Halloween

Hello, Beautiful!

I'm a little sad that Halloween is over, but I'm happy to get back to work on all the great new inventory for ValentineKisses.com! If all goes as planned the new inventory will be up on the website by Wednesday night.

Halloween for us was fun! Although I'm a little disappointed with the costume contest in town tonight.... or should I say, lack thereof! On the event flyer it said there would be a costume contest, however nobody seemed to know where or when it would be. We asked the police department (who were basically running the event and had a huge set-up at the event). They had no idea when or where. They told us to ask the fire fighters, which we did and they had no idea. They told us to ask the magician at the gazebo (which was the center of the event). We asked the magician and guess what? He had no idea too and told me that nobody told him anything and the person running the event was nowhere to be found.

Another disappointment was how lazy the store owners were this year compared to previous years. You see, this event is in town on Main Street. There are stores on both sides of the street and they block off the road so kids can safely trick-or-treat. Usually they stand outside of their stores to hand out candy, making it easier for everyone to stay in a line. However this year 98% of them were inside their stores, requiring everyone to walk in. I can understand that maybe they were thinking "people will walk in and want to shop", but really the kids just want candy and no parent is going to stop to shop when their kid wants to keep trick-or-treating! Plus, people push and shove and rush people so who even has time to stop and look at anything?

My son's costume is large, heavy, and on wheels. Getting it in and out of the stores just wasn't a realistic option for us. Most of the stores only have one door to enter and exit and with how people push, shove and squeeze in and out of those stores it would never work for us. So unfortunately my son didn't get a lot of candy there (which isn't a huge deal because he has enough at home). He just loves the attention he gets with the costume :)

Below are some photos of his costume. He was a vending machine for zombies. I even went as far as making a fake company name, "Zombie Snacks". I custom made most of the snacks in the machine - like the Zombie Soda, Breakfast Fingers Cereal, and jar of Blood & Guts.

The "Thank You" flap (where you'd normally take your vending machine selection) is where people put the candy. The buttons to make the selections are made from an old computer keyboard. I just spray painted them and then drew the numbers on with a nail polish pen. I made the dollar and coin parts out of bubble wrap insulation, wood, and plastic. The entire frame is made of wood with lots of cardboard on top. The window in the vending machine is a thin piece of plexi glass. The top and back of the costume is open so there is plenty of air.



The vending selections were:

A 1: Brain

A 2: Human Head

A 3: Zombie Soda - Blood Type AB Negative

B 1: Freshly Sliced Human Hand

B 2: Breakfast fingers Cereal

B 3: Zombie Soda - Blood Type O Negative

C 1: Spider Doritos

C 2: Blood & Guts

C 3: Freshly Chopped Human Arm

My husband once again let me play around with makeup and I make him look like he was run over by a car. This was supposed to only be the trial run (meaning the first time I tried this look on him), but because I ran out of time this was how he went out tonight.

[For the tire treads I used a Wet n Wild Kohl Eyeliner in Black to draw out each shape (Wet n Wild's Kohl Eyeliner will be available on ValentineKisses.com for $0.75 each - we have several shades that will be available). Then I used Wet n Wild Fantasy Makers Enchanting Body Wand (which is a creamy pencil) in Black (this crayon/pencil will be available on ValentineKisses.com for $0.99 each). I used a brush to blend and smudge.]

[For the blood/bruises I used Wet n Wild's Fantasy Makers Enchanting Body Wand in Red and in Black (they will be available on ValentineKisses.com for $0.99 each). I just applied with a brush and blended with my fingers.]

I hope everyone had a great Halloween! I'd love to hear what you dressed up as! :)

Also...

I want to thank everyone for entering our October Daily Give-Away! We started out with a small amount of entries per contest at the beginning of the month (with around only 30 to 40 entries per contest), but as the month went on the amount of entries grew (up to 253 entries per contest)! I'm thrilled with the great response we had to our October Daily Give-Away!

Reminders about our October Daily Give-Away:

Winners will be selected and notified within the first two weeks of November.

We'll attempt to contact the potential winners up to three times. The first and second attempt will be by email; the third attempt will be by phone. We email and/or call you to the email address/phone number you provided on your contest entry form. If you entered our contest during the stage that we only accepted blog comments and email entries, we will contact you a total of three times - all by email. Please keep a look out for an email from us!

You will have 7 days from the initial contact to reply back to claim your prize. If you fail to reply back within 7 days, or if we are unable to reach you within 7 days, your prize will be forfeited and an alternate winner will be selected.

You have not officially won any contest until you submit a Prize Claim Confirmation Email (PCCE). The PCCE simply confirms all the information you submitted on your contest entry form. Once your PCCE is sent to us we will be able to process and ship your prize.

Prizes will ship out within 4 weeks from the time we receive your PCCE. Prizes may ship out via USPS Priority Mail or USPS First Class Mail. We will email you to confirm we have shipped your prize so you can look for it in the mail. We do not replace or re-send any prize that was damaged during shipment, or that is lost during shipment.