Top 10 Ways to Green Your Halloween

This from newsday.com...

What's scarier than a toddler with a sugar high? How about the amount of waste that is produced during the holiday season?

According to the National Retail Federation's Halloween Consumer Intentions and Actions Survey, conducted by BIGresearch, more consumers plan to celebrate the holiday this year than last (64.5% vs. 58.7%). But celebrating Halloween doesn't have to break the bank or trash the planet.

So we present the Green Living Newsletter's Top 10 Ways to Green Your Halloween:

1. Swap costumes. Host a get-together with other parents and trade costumes and accessories your kids have outgrown.

2. Replace traditional paper party invitations with online invites.

3. Make your own costumes by reusing items found around the home, at local thrift stores, or at yard sales.

4. Walk the streets of your neighborhood, don't drive! The exercise is heart-healthy and eco-friendly.

5. Avoid plastic trick-or-treat bags. Instead, decorate an old pillowcase, tote bag, or canvas shopping bag.

6. Treat the kids to organic and fair-trade goodies.

7. Shop for locally grown holiday treats and decorate with apples, pumpkins and gourds.

8. Find alternatives to candy treats. Try soy crayons or packets of seeds that can be planted in the spring.

9. Fill your flashlight with rechargeable batteries instead of conventional ones.

10. Host a pumpkin pie bakeoff -- a great way to use the post-halloween pumpkins.

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Mark Harvey

(A Californian)

Play of the Day: Halloween, McCain style

MIAMI (AP) — Cindy McCain was dressed as a would-be first lady Friday when she brought early Halloween spirit to her husband's campaign plane.
The wife of Republican presidential contender John McCain popped through the brown curtain separating the candidate and passenger sections of the Boeing 737 shortly after takeoff, carrying a plastic Halloween pumpkin filled with candy.
"Take one," she said repeatedly to staff and reporters as she and Sen. Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., walked the length of the aircraft, passing out an assortment of KitKat bars, Reese's peanut butter cups and Hershey's chocolate. Graham has been traveling with his Senate colleague recently.


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This is a non-partisan message...

Mark Harvey

Cheesecake has Halloween spirit

Cheesecake has Halloween spirit
By Steve Petusevsky South Florida Sun-Sentinel
October 21, 2004
This time of year I think of how my kids have grown up and how much I used to enjoy walking through my neighborhood to gather Halloween candy with them. But the allure of free candy has waned.

My daughter Sabrina, 19, is in college; Jared, 16, is almost out of high school.

The candy collection may be gone, but the spirit of Halloween lives on in my house. The past few years my daughter has come home from school around the beginning of November. She insists on making pumpkin cheesecake. I don't know where this tradition started. But I find it both a blessing and a curse.

Sabrina makes a huge cheesecake and tells me that she is on a diet. I, hating to waste a perfectly good cheesecake ... Well, you can guess the rest. Too bad she isn't as crazy about poached pears.

Click here to read the rest of the article.

Mark Harvey

Make Your Own Halloween Costume

Make Your Own Halloween Costume
By MARY LOU AGUIRRE McClatchy Newspapers
October 4, 2008
A glue gun, fabric, odds and ends plus a great imagination are all Tracy Bohren needs to create a photo-worthy Halloween costume. The Clovis, Calif., resident has been making homemade costumes for years.

The former craft-store employee says inspiration is as close as your closet. She shared her ideas on how to create inexpensive costumes as clever as those priced much higher in stores.

"The best advice I can give is start early," Bohren says. "Start at home. Once you have an idea for a costume, start thinking about what you can use that you already have. You can do a lot with an old white T-shirt."

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Mark Harvey

Scare tactics for your Halloween display

More articles from the WWW...

Scare tactics for your Halloween display

Never mind the Christmas junkies who fantasize about hanging icicle lights on Thanksgiving before the turkey is carved. They've got nothing on the Halloween freaks, in whose ranks, I confess, I am now permanently entrenched.

Long before Labor Day, I was making papier-mache witch heads, shopping online for everything from bat skeletons to glow-in-the-dark rubber brains, and scouring Internet chat groups for tips on how to make soil-less grave mounds.

It started out innocently with a few strings of pumpkin lights. Then I discovered the secondary market in anatomical displays. Medical-school skeletons with misaligned femurs don't get sent to the dust heap. They are marketed to "haunters," as do-it-yourself fright-makers are called.

In just a few short years, after frighteningly extensive Web surfing, I have acquired the Talmudic-like knowledge that distinguishes the haunter from the "stick a pumpkin on the porch and call it a holiday" homeowner. Click here to read the rest of the article...

Mark Harvey

Adults Stepping Up Halloween Celebrations And Spending

Good news folks (for our beloved holiday).... this news just in...

Halloween, it seems, is returning to its fifth century Celtic roots.

Back then it was adults, not children, who dressed in costumes to ward off the spirits bent on snatching their souls. Now, in the past few years, adults have increasingly begun reclaiming Halloween from the kids.That's turned out to be exceptionally good news for retailers. Even though the stock market lately is lot more scary than frolicking grown-ups dressed as witches or devils, people plan to spend more money than ever this year on Halloween, according to a survey by the National Retail Federation.

Consumers are expected to spend $6 billion on the holiday this year, an all-time high — $67 a person, on average, up from $65 last year.

And more adults than ever say they plan to celebrate — 65 percent, compared with 59 percent a year ago, the survey showed.

What gives? For months, consumers have been spooked by the economic downturn and have been cutting back on all types of spending. Retailers are bracing for dismal Christmas and holiday sales, projected to be the weakest since 1991.

But analysts are predicting a happy, prosperous Halloween.

"Halloween is fun. It's a 'throw away all your cares and be a kid again type of holiday.' People really need that, what with the stock market and Wall Street," said Pam Goodfellow, senior analyst at BIGresearch, a Worthington, Ohio-based consumer research firm.

So if you can't afford to cruise the high seas this year, you can at least dress like a pirate.

Click here for the rest of the story and CELEBRATE...it is THE thing to do!

Mark Harvey

(one person guaranteed to celebrate Halloween EVERY year)

Let The Countdown Begin!!!

Woo Hoo!!!

The Halloween Countdown has begun! My daughter said to me last night, "Daddy...tomorrow is the beginning of your favorite month of the year". Yesiree! So, I will try to post something Halloween related every day in October. I'll do my best, but I make no promises. Please visit the sites listed below and try not to overdose on the macabre, creepy, spooky, strange and bizarre. Jon at Random Acts of Geekery created the Halloween Countdown logo. If you have a blog and are featuring a month full of Halloween stuff, let the folks at Wonderful Wonderblog (click here) know and you will be added to the list.

Participating Blogs
All Eyes and Ears
Art by Bubba Shelby
Azathoth's Abode on the Plateau of Leng

Azathoth's Abode on the Plateau of Leng: The Dungeon
Branded in the 80's

Cool-Mo-Dee

Creepy Los Angeles
Dave Lowe Design!
Distinctly Jamaican Sounds
Dr. K's 100-Page Super Spectacular
Dr. Squid's Smorgasbord of Terror!

The Drunken Severed Head
Frankensteinia: The Frankenstein Blog
Geektarded
Halloween Addict
Harvey's Midnight Hour

Holiday Queen
Horror Host Graveyard
The Horrors of It All
John Rozum.com
Monster Crazy

Monster Memories!

Monster Rally

Monsters and More
Music From the Monster Movies 1950-69
Neato Coolville
Negative Pleasure
Nostalgia Factory

A Nostalgic Halloween

Oh The Horror
Orange and Black
Para Abnormal
Plaid Stallions

Pumpkin Hollow

Pumpkinrot

Random Acts of Geekery

The Sexy Armpit

Sweet Skulls

13 Visions

Tikiranch Hallows

Trixie's Treats

Universal Horror Sounds

Valhella

Vinnie Rattolie's Records

Weird Hollow

Wonderful Wonderblog

X Entertainment

Please be sure to visit 13thTrack.com Halloween Radio (click here) this season and enjoy the streaming music.

Happy Haunting!

Mark Harvey