Debby! Thank you so much for my halloween box! I love it all, most especially the sweet note. You and I have been having similar weather and doing the same things with our days. I am getting a few beds rearranged before the bad weather hits and taking advantage of these beautiful warm days! Deb Sent... Oktoberfest Iris (a brilliant orange bloom) Parrot Tulips (creamy base that has deep pink/peach tips) Red Magic Daylily Red Tulips Black Prince Snapdragon Seeds (Gorgeous! I will definitely be wintersowing these!) Gypsy Queen Hyacinths Queen of the Night Tulips The kids loved the metal spider basket and the Planet Earth Books! They are bugging me to go pick up some candy to fill the basket and confiscated the books as soon as I pulled them out of the box. lol. They'll have to wait on the candy till they work for it going door to door. :o) You made my day with all the bulbs. Mine disappeared on me. Dug up the one bed to re-do the border and divided the bulbs and only found one sad little bulb in all that dirt I sifted through. Thank you so much for everything. I will be planting like a happy little gardener tomorrow. Good luck with your bed by the mailbox. My neighbor across the street has her's surrounded by a stone border and has lots of lamb's ear, alliums, tulips, and some type of mounding grass. It looks great every year even with the snow plows dumping heavy snow and spreading salt in the winter. So Ta DA! One more masquerading petal pusher has been revealed! Thank you Vic, this has been a blast!

Well, I've been watching a lot of Food Network this morning and they seem to be making lots of dishes with garlic. Since it's so close to Halloween I wondered how the whole garlic and vampire thing came into being. Some people believe that the association of garlic warding off vampires has to do with bug or animal bites. One is rabies. You can get rabies from any animal bite from an animal that has rabies. Remember Cujo (Stephen King) getting rabies from the bat? Anyway, I guess if you have rabies you become fixated on certain scents. One of them being garlic. Another theory is that of mosquito bites. Since mosquitos suck blood, they fly and can be warded off be garlic, it's not a difficult jump to vampires (if you have a vivid imagination.) Anyway, here's a little more info! Here is a link that might be useful: Garlic & Vampires

Welcome Azzalea! Oh my, what a FUN thing to do!! A Halloween Party in AUG. Love it! Sounds like all of you made such cute things as well as had a great time. (age is irrelevant for things like this.) I have the same problem as Party and Seas...no one to do stuff with. They are all HERE on the Forum and Janie must've lost the bus keys to pick us up and head for your place! :o) I have a feeling it would be so neat to meet you. I'm glad you joined us here, tho, and hope you can post pictures. hugs, Karen

Oooo...another Halloween party enthusiest! Enough to make me come out of lurkdom for awhile... Great theme! We have a themed Halloween party every year, themed costumes are required (I think it actually makes it easier for people, because they have an idea to start with). And no, our guests don't seem to have a problem with it, we just give helpful hints in our invitations, and we normally have next year's theme picked out ahead of time. This year we're doing a pirate theme...all of our guests were informed of that at last year's "Hollywood Academy of the Undead Awards" party. Our 2009 them is going to be a medieval theme - we get a little ahead of ourselves sometimes. ;-) Some great suggestions so far, and don't forget to start saving cardboard boxes to make pyramids with (a large one out on the lawn that you have to walk through to get to the front door would be very striking and mood-setting)! I guess it depends on what you prefer...my hubby likes "scary" better, so our decorations normally have some sort of gore factor to them. If you lean towards that, you need some clear jars for "canopic" (spelling?) jars...to hold the organs of the dead (in the pyramids). Otherwise opague jars labeled will work just as well. Heiroglyphs on the walls would be a nice touch, along with eyes watching from behind things (think glow in the dark paint). As for your costume, how about you going as a mummy! Tear up some old sheets, stain them with tea (and a little fake blood, if you like), and have your hubby wrap you up. Or "wrap" some old clothes to make them a "mummy suit", then just make yourself a head piece and booties to match. You could be one of Egypt's animal gods too...a bird, or a cat, something they worshipped. But don't let your size stop you from finding a great Isis costume or something - those flowing dresses make anyone look good, really. Sandals, a head piece and some jewelrey would finish it off. Food...I'd probably go with some organ molds & jello and/or cakes, but like I said, we do "gross". Our normal halloween fare is a "serve your own" chili bar, with all the fixings, lots of desserts (witches fingers, chocolate eyeball truffles, etc), and a full bar with a "signature" drink. Last year's was the martini (since we were all supposed to be TV or Movie stars or characters), this year we'll pick something to fit with our pirate theme (a rum-based drink). I normally have punch with dry ice in it to fog it up too. I'd do a search for "Egyptian Halloween" and see what pops up. Go through web sites and see what everyone has to offer for egyptian theme parties, and you'll be surprised at how many ideas you'll end up with (too many to pull off, no doubt). If you have a basement, perhaps you'd want to decorate that as if you were descending into a pyramid, with treasures and a large sarcophogus down there? We used fake torches to light our basement stairs for our goth party one year, so it was like descending into a vampire's lair... Just a few ideas - can't wait to see what you come up with! Fun theme! :-)