Halloween Party 2012

Photo by Amy Robb

 

 

Another great party! This year's theme was prognostication (see our crystal ball invitations here).

 

We cast runes at the party, with surprisingly off-color results

 

 

In addition to our awesome fortune telling machine, we had three areas set up for tarot card reading, palm reading, and Ouija board.  Then at midnight we held a (very informal) seance.

We did tarot reading in the playhouse:

 

 

Lilli taught herself card reading in the days before the party and did an excellent job as our chief card reader.

The Ouija and seance tent:

 

Skull, a bundle of white sage for smudging away evil spirits, and some framed photos of seances from the early 20th century

I got the pattern for making the seance table from How to Haunt Your House.

The palm reading station and hookah lounge, in the far back corner of our yard:

 

Where Cliff proved to be an expert palm reader.

Michelle as the Bride of Frankenstein (with Donovan)

A blurry picture, but it cracks me up 

 Sam as a modern prognosticator, a NYSE trader

Beatrice and Melanie admiring the fire pit

Lilli as a Magic 8 Ball

 Monty as Carnac the Magnificent

Melissa as Melizza the Fortune Telling Machine

 

The kids' favors were little gold pouches filled with candy and toys and tied up with a "Lucky Penny" tag.

 

The adults' favors were cards with fortune telling fish attached.

Yes, I'm already thinking about the next Halloween party, but meanwhile we still have pumpkin carving, trick or treating, and a party at Beatrice's school left to enjoy this week. Happy Halloween!



Madame Cassandra, The Fortune Telling Machine

My favorite part of the party this year was the fortune telling machine we made.

Madame Cassandra is built from a mannequin housed in a glass-fronted cabinet, dressed and decorated with orange and purple globe lights, a purple lightbulb, silk fabric, a tablecloth, a crystal ball, tarot cards, a candle, and a skull.

Inside the cabinet is a card shoe loaded with fortunes.  When the button is pressed, a small rubber "finger" powered by a servo motor and a microcontroller reaches out and plucks the top card from the stack and drops it into the chute below.

Dev programmed the machine so that in resting mode the lit button slowly "breathes."  When the button is pressed, all the lights eerily jangle and flicker and the music starts up.  The music is a calliope rendition of Chopin's funeral march, "Trauermarsch," which we found here on YouTube.



Madame Cassandra in action:

The machine is loaded with approximately 300 fortune cards (I wrote a little more than 100 unique fortunes and printed three copies of each).  I was very pleased that the first fortune of the night was the simple message "Run."

 

 

Thank you, thank you so much to Amy Robb for finding the perfect thrift store cabinet and then dragging it home, to Sam Thompson and James Sarrett for staying up very late with Dev working on the programming, and to Lilli Thompson for helping me write the fortunes.

Halloween Village

After seeing several different Halloween villages for sale, I was inspired to make my own.  I wanted something that was genuinely scary, not childlike or cartoonish.

 

So I bought some papier-mache house forms from the craft store and spent a few evenings creating a village which, if I may say so, is about as scary as a paper village could ever be.  So much so, in fact, that I actually put it out of view of the children.

 

This one is built around antique photographs and letters, doilies, and lace.

The buildings are loosely themed, but mainly I just had fun gathering up the creepiest images and items I could find and combining them together.

This one is probably my favorite, the crypt.

The project also used up a lot of odds and ends I had left over from previous Halloween parties and crafts.   

 

Red sealing wax from last year's invitations

 

 

The "museum"

 

The "church" 

 

Assorted tombstones

 

Eventually I'll probably add some twisted wire trees and maybe some fallen leaves or other ground cover - and I can always add more houses, too, if inspiration strikes against next year.

With decorative gargoyle