What is Coming to Get Us

 

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The biggest danger in each state, according to horror and science fiction books and movies! Click image above for a larger view.

Vampires are coming to get me in California.

What's coming to get YOU?

Halloween Leftovers: A Photo Post

Hello boils and ghouls!

I just wanted to share some leftover Halloween photos with you that I never got around to posting. The following were all taken on or in the days leading up to Halloween and include my photos of Disneyland, my costume and pumpkin carving on Halloween night! Please enjoy:

Me and my Halloween night pumpkin...I didn't blow the candle out 'til

Halloween was over!

 Me as Wednesday Addams and Mister

Spooky as a backwoods killer at a

Halloween party

 LOL...my Halloween night dinner...a Vampire Burger

from the always amazing Native Foods! 

It even came with garlic fries!

 One of my vintage-looking Halloween lamps.

It stays up year-round. 

 Our Spooky entryway! 

This also stays the same year-round too! 

Halloween specials (above and below) at 

Mother's Market and Kitchen!

 YUM!

 A cute pumpkin I spotted at my favorite grocery store, Trader Joe's

Halloweentime at Disneyland! 

My favorite time of year to go!

I loved all the pumpkins throughout the whole park

 Dia de los Muertos at Disneyland!

 Ghost Mickey Mouse containers at Disneyland 

 Too cute Vinylmation figure! I have far too many

toys already so I resisted buying it

 Ghostly cupcakes

 Grim grinning jack-o-lanterns at the Haunted Mansion

 Jack Skellington taking over the Haunted Mansion 

for the holidays

 Wow! Disneyland actually had a pumpkin tree!! 

It was hidden in Frontierland, but I found it

 Haunted Mansion...my favorite :)

Luckily it was the first thing we rode when we arrived

cuz it kept breaking down the rest of the day!

Haunted Mansion entrance

In all its early morning gory, errr, I mean glory!

Inside the Mansion - Toys from Sandy Claws, Jack Skellington style!

One of my fave parts of the ride that has been "Nightmared"!

I love the snow and pumpkins!

 Dearly departed

 I won this cute lil' guy at a Halloween party!

Ok, actually Mister Spooky won him for me...

I'm ashamed to say he totally schooled me

in horror trivia!

 Our friend's amazing digs all decorated for the 

Halloween party!

My Wednesday Addams makeup

Liebster Blog Award Plus 5 Blogs You Should be Reading

Many thanks to Jen at Zombies are Magic for awarding me the coveted Liebster (which I am told means "Dearest" or "Favorite" in German) Blog Award! You should definitely be reading Jen's super-awesome blog on all things spooky!

I'm supposed to name 5 of my favorite blogs, but all the blogs I follow are awesome, so it's really hard to choose. However, here are some fantastic blogs I've recently discovered that I'll think you'll enjoy:

Horror Shock Lolipop - Lots of horror fun! And I just ADORE the name!

Little Gothic Horrors - Creative posts from a lover of all things dark! Check out her adorable zombie dolls too!

Miss Muffcake- I feel like this is my long-lost twin! Another vegan (who posts awesome recipes!) with a strong appreciation of spooky things!

Mockingbird Lane - A cute new blog with beautiful photos and fun personal posts.

Midnight Monster Spookshow - I am seriously addicted to this blog! Lots of Halloween and horror-related posts from an amazing artist.

Go check out these awesome blogs...they are 100% Spooky Approved!

And while you're at it, check out Zombies are Magic! And thanks again to the lovely Jen for the award!

Ack! Now I'm off to turn the clocks back an hour as Daylight Savings Time ends tonight in the U.S. At least I'll get an extra hour of sleep tomorrow!

Goodnight my dearies!

Food Review: New Moon Kitchen Cookies

Photo courtesy of This is Vegan

Last month, I participated in an awesome giveaway put on by the lovely Mary of This is Vegan (go visit her rad site, like, now!), and I actually WON! The giveaway was for two boxes of New Moon Kitchen's cookies - one box of chocolate chip and one box of ginger snappers! Mmmmmmm...

This is the first time I've won anything through a blog giveaway, and boy, was I stoked! Also, apologies for not blogging about this sooner, but last month I was indisposed with Halloween celebrations (if you haven't already, check out my 31 Days of Halloween!).

I received the cookies one rainy afternoon in early October and promptly heated up some tea so I could dunk and eat! From the box, I learned that the New Moon Kitchen cookies were 100% vegan (that was a given), organic, peanut and nut free, contain no preservatives and no trans-fats, and are certified Kosher Pareve. They are also all-natural and are made using spelt flour!

As you probably already know, I am a sucker for vegan sweets and I love trying new vegan foods, so I was very excited to try these. I've also been meaning to try baking with spelt flour, so I was eager to see how these cookies would taste.

I first tried the Chocolate Chip cookies. One bite and I knew I was in heaven! Though they had been shipped from Canada, the cookies were still soft and tasted delicious. I loved the texture the spelt flour gave the cookies...nice and chewy! I had to pretty much stop myself from eating the whole box in one sitting!

Luckily, I left enough room to try the Ginger Snappers. These tasted the best dunked in my tea, and were just as yummy as the chocolate chips. These aren't your typically tame ginger snaps...these roar with a strong ginger taste that comes from real chunks of ginger and blackstrap molasses. These are simply perfect for a mid-afternoon tea break and seem especially appropriate for fall!

I absolutely adored New Moon Kitchen's cookies and they are some of the best vegan cookies I've ever tasted. Plus, you know they are the kind of cookies that were made with a lot of love and care! In fact, the story behind New Moon Kitchen's founder Eden Hertzog is quite extraordinary (read about it on their website) and it goes to show how much love Eden has for her cookies and her loyal (and ravenous) customers!

I must thank Mary of This is Vegan once more for choosing me as her contest winner and introducing me to these delicious cookies and wonderful company! Now if only I could find them in the States (New Moon Kitchen is based in Canada) so I can try all 8 of their amazing-sounding flavors! Well, I'm sure that with their indisputable success they will soon expand to the U.S. (and beyond)! Just you wait...these will be the next big thing in the vegan world! Heck, not just the vegan world, but THE world!

Until then, do any of my Canadian friends want to send me a few boxes of these?!

For more info, please visit New Moon Kitchen's website, Facebook and Twitter!

Join The 13 Days of Creepmas!

Artist extraordinaire Chad Savage and awesome blog AEIOU...and Sometimes Why have come up with a holiday celebration for us spooky kids called CREEPMAS! On December 1st through the 13th a creepy coalition of bloggers will be making the holidays haunted again with CREEPMAS!

What exactly is CREEPMAS and what is the reason for it? Read on to find out:

CREEPMAS is for those Halloween lovers and Monster Kids who want to say "enough is enough" - if they're going to put their Christmas into our Halloween, then let's put our Halloween into their Christmas! Tim Burton showed us that it can be done with marvelous results, and we're definitely following his lead.

The 13 Days of Creepmas is an online Celebration of Spookiness from December 1 - 13. The idea is to bring a macabre twist to Christmas and the holidays. Get creative and post it on your blog - share your twisted yule visions with the world!

You can read more about CREEPMAS on the official site, but also check out AEIOU...and Sometimes Why's post on CREEPMAS!

I'll be joining in the fearful festivities, and you can too! Just visit the CREEPMAS blog and chime in that you'll be participating! In the meantime, start thinking of ways to scare up some fun this holiday season!

The Business of Halloween

I received this infographic a few days prior to Halloween but haven't had a chance to post it before now! I love infographics and this one definitely has a lot of info related to 2011's Halloween!

Check it out and enjoy:

Via: Business Credit Cards Blog

Dia de Los Muertos Photography by John Rees

Happy Dia de Los Muertos, dear readers! I want to take a moment to welcome to all my new followers...I hope you'll stick around and keep haunting the place for a spell.

Today is Dia de los Muertos, or Day of the Dead, a Mexican holiday that falls on November 1st-2nd. This holiday is celebrated throughout Mexico and other Central American countries as well as parts of North America. Traditional events include decorating deceased family members' graves and leaving them offerings of sugar skulls, marigolds and favorite foods and drinks. Elaborate and colorful altars are built for the deceased and skeletons and skulls dominate the decorations. You can learn more about this holiday in the awesome book Skulls to the Living, Bread to the Dead: The Day of the Dead in Mexico and Beyond by Stanley Brandes!

However, today I wanted to leave you with some gorgeous Dia de los Muertos-inspired photography by John Rees (please note I do not claim ownership of the photos below!). Enjoy and I hope you take a moment today to celebrate the Day of the Dead and pay your respects to the dearly departed.

For more John Rees photography, please visit his website!

31 Days of Halloween: Wishing You a Happy Halloween!

The time is nigh, ghouls and boils! It's finally Halloween!!

I've been waiting and preparing for this day all month long (thank you for celebrating with me during my 31 Days of Halloween!), but now that it is here it is definitely a bittersweet feeling. I'm overjoyed that today is my most favorite holiday, but at the same time I'm sad because I know that Halloween season is drawing to a close. Of course, I have next year to plan for, but over the next few weeks I'll be going through Halloween withdrawals, like many of you other Autumn people out there. Symptoms include hoarding of all candy corn and pumpkin-flavored edibles, repeated viewings of The Nightmare Before Christmas (hey, it helps to ring in the Christmas season!), slowly taking down decorations (while sobbing a little...in fact this usually makes me so sad that I purposely leave what some might consider "Halloween" decorations up year-round), trying to preserve jack-o-lanterns for as long as possible and a general malaise that lingers for the first few weeks of November.

 I'm a sad pumpkin after October

But enough doom and gloom...it's Halloween and let's enjoy this most ghoulish holiday! Since Halloween falls on a Monday this year, it will be a low-key Halloween night with just me and Mister Spooky (we attended a friend's Halloween party over the weekend). We are planning on carving pumpkins and watching some classic horror movies. I'm thinking viewings of Dracula, The Wolf Man and Frankenstein are in order. We also might watch some Halloween horror movies, like Halloween and Trick 'r Treat. We never get any trick or treaters, but just in case we have a big bowl of Halloween candy (Sour Patch Kids, Nerds, Twizzlers, Swedish Fish...pst! They are all vegan!) for any stray spirits that show up on our doorstep.

 How I fancy Mister Spooky and I are :)

What are you doing tonight? I'd love to hear what you have planned for this eerie evening in the comments below!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

31 Days of Halloween: Satan's Little Helper (2004)

I love a good Halloween horror movie, and I’m not talking about your usual haunted house flick. No, I’m talking about movies that put you in the spirit to spook, movies that haunt your dreams with visions of Halloween and really inspire you to get in the season.

One such gem of a Halloween film is Satan’s Little Helper, part perverse satire, part vicious horror film and a whole lotta fun!

Young Dougie (Alexander Brickel) is obsessed with a video game called Satan’s Little Helper, in which a character helps Satan send people to Hell. It’s Halloween day, and Dougie and his kooky, spacey mom (Amanda Plummer) are picking up Dougie’s sister Jenna (Katheryn Winnick), who is back home from college just so she can take Dougie trick or treating. Problem is, Jenna’s brought her boyfriend Alex (Stephen Graham) home for the holiday and Dougie is pissed…so he storms off to wander the neighborhood alone, clothed in his own Satan costume.

Dougie comes upon a creepily masked serial killer who is going house-to-house, killing people and then re-arranging them on front lawns and porches as macabre Halloween decorations. Dougie thinks he’s finally found his Master and brings Satan home to meet mom and sis. They think the person under the mask is Alex, trying to please Dougie, so they think nothing of the weird behavior. Dougie goes on a crime and killing spree with “Satan,” thinking it is all just a game…until his “Master” attacks his family that is.

Satan’s Little Helper is a fun, darkly humorous flick that borders on satire. You’re never quite sure if director Jeff Lieberman (who has created other cult classics like Just Before Dawn, Squirm, Blue Sunshine) meant it as a social commentary on kids being desensitized to violence or if he just wanted to have a bloody good time, but whatever the case he succeeds in creating a cult classic!

Though the character of Dougie is unbelievably naïve at times (what kid, no matter how desensitized, would think that an old lady being hung out of a window is all part of a game and not real?), I couldn’t help but get sucked into the imaginative story. The whole Halloween setting really helps with the story, especially due to the fact that everyone is in costume and things are expected to be gruesome. The killer, whom we never learn much about, has it pretty easy since no one can see his face and no one really takes the dead bodies he leaves in his wake to be real. My favorite part is when “Satan” gruesomely kills a black cat (very cringe-worthy in of itself!!) and uses its blood to write “BOO” on the side of a house he’s already decorated with a very real body. A lady with her two trick or treating kids asks our killer to pose for a picture, which he obligingly does!

Now, this is by no means a perfect film. For one, the character of Dougie does grate the nerves with his stupidity. For another, the acting at times isn’t all that great. The film also has a low-budget look (it was shot on digital in 2004) that will turn some viewers away. The story is engaging, but towards the end it starts to drag a little bit. Still, despite these flaws Satan’s Little Helper is an extremely fun and clever horror movie.

Buy it on Amazon!

(Ed. note: My review was originally posted on Fatally Yours October 20th, 2008.)

31 Days of Halloween: Vegan Halloween Recipes

My vegan Halloween sugar cookies!

It's almost that time, lovelies! In just a few days it will be Halloween! Woot!

And in preparation for that grand holiday, I wanted to share a handy list of delicious vegan Halloween recipes for your enjoyment and use! Below you'll find links to autumn and Halloween-inspired vegan recipes that I've posted in past years as well as the ones I've posted this year. 

Pumpkin Chocolate Chip Cookies

Autumn Chili and Cornbread

Spicy Pumpkin and Black Bean Burgers

Jack-o-Lantern Sandwich Cookies

Halloween Sugar Cookies

Caramel Apples

Dia de los Muertos Pumpkin Spice Muffins

Pumpkin Brownies

Pumpkin Pie Hot Chocolate

Enjoy!