from both versions of The Witch's Christmas below:

Heritage Square's Halloween Mourning Tour

Heritage Square's Victorian mansions and hearses on display from 

Coffin Cartel Hearse Club for the Halloween Mourning Tours

Last weekend I visited Heritage Square Museum, a collection of preserved, renovated and currently being renovated Victorian homes tucked away in a nondescript cul-de-sac of Los Angeles. Every year around Halloween they hold a weekend of Halloween Mourning tours, where they bring alive Halloween celebrations and mourning customs from the Victorian age to the '30s and '40s with re-enactments, costumes, decorations, and traditions.

Sneak Peek: Halloween 2016 at Target

Target is one of my go-to stores during the Halloween season, despite the fact that they usually don't start stocking their shelves with spooky items until mid- to late-September. It is usually worth the wait, though, as their items are designed beautifully, whimsical, and fairly priced.

I took a peek at their online site and to my surprise found that many Halloween items were listed and available for pre-order! I am in trouble, because it looks like there is tons of fantastically fun items this year!

Here are some of my favorites I found on their website:

Vinegar Valentines, or Victorian Insult Cards

Feeling anti-Valentine's Day this year? Well, instead of sending lovey-dovey cards, you can send Vinegar Valentines and insult those you dislike this year! Vinegar Valentines were a popular Victorian tradition of sending offensive cards to your enemies or people you disliked or you thought had done wrong.

According to Wikipedia, these cards were first produced in America as early as the 1840s and really gained in popularity around the turn of the century, and continued to be produced until about the 1940s. In Britain, they were more commonly called "mock" or "mocking" Valentines, and they were even erroneously referred to as "penny dreadfuls" at one point.

They were mean-spirited, sarcastic, and cynical - each card was decorated with a caricature of a certain type of person accompanied by a cruel, insulting poem that usually rhymed. The cards attacked people's appearances, those that didn't conform to social norms of the time, those that acted above their social station, the rude, the lazy, feminists, the pompous, the flirtatious, bookworms, bosses, Civil War surgeons and secessionists, etc. These unflattering Vinegar Valentines were sent out, usually anonymously, around Valentine's Day to condemn the behavior of family members, acquaintances, neighbors, store-clerks, couples, and so on.

Check out some examples of these insulting Victorian Vinegar Valentines below:

31 Days of Halloween: Vintage Halloween Magazine Covers

There is just something about vintage Halloween magazine covers that puts a big ol' smile on my face. I mean, even modern magazines with Halloween covers make me happy, but the artwork and photographs on older magazine covers have that certain something that can have me gazing at them for hours!

31 Days of Halloween: The Art of Rhode Montijo

Some people might know Rhode Montijo as the comic book artist who created Pablo's Inferno and co-created the cartoon Happy Tree Friends, but I will always associate him with the book The Halloween Kid, which is an adorable children's book about a pint-sized Halloween buckaroo! 

Besides The Halloween Kid, Montijo has many other Halloween artwork that I adore! His vibrant, almost vintage-feeling designs are always full of so much Halloween joy and they never fail to put a big ol' smile on my face!! I hope to one day own one of his original works (or at least a nice print)!

The Beginnings of Halloween 2014 at Target

I stopped into Target yesterday to look for the Halloween Pyrex bowls they have this season, and was surprised to find their Halloween section already taking shape! They had a lot of socks and various knick-knacks in their dollar bins, but beyond that their actual Halloween section was finally being set up!

Heritage Square's Annual Victorian Mourning Tours Return this October to Los Angeles

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Written by Sarah E. Jahier

I have always wanted to attend Heritage Square's Victorian-inspired event, and I'm hoping I'll actually be able to attend this year!

During a weekend in October, Heritage Square, located in Los Angeles, offers Halloween and Mourning Tours, where guests can learn about Victorian death and mourning rituals and etiquette, plus the movement of Spiritualism and how other cultures and time periods celebrate the deceased. They have actors in period costume recreate Victorian scenes involving death, mourning, funerary customs and spiritualism rituals. Heritage Square itself houses authentic Victorian Era buildings, so it is the perfect setting for the event.

31 Days of Halloween: Retro Halloween Video Featuring "Halloween" by Kay Lande

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This is a cute stop-motion video shot entirely on the iPhone by Jason Willis and set to "Halloween" by Kay Lande and Wade Denning! It is truly stunning, magical and really captures the innocence of Halloween of yesteryear.

Here are some stills from Jason's Flickr set:

Find more info at www.jasonwillis.com!

31 Days of Halloween: Vintage Halloween Cartoons

What is it that I love so much about vintage Halloween cartoons? I love how they are creepy-cute, balancing silliness with scares. I love their nostalgic charm and thinking about how many people have enjoyed them, considering some go back as far as the 1920s!

Most of all, I love the Halloween atmosphere and spirit they all seem to exude. Watching any one of these puts me in the Halloween spirit!

I wish there was a box set of these vintage Halloween cartoons, but for now we can watch most of them on YouTube.

Check out a few of my favorites below:

31 Days of Halloween: Vintage Halloween Photographs from Life Magazine

Can you tell I love vintage-y Halloween things? I can't help it, there is just something so neat about looking back at how Halloween used to be celebrated!

Today, I want to share some old Halloween photographs that Life Magazine has taken in past years. These nostalgic photos show some spiffy Halloween costumes and decorations from decades gone by. I've compiled a few of my favorites below for a visual treat!

31 Days of Halloween: Halloween Superstitions, Omens and Charms

All Hallow's Eve is rife with superstitions, omens and charms against evil. I found a neat list of these collected here (warning: source site looks like it is stuck in the '90s) and couldn't resist re-posting! Check out a few superstitions, omens and charms about Halloween below.

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• If you hear foot steps behind you on this night, don’t look back. It may be the dead following you. Turning back could mean that you will soon join the dead.
• Tying a knot into a handkerchief wards off evil.
• Carry a lump of bread in your pocket when walking in the dark. It will serve as an offering to ghosts.
• If you do not want to be haunting a graveyard any time soon, be sure you do not look at your shadow in the moonlight. Doing so on All Hallows Eve will guarantee your death within a short span of time.
• Girls who carry a lamp to a spring of water on this night can see their future husband in the reflection.

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• If you see a ghost, walk around it nine times, and it will disappear.
• If a candle lighted as part of a ceremony blows out, it is a sign that evil spirits are nearby.
• If you hear 3 knocks and no one is there, it usually means someone close to you has died. The superstitious call this the 3 knocks of death.
• When a good life was lived, flowers will grow on the deceased’s grave. But if the deceased was evil, weeds will grow.
• Never slam a door. You might hurt a ghost, who’ll haunt you for the rest of your life.
• Kill a black cat on Halloween and you’ll have seven years of bad luck.
• Thunder following a funeral means that the dead person’s soul has reached heaven.
• You will have bad luck if you do not stop the clock in the room where someone dies.
• If you hold your breath while you drive by a cemetery, evil spirits can’t enter your body.

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• If a black cat meows on your porch or near a window, a death will soon occur in the family.
• Peel an apple from top to bottom. The person with the longest unbroken peel would be assured the longest life. If you threw the apple peel over your shoulder, the initial it forms upon landing is the initial of your future mate.
• Don’t point at a grave or your finger will rot off.
• When bobbing for apples, it is believed that the first person to bite an apple would be the first to marry.
• If you go to a crossroads at Halloween and listen to the wind, you will learn all the most important things that will befall you during the next twelve months.
• A person born on Halloween can see and talk to spirits.