At Home Halloween

Wow! It has been so long since I've typed up a blog! There hasn't been a lot of excitement for me to write about these past few months. I'm healthy and I hope you all are as well. Things have been slow, but a few days ago I got to have a jolt of excitement. The Halloween items are in at the At Home store! Being in there, taking photos, it felt great. I really didn't want to leave. But you can only go down the same Halloween aisles so many times, right?

So, while any new Halloween goodies would have been a breath of fresh air right now, I'm happy to say that At Home had a good selection. They had some general themes going, and I'll break this post into those themes. We'll start with the enchanted woodland theme that goes with the lady above.

Next we have a candle holder with some mossy knuckles on it. A few of the objects in this category looked like they'd been rotting in the woods for years.

Like this skull that has been on the forest floor so long that it has fungi growing on it!

A close up:

To my mind, these eyes fit in with the woodland theme. In part because of that woodgrain texture and in part because I can just imagine them rolling around in the woods.

This little cutie is something far different, but I think it could still be found in the imaginary forest I'm describing.

Next, we have the skeletons. Check out this amazing amount of skeletal goodness!

It's always fun each year to try and find some new ones. At Home did not disappoint. Every year, I think I've seen it all, but then someone cooks up a new one. I bet you haven't seen an Alien skeleton!

This seemed very Area 51

Or a gargoyle skeleton:

This electric eel was new to me too. It lit up, but it was hard to take a photo while pressing the light button. I thought the light was a fitting addition, given what it is.

I'm not sure what this little guy is. He seems like something out of Jurassic Park.

I'm sure I shared something like this last year, but it's so cool that I'm going to share it again. It looks like there's a hinge in the jaw.

This dragon skull is a nice transition into the next theme: dragons.

You guys know that I'm into spooky bottle labels. It's always fun to read the fine print on these.

"Caution: May cause a burning sensation on the throat area"

This light up dragon eye changed colors from green to red to purple. There are probably a lot of uses for this, although I'm not thinking of any right now. Maybe if you built your own dragon sculpture and used this as its eye?

And if you use your imagination, this is a bit of a dragon. A little one. I put a leafy placemat under him for one of those "natural environment" sort of shots.

I liked this lizard so much that I'm sharing two views of it.

Onto the candy-themed items...

I thought these ghosts were so adorable, especially the one with the mustache.

I've been thinking of making something similar to this. It's the kind of decoration you might normally think of for Christmas, except it would be in red or green. I was thinking how it would look cool to make a number of different large scale candies, like magnified trick-or-treat candy.

The jack-o-lantern cupcake in front of this gingerbread haunted house is so cute. Hmm... that could be another fun craft project: fake Halloween cupcakes. I'm getting some inspiration as I look through these photos.

At Home had a nice selection of Halloween inflatables.

This one is probably my favorite, but then I noticed myself saying that about a number of these.

Some of my other favorite Halloween inflatables were the dogs.

I thought this one had a bit of a Simpsons vibe with the eyes.

And a favorite Halloween-themed dog of mine: Zero!

I'll call this section Gothic decor. These items had kind of a vampire's castle vibe.

I'll start the Gothic section off with this yowling skeleton creature. I wondered who he was supposed to be. A zombie? A ghost? I took a look at the tag on him and only saw him described as "Gerald" 🤣 I just noticed the skull pattern on Gerald's shirt. It reminds me of a scarf I have.

Another dapper character:

I guess this is a skeleton king? Nice bottle opener behind him.

A closer view of that beautiful throne back:

A fancy, metallic pillow.

A tiny gargoyle creeping around behind some candleholders. He looks ready to pounce.

Cool stem!

I thought this dog actually had kind of a sweet expression. I could see this as a year-round decoration in someone's yard.

Love the eyes! I'm trying to remember if I've done this to a skull already with some craft jewels.

A spooky sorceress lady?

How awesome is this reaching hand ribbon? I don't know how I could use ribbon like this, because I feel like the design could be lost in a bow. I might prefer it on the roll.

The general autumn decor:

Doesn't that wall of autumn leaves make you feel happy? And I love an owl perched in a wreath.

Pretty realistic, hey?

And now for the cool and uncategorized...

Groovy, Space Age pumpkins, which I just noticed were labeled "Cool Cats":

There were a few other retro "Cool Cats" designs. There was a little house that was so hard to photograph, but I did manage to get an OK shot through one of the windows. If you're into the artist "Shag" than you'll probably agree that this is pretty Shag inspired.

And these are I guess evil Tiki guys? Or sorta melted candle faces missing the wicks? Now I'm wishing that I'd looked at how these were labeled.

Candy corn trees, which are another craft on my to-do list. I figure they could be simple enough to make using some white mini Christmas trees.

:)

Hehe. Just try not to sing the song as you read this.

Well, I hope you guys enjoyed my first trip to the Halloween shelves this year. It was a fun and safe trip since At Home is basically a massive open store without many people in it. So I felt able to linger over the Halloween shelves in a relaxed way. Another thing that helped me feel relaxed was that I was wearing a mask filled with lavender essential oil. Some of you who are up on your plague doctor history will know how they filled their "beaks" with lavender. Now, there was a morbid reason for this, but I'm thinking it also helped them feel more relaxed. That's what it's doing for me, anyway.

So during our current "plague" I'm using drops of lavender and geranium essential oil on the inside of my mask, instead of the loose dried lavender flowers the plague doctors used. It has such an effect on me. I am just merrily gliding around stress free, more or less gassing myself with these oils. Especially with the heat, it's really steaming up the scents. So that's a tip for you guys. If you have some essential oils in the house, I suggest using them in your masks. I mean, if you're wearing black fabric masks like I am. You wouldn't want to stain a lighter mask or drop oils on a paper one.

Now, I just need one of those plague doctor sticks to keep people away, right? 😉