Nightmare in My Diningroom

With Halloween – and my 13th wedding anniversary! – fast approaching, I thought it was time to show you the anniversary present my husband and I gave to ourselves, from ourselves.  And as it turns out, ourselves has great taste in anniversary gifts!

This is a fully functioning Nightmare Before Christmas cuckoo clock we purchased from The Bradford Exchange, an online collectibles dealer based out of Canada.  Bradford have a number of fantastic Nightmare Before Christmas collectibles, including a Christmas Town clock that has me seriously contemplating the utility of two chiming cuckoo clocks in an 850-square-foot space, but it’s this Halloween Town beauty that really captured my heart.  I love the dusky, heathered jewel tones of the clock (the grapey purples, the rusty oranges, the blackened turquoises) and despite my mother’s polite protestations (“Are you really sure you want this hanging in the diningroom where everyone who goes anywhere in your house can see it?”) I did indeed want it hanging in the diningroom where everyone who goes anywhere in my house can see it, because I love it!  Love the way Zero pops out of the little door at the top, love the vaguely rusty snippet of “This is Halloween” that cranks out at the top of every hour, love Boogie’s crew hanging off the acorns at the bottom.  It’s the perfect anniversary gift for our lucky 13th.

Plus it also looks pretty darn fabulous with our Nightmare Before Christmas snow globe, a delightful wedding gift from friends that lives year-round on our sideboard, which you can see from this photo is totally crooked.  The sideboard, that is.  Or maybe the floor, or the chair rail molding, or, most likely, some horrid combination of all three.  It’s a Nightmare Before Leveling!

The ceramic Jack-o-Lantern bags and spooky candelabras are strictly seasonal, although you can be forgiven for thinking otherwise, particularly when we’ve got paintings like these hanging on one wall year-round.  Mr. Finger Candy gave me these little wooden plaques one year as a birthday gift – they were painted by artist Kristin Tercek, although I think there’s a good deal of Burtonian inspiration at work here.  You can also add these paintings to the list of things my mom hates about our diningroom!  Oh man, she really hates them (said with a good natured, yet malevolent, sort of glee.)  I, of course, think they’re adorably messed up – my favourite is melancholy sushi girl.  I love her ebi bonnet.

That also pretty well encompasses the totality of my Halloween decorating for this year, if you can call decorating just leaving out the things you already have (or have recently procured.)  I typically set up MY Halloween Town – once again, in the diningroom – but I had to put it in temporary storage that is not quite so accessible at the moment.  So in lieu of dealing with that insanity, I thought I’d go small and simple this year.

But I’ll always, always show off this manicure, because it remains one of the best ones I’ve ever done.  Everything works in this design; I’ve never done an update because there is nothing to update – it was perfect the first time around. 🙂

Fall Fun Series: Halloween ’16

Coming at you dark and early this Halloween morn, friends, with best wishes for a spooktacular ‘Ween ’16.  As for me, I’ll be spending the day with Mr. Finger Candy as we celebrate our 12th wedding anniversary!  Here’s a throwback to the big day.  I think we clean up pretty well. 🙂

And while we do have some plans, we’re both big time homebodies, and neither one of us is much for the grand anniversary show (if you don’t get married so you can spend your time binge-watching TV on the couch in your jammies together, you’re doing it wrong!) We’ll probably spend the day sticking close to home, where we’ll be surrounded by the creepy-cozy Halloween decorations I finally put up this past weekend.  Better late than never!

You’ve already met my Halloween town, a rundown, way-off-the-highway amusement park mostly populated by bats and skeletons.  It takes up the entire surface of my diningroom table, and compromises the bulk of my seasonal decorating.

Out in the kitchen we have two ceramic Jack-o-Lantern tealight “bags” that I’ve somehow managed not to destroy over 15-plus years of use, as well as a couple of lovely and thoughtful cards from sweet blogger friends.

Down in the bathroom we have a cool wire tealight candelabra I purchased from Michael’s I-have-no-idea how long ago (if I don’t destroy them, I tend to hold on to my favourite possessions forever) and my Trick (and) Treat towels, which are actually tea towels and not hand towels – tell no one. 😉

In the second bedroom we have my Book of Spells, a large decorative tome (from Hallmark, I think) meant for holding Halloween sweets, although given the shelf life of Halloween treats around my house (non-existent), it’s doing far greater work safely holding the broken off bits and bobs of my Halloween town.

Out in the diningroom we have a tombstone fit for a Terminator.  I just think it’s funny. The petrified catnip mice may disagree.

And finally, out in the diningroom (but in this picture it’s in the kitchen) we have the newest addition to my Halloween haul, a devil kitty wax warmer from Yankee Candle that my husband bought for me a couple of months ago.  Sophia is her name, and in addition to her cute little devil tail and ears, she has a row of adorable little bat markings that run down her back.  Here Sophia is diligently melting my last chunk of Rosegirls’ Boo’s Spooky Castle, a blend of Boo Berry, Vanilla Crunch Donuts and Monster Cookie, and one of only two even remotely Halloween themed waxes in my collection (the other being another cereal blend, Strawberry Frankenberry.)

And so there we have it, the Halloween decor here at Casa Finger Candy.  And now I’m off to enjoy my anniversary!  I hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween, friends – may your candy hauls be back-achingly grand!

Fall Fun Series: Halloween Town

Not to be confused with Jack Skellington’s Halloween Town, this is MY Halloween town, a little cluster of much-loved Department 56 lighted buildings and accessories that I’ve been collecting since my mid-20s.  Last Friday’s call-to-action in the Fall Fun Series was to show off our Halloween decorations – clearly running a bit behind on that one, but my creepy little off-the-highway amusement park takes some time to set up, and pretty well encompasses the totality of my Halloween decorations – and I thought it would be fun to share my seasonal setup with you all.  So pay your admissions – the ticket-taker is dead excited to receive your business – and join me on a little jaunt through the haunts of my Halloween town, won’t you?

First stop is the Dead End Motel, which, burnt-out lights, rickety porch and general disrepair aside, is still moving ahead with its plans to host the Gravely wedding party. I hope they’re cool with accidental skylights and the very good possibility that the handsome bachelor innkeeper will creep on them through a peephole in the wall while they’re undressing.

Swinging clear across to the other side of town, we have Gravely Manor, a once-proud, now-haunted Victorian badly in need of some tender loving care.  Actually, that could be said about everything in town (regrettably, nearly every single one of these incredibly fragile pieces is damaged in some fashion, despite my better efforts to store them soundly. I guess I’m fortunate in that burnt-out lights, snapped tree limbs and a carousel that won’t actually turn go with the general aesthetic of a creepy amusement park, but of course I’d prefer it if they weren’t damaged in the first place.)

Speaking of damaged, I don’t know WHAT this child’s damage is, but every year she takes great delight in standing outside Gravely Manor and pointing at this poor skeleton dude taking his final nature break.  Jeez, a little privacy, please!

Once again swinging back to the other side of town, we have the Black Cat Diner, my favourite.  Actually, the diner was an anniversary gift from Mr. Finger Candy one year. And then behind the diner we have the haunted carriage house, which has been burning steadily for over 15 years.  It’s also the first building I ever bought, so I suppose we can blame it for touching off this madness!

To the right of the diner we have the now-defunct Spinning Pumpkins ride, out of operation pretty well from the moment I took it out of the box.  So no five-star rating for that Ebay vendor.  Nor for the vendor through which we bought the Haunted Carousel, which has likewise stopped turning.  Actually, that one chaps my hide pretty badly – the carousel is the largest and most expensive item in the Halloween series, but very poorly constructed. All the same, as long as its lights are still on, it remains the creepy caramel centre – look at the gorgeous bat detailing along the roof! – of my little haunted amusement park.

Just behind and to the right of the carousel lies the Scaredy Cat Ferris Wheel, the Haunted Fun House and – in a blur – the Swinging Ghoulies swing ride.  I love roller coasters, thrill rides and other amusement park attractions, but yikes, I can’t handle swing rides at all – it’s a one-way ticket to Nausea Town.  Even just watching these guys zip back and forth is making me feel a bit ill!

Finally, we have the lone residence in my Halloween Town – the kind of place I’ve always figured a Halloween-loving person like myself would call home (you know, should she find herself living in a rundown, way off-the-highway haunted amusement park.  Hmm, sounds like I just wrote my first Stephen King novel.) 😉

We’ll now conclude this tour with one final shot of the town all lit up (save and except one or two broken stalwarts) in the mid-day gloom of an unexpected October snowstorm.  Ooh pretty (and so very flashing orange!)  I hope you enjoyed this little tour through my town. I know I did – it’s been a couple of years since I last laid out the whole shebang, and I’ve really relished the opportunity to share it with you through the Fall Fun Series.

P.S. Have your hand stamped at the gate for reanimation.  I mean readmission. 😉