Halloween Mood Table 2013

I wasn't sure Matt from Dinosaur Dracula was going to put together or post about a Halloween mood table this year, but I'm really glad he did. It has become an important tradition for me, even though I have only been doing it for a few years. So last night while listening to music that I consider to be seasonal and sipping apple cider, I put my Halloween mood table together as well.



Not a lot has changed. Same scarf and table I always use. There are speakers under the table again, so I can plug in my iPod anytime and blast the aforementioned music. This was probably the most exciting improvement last year, and it's still just as exciting. Trick Or Treat, Chickadee.

The werewolf figure is back weirding everyone out (or turning them on) with his tight, unbuttoned shorts.

Behind the werewolf is a half-eaten bag of Starburst candy corn. I really dislike regular candy corn, but it's such an iconic Halloween candy that I always feel like I'm missing out. This year, Starburst gave me another chance! I was afraid I still wouldn't like them, but they're not bad. But that's probably obvious from the fact that I ate half of them before October even started.

The LEGO minifigures are back, including last year's LEGO Dinosaur Dracula. But hold on, a new horrifying minifigure moved into Table Town. A glow in the dark ghost! It's such a classic figure, and it's from one of my favorite sets when I was a kid, Black Monarch's Ghost.



One obvious new addition is the adorable paper lantern. I actually got that last year late in the Halloween season and neglected to post about it. My sister bought three of them from a dollar store, kept one, and gave the other two to our cousin and me. Lantern buddies!



My sister's is the jack-o-lantern, our cousin's is the ghost, and of course mine is Frankenstein's monster.

Another new addition is two scented candles in jars that the same cousin mentioned above gave me. They're merchandise from the very Halloweeny movie The Nightmate Before Christmas, and each candle has different art on its label, which is very cool. The scents are Mountain Berry and Black Cherry.

Halloween Mood Table 2012

Happy October! It's the 1st of the month, and I set up my Halloween mood table today. I got the idea from X-Entertainment several years back and last year was my first experience setting up my own. The Halloween mood table was also the post today on Dinosaur Dracula, the spiritual successor to X-Entertainment, which is in the middle of its first Halloween Countdown. If you're unfamiliar with the concept of a Halloween mood table, you can read about it there.

My table this year is a big improvement over last year's, and I imagine it will continue to get more awesome every year as I develop and hone my mood table skills. I again used the coffee table that I regularly have in my room, so during the Halloween season I am without a regular coffee table. As I'm sure you can see, it's clearly worth the temporary sacrifice.

I had the collectable LEGO minifigures on the table last year, but this year the Dracula is a Dinosaur Dracula. The Halloween takeout containers housed prizes I won for my GERTY costume 2 years ago, and I thought the containers were cool. Mmm, blog continuity...

There's a stack of season-appropriate DVD's, a skull candle holder, and Batman: Haunted Knight. I know Krang and Edward Scissorhands don't have anything to do with Halloween, but I knew they wanted to be in on the fun, and I think they fit right in. Pumpkin Pie and Spookylicious Pop-Tarts complete the ensemble. Oh, and there's the purple lights and the table cloth, which is actually a fancy scarf of mine.

A pretty special addition to the table this year is a pair of old computer speakers hidden underneath, which can be easily plugged into my iPod to play Halloween music like "Dead Man's Party" by Oingo Boingo,  "Halloween" by Glass Candy, and the All Hallow's EP by AFI.

UPDATE: Check out this entry to see a few more additions to the table.

Dinosaur Dracula's Halloween Countdown

I wrote about the X-Entertainment Halloween Countdown two years ago. This past summer, the creator of X-Entertainment, Matt, launched a new website called Dinosaur Dracula. It's basically the spiritual successor to X-Entertainment, but is clearly an improvement due to the recently hatched vampiric Tyrannosaurus rex (I love that I know how to spell that without having to look it up or even think about it) that the site has for a mascot.

Since it's early September, any reasonable human being could have expected this... Dinosaur Dracula's Halloween Countdown started recently, and since the site is new, this is its first ever Halloween Countdown. That's something pretty special. It has the renewed energy and magic of the new site, but since there have been so many Halloween Countdowns on X-Entertainment, Matt has had plenty of practice. And you know what they say about practice.

After seeing the Dinosaur Dracula action figure that Matt made in his post about Matchbox Con-Nec-Tors and seeing that he compared the toys to LEGO, I was inspired to make this LEGO version of Dinosaur Dracula.

I combined parts from the Collectable Minifigure Lizard Man and Vampire, and had to find one extra piece to complete it: a black minifigure head to go under the dinosaur mask. Matt mentioned in the Con-Nec-Tors post that despite the fact that one of the figures is an obvious Dracula, they called it a Vampire. Well, you may have noticed that the same goes for that LEGO minifigure. He's called Vampire, but he's obviously Dracula. These toy companies can't fool us.

I hope you enjoyed my LEGO Dinosaur Dracula. I know I enjoy it. Check out Dinosaur Dracula's Halloween Countdown. At this point, you don't have too much catching up to do.