Alien O’Lanterns Have Landed!

Saturday, October 30, 2010 in Decorating, Home

Not gonna lie, here. I had a heck of a time coming up with a Jack O’Lantern idea this year.

Last year, my choice of Owl O’Lantern was clear – my obsession with owls had hit an all-time high, so creating my own rotund orange number was a no brainer.

This year, I just wasn’t feeling any cute animals. For some weird reason, I kept coming back to aliens.

About halfway into creating this little bugger, my guy said it looked like a cute little alien pet. Perfect! There must be adorable animals on other planets, too!

His head is a plain old carving pumpkin, his eyes a couple of little gourds held up with tape-covered sharpies (just a plain old sharp drill bit makes perfect holes), his body a sugar pumpkin originally intended for pumpkin puree (hopefully it’ll keep). His feet are made of a pear cut lengthwise and his tail is the stem from the spaceship squash (a winter squash I cannot for the life of me identify, and it’s driving me crazy). He was actually one of the easiest Jack O’Lanterns I’ve ever made – score! Years ago, my friend Vix created her own alien with Sharpie-colored lightbulbs as the eyeballs – brilliant!

I’ve never seen an alien pet with a five o’clock shadow before, but no matter.

I had to create a little spaceship accompaniment – not easy with a bunch of squash. In a moment of desperation, I plopped an orange LED-lit candle on top of the mystery squash. Hmm. Maybe. I then stuck a zucchini end in the top. Closer. The flag topper I threw together and threw on there makes it happen, I think.

My guy got in on the alien action with his own big-eyed number.

And so, Alien O’Lanterns have landed at the Bloom house. We even cut some alien silhouettes out of cheap black poster board for the windows, and are incredibly tempted to pipe some extraterrestrial-sounding music outside for trick-or-treaters. What we really need is a multi-colored strobe light…

Have I mentioned I’m a dork? (Did I even need to?)

A few other random Halloween tidbits…

That show-off Todd painted another neat number this year. Mustacherrific!

Need a good scare? Check out this list of the very best horror movies out there from my friends over at the Box Office Prophets. Trust these guys. They know their stuff.

I love this cute fuzzy spider (and I hate spiders). We have several all over the house.

I wrapped Christmas presents last night. Okay, just two, and they’re for the costumes Vix and I are wearing to a party tonight. Step 1: A fake hole on the box.

Should be… interesting.