Decorations at Witches Brew 2011

Here are just a few of the decorations that we set upfor Witches Brew, our annual Halloween Party!

We have always put up the spooky silhouettes, but this year they were a part of the glowing black light room.  The jointed glow in the dark skeleton was a splurge at $40 from Target.  PJ added a little black paint to accentuate the eyes, etc.  We intended to place the skeleton on the trapeze (if you are new to the blog.. yep.. I have a trapeze in my living room.  You can read about it here!) but liked it SO much under the black lights, we didn't bother.

You can see the new family room (black light area) occupied with actual party goers in the picture above.

The fireplace always gets some smaller trinkets.  We also put a vintage horror film on the TV with the sound turned down. This year it was Frankenstein.

Speaking of Frank, I found this doll at a thrift store and I think he is the perfect partner for the pumpkin gal.

This guy is new too.  He is also thrifted and fit well on the horse sculpture that lives on our mantle.  I HATE his sweater, bu didn't have time to make him anything more appropriate.  Next year he will get a wardrobe overhaul.  Maybe something like a Jack Skeleton suit.

I have been keeping my eyes open for apothocary style containers at thrift stores.  This year I used them to display plastic Halloween toys.  I use these jars as decorative features for lots of parties, so I pick up good looking containers whenever I find them for a good price.

Our china hutch became the black cat area this year.

The new addition includes a small room off one side that will probably become an office at some point.  For the party we themed it as a fortune telling room.  It had black plastic like the rest of the new addition, but we added glow in the dark spider webs and a small table.

PJ actually made the table so that he could rig it with a glowing crystal ball (a round light fixture from the hardware store with a green light bulb.  We through some playing cards and a magic 8 ball around for added fun.

I found the "Beware" sign last year at a thrift store.  We made custome name tags for the first ever witches brew.  One says "Hello, my HUMAN name is..." and the other says "Hello, my WITCH name is...."

I made a little shrine on an end table with a book about the show Wicked and a few Halloween trinkets.

PJ made tombstones out of plywood scraps from the new addition.

These were MUCH more impressive at night.  They each have a glow stick inside them so they looked like aliens floating in the air by our front door (they are connected to the dog run cable!)

PJ added caution tape at the edge of our property.

Once again, I did my "freak show family" pictures where I swapped out our real pictures for carnival folks off the internet.  I haven't made replacements for all of my family pictures, so this year i wised up and marked the backs of the frames to make it easier next year.

I LOVE the wolf boy and I tell everyone that he is from PJs side of the family!

Finally, we made vampire pumpkins with inspiration from Pinterest (more on our Halloween Pin-spiration here.)