Last Tuesday, Carol and I appeared on Paula Sands Live, a show out of Davenport, Iowa, to plug Margi’s eBook, A Frightfully Frugal Halloween. We had two, four-minute segments: one to show Halloween decorations and one to show and demonstrate Halloween treats. I did the decorations; Carol did the food. Sands asked us to provide promo pictures, bring and demonstrate the food and decorations, and show copies of our eBooks. Sound easy? Well, it was a lot of work!
For Carol, it meant that she would need to make everything twice—once for the promo shots about 10 days before and again for on-air. (And, if she made a mistake, that would mean making it three times.) For me, it meant spending an afternoon shopping for gourds and pumpkins at Miller’s Farmer’s Market, then combining them with decorations either left over from last year, or bought or made as inexpensively as possible. Then Margi and I made a scary “dude and dudette”—life-size “monsters” that you’d place on your front porch to greet trick-or-treaters—and it took most of an entire day. But they turned out way too cute and not at all scary, so back to the drawing board I went. Three hours and a lot of ideas later—voila!—Scary Dude.
Here are pictures of some of the projects we showed on Paula Sands Live:
I love these Spider Web Cupcakes, and they’re surprisingly easy and inexpensive to make. Hint: The spider is made from three gumdrops.
What would a Halloween party be without Blood Soup with Floating Eyeballs, or eyeballs staring back at you from your plate?
No Halloween is complete without a black cat somewhere. You don’t have to be an artist to “draw” this kitty on your cake.
Every Halloween party needs a Boneyard Dessert, complete with worms, tombstones, ghosties, and gummy skeletons.
Then there are decorations: a $1 skull with a purple, sparkly ribbon, draped in a spider web; a few kernels of candy corn strewn on a black tablecloth makes a festive and frugal decoration.
In a basket of small gourds—the uglier and wartier the better—a serpent gourd peaks through the Indian corn and sticks out his tongue.
And last but not least, meet Scary Dude. He is made of old clothes stuffed with pillows, newspapers and towels. The head is a plastic colander covered with a black stocking, and he is wearing a hat. On TV, a raven perched on top of his hat.
All in all, the show was great fun. Sands made us feel comfortable and tamed the flip-flops, and it was exciting to see some of the ideas in A Frightfully Frugal Halloween come to life.
Instructions for these projects and more can be found in A Frightfully Frugal Halloween, for sale now at http://www.frugallivingpress.com/.
—Alice Rose Kieft
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