A big effort for my last Halloween party for a while....but why?!

Halloween really is a great time of year. I have partaken in it many times and have got to know the shops that really get this holiday. B&M is one of them. They are so good I feel somewhere in the business chain there has been some American influence..maybe the buyers? I don't know. All I know is they are my go to place for new creepy things.

This was trolley 1 the day I went in the store.

But that one got full quick. So this is trolley 2!

At the time I thought I was maybe going a bit nuts but they really did have some fab stuff in that year. I felt a lot better though when an older lady went past me and commented on how full my trolley was. I commented on hers too as it was equally as full. She told me that was nothing. This was her 3rd trolley of the day and she had already been in other B&M's that week too!! She is my kind of person for sure!

This guy for me was the find of the year. I love him so much!

This was the final haul of that day. Mainly things from B&M but I also some from Poundland too.

Then it came to decorating the house. Now we are in a bigger house there is a lot more floor space to decorate; up and down. Hence why the shop to you drop style haul.

This spider web works so well and only uses black wool and drawing pins. So simple to do and you feel like you are the spider making the web in the process. I just pinned up four long pieces of string crossing over each other, tied one end of the wool ball in the middle and preceded to make my way carefully out to the edges, wrapping around the taught wool strings as I went.

The garden got decorated too with the limbs of ol' skelly again and some gravestones.

I LOVE this effect. A little bit of BluTak on each ants underside, put them in a line and they looks amazing. I keep thinking I might buy more ants to have a really long line of them following one around around the place, but the few I used here worked well on the door frame.

Also another cool thing to do. Cotton wool balls in a Mason jar or jam jar, a couple of fake spiders around the outside and chuck in a large activated glow-stick into the middle.

This was a decoration it tried to design myself. In this picture it looks like it worked but I can tell you given time, it goes bad! I poured some slime into this bottle and then put it on its side to look like its poison from inside is spilling out. Sadly if you leave slime it just goes hard and stains things. So when I can to take down the decorations it was pretty hard to clean up. Looks cool though.

This is our Entrance Hall and I love to decorate this part of my house the most for any holiday. I really lends itself to lots of decorations.

The bit in the middle is our boiler and I hate that its the first thing people see when they come to our house. So any excuse to make it part of the fun, I'm in!

At the same time as I was decorating this bad-boy arrived. I had him posted to work in case I missed his delivery and we had a fun day having him sat next to us in the office. We found him one of the Presenters ties to make him really look the part. His name is Jeff.

My partner bought me a projector and screen from AtmosFX in this year. It has been a game changer for me decorations wise and this below animation I think is my favorite of all the ones they do. I was using the AtmosFX projector elsewhere in the house but I borrowed on from work and set about adjusting these fellow until their faces fell right onto the surface of the pumpkins. I love these as they remind me so much of the Singing Busts that can be found in The Haunted Mansion in the Disney Parks (or Phantom Manor at Disneyland Paris).

Get it here: www.atmosfx.com/collections/halloween/products/jack-o-lantern-jamboree

I had the grand idea of decorating my car for this particular Halloween year. I didn't realize until I had done it however that I wouldn't be able to use my car for the 3 days I wanted it to be decorated for. It looked amazing with Jeff sat inside, lit up at night by a strobe light, but I was glad we had another car I could use.

Although this is a super bad quality picture of the Front door of my house this is how I decorated it. You can see the wreath I made, hanging on the door. I also added webbing to the ceiling of the porch, some lanterns with candles in hanging up at the front, and an amazing plastic chunky chain hung like bunting over the door. You can see the other projector in our kitchen window with another AtmosFX video running.

I decorated each window of the front of our house with orange lights. They are all battery powered which is a pain to keep switching on and off but I do like the look.

Here are a few videos of the overall look of the front of the house.

I went to a Halloween event locally, at a Dinosaur Park no less. Its done at night once the park is shut and is an over 18+'s event; similar to the

Knott's Scary Farm ( www.knotts.com/events/scary-farm ) or other American Haunted Hay-Ride style events. We have one really big one here in the UK called

Tulley's Shocktober Fest (www.shocktoberfest.co.uk ). I haven't been but would love to some day. Its looks really good! The one we went to is called

PrimeEvil ( www.primevil-scare.com ) and is really excellent. I have been most years, barr one so far. This year I wanted to go in a scarecrow outfit but realised the day of it I would be allowed to wear the mask that goes with it. So I donned some pretty spooky makeup instead.

This was the whole costume.

Through the years my pets have always very amenable to costume and this year was no exception. Ninja was dressed a little Dracula cat.

The day of the party arrived and I started making all the party food. My partner works offshore so was not around to help this time so I thought about doing a lot less things for it...but that's not my style.

These eggs are a really cool effect and I got the idea from a Pinterest post about how to make dragon eggs. I adapted the color a bit to try and make them look more like rotting eggs but the method is still the same. Hard boil the eggs then start to lightly crack them but don't peel. Then place in a bag with some water and food coloring of your choice and leave for a few hours. When they are done peel away the shells and you are left with this effect. Amazing!!

Once I had done that to the outside of the eggs I cut them in half and preceded to follow the below recipe to make these rotten looking eggs. The seeds really do make it look like they are crawling with bugs. Bleurgh!

Try it here: www.parentingchaos.com/deliciously-rotten-deviled-eggs

Love my attempt at eyeball cake pops. They didn't come out how I liked but I know why. The white I did by melting Wilton Candy Melts but they didn't silkily en robe the cake pop balls and came out a little messy. Maybe next time I will use white chocolate and dip them twice. They still look cool though.

Try it here: www.bakerella.com/eye-popping

This was the completed buffet table. I really didn't take enough pictures of what I made but I am super happy at how it all looks. Especially under the UV light. If you can see at the back on the left was a mixture of Tonic water and Kool Aid Grape Clear. I did this because under UV light Tonic water glows...spoooooky!

This was my outfit for the evening: Spiderella.

I thought I had better go all out for this one as well it was going to be my last big party for a while. The reason: I was expecting a BABY!