This is basically me every year:
Time to start preparing for Halloween 2016. No joke. I take this very seriously. I don't think my fervor really took off until I was in high school. That was when my family moved into a house that had a generous downstairs family room and I was allowed to decorate nearly as much as I wanted for Halloween parties - which meant black plastic on all of the walls and windows and creepy light bulbs in all of the light fixtures. My mom was a little annoyed every time she had to walk through to the laundry room.
As an adult I have lived primarily in walk-up apartments that didn't attract Trick-or-Treaters. Until two years ago! When we moved into our townhouse all of the pent up excitement resulted in some pretty fun decorating and scaring the pants of the kids in my neighborhood. This year will be no exception.
The only difference is that I will be out of town from early to mid October. When I get back I will have only two weeks to get ready for Halloween! That means I need to start ordering and collecting any new decorations I've got my sights on. I still haven't picked a theme for the outdoor decorations but as I've gotten a little older my interests have moved toward vintage Halloween for indoor use.
If you're a serious collector you could easily spend a lot of dough. For example, this plastic candy dish sold on eBay for $1,000.
I'm more of a reproduction market kind of girl. There are some great options out there for people without the budget or time allowance to hunt down hot-ticket Halloween antiques. There are patterns and clip art out there for free or purchase online. One of my favorite finds are reproduction prints of vintage Halloween decorations that you can buy brand-new from the The Beistle Company, who've been making decorations since the 1920's. Recognizing that there is high demand for their vintage cardstock cutouts, they've begun printing reproductions of old faves and selling them at pretty reasonable prices. Here's a link to their website but you can find other small business and niche merchants all over the internet.
