I'd buy that for a dollar!

Between stores not putting out as much as they used to, and moving to a part of the country that doesn't seem to celebrate the holiday as much as everywhere else, it really seems like it's getting harder and harder to try and find new Halloween decorations that are of interest to me. Even with that being said, I still enjoy the thrill of the hunt, even if I do leave empty handed more often than not.

This season really didn't start of well, it began with trips to multiple different Dollar General's (only because they're so prevalent here), which not surprisingly, yielded absolutely nothing. A couple of them had a decent amount of stuff for sale, the problem was, it was all just crap.

I then tried Walmart, which I knew would be pointless, and it was.

Next up was Big Lots, Ha! Terrible selection.

How about K-Mart? Overpriced and uninteresting.

Hobby Lobby had an almost overwhelming selection, that is if you like glitter on everything.

Target? They're aren't any around here.

All was starting to look lost, until about two weeks ago, when I went in to one of few and far between Dollar Tree's. Aah, finally, a place that gets it! This particular location that I was at had an incredible selection, and of course being a Dollar Tree, the prices were spooktacular (sorry, I had to get that in).

So other than the masks I posted about last week, everything seen here today represents the whole of my 2017 Halloween retail purchases.

These goblets are really fantastic, although trying to find a couple that weren't all scratched up was kind of pain. After seeing these, my mom suggested putting LED tea lights in them, which I intend to try once I get some LED tea lights. I picked up a couple more of these went I back a few days later.

Try as I might, I just couldn't get a decent picture of this raven skeleton, so you'll just have to take my word when I say that it looks far better in person.

This picture of the back came out a little better. It's not uncommon to find these plastic animal skeletons for sale around Halloween time in recent years, but they always seem to be overpriced (in my mind at least), so to find this one for only $1 seemed like a real bargain. This is what you, or rather I, call a "year round decoration".

Standing around 5" tall, and made of nice thick plastic, this ghost has a lot going on for only a $1. He's got a motion sensor, that when activated, sets off not only a sound (song?) that I can't describe in writing (you'd know it though), but also a multi-colored light emanating from within.

They had three different LED paper lanterns available, I got the spider nest, and the pumpkin. I can't remember what the third one was, but it didn't look all that interesting.

Here's a better look at it once it's set up.

And the pumpkin once it was actually set-up. These things are far from perfect, construction wise, but they don't look too bad at night...

My phone doesn't like taking pictures under near dark conditions, but you can still get a general sense of how they look in the dark.

Got a graveyard you need to enclose? Try these nifty fence posts. Coming in packs of two, you've got your choice of...

... bats, or...

... or spiders.

 

I was bit surprised to see three different jointed cutouts among this year's offerings, as it feels like it has been a couple of years since I have seen any for sale. And of course, I had to buy all three.

And here's the mummy after he's risen from his plastic tomb. To me, he looks more like an androgynous zombie covered in bandages, which is a little disappointing, but there's always got to be at least one thing that doesn't end up looking as good as you thought it would.

The cardboard on these is a little flimsy, which means that they appear to bend/crease easily, so I had to do a bit of digging to find a couple that weren't damaged. On the plus side though, they are around five feet tall, so they do create somewhat of a presence.

At the time I took all these pictures, I hadn't opened the reaper skeleton yet, but you can still get an idea of what it looks like from the image on the package.

All three cutouts were on the same hook/rod, which meant I hat to take all 40-50 of them off when trying to find the non bent ones. This one was buried (pun?) behind the other two, and once uncovered, I could not believe my eyes when I saw Yvonne De Carlo looking back at me!  It's been two weeks, and I still can't believe the designer(s) of these cutouts would have, in 2017, used her likeness for a decoration.

After a very quick search, I believe this to be the image that was used to get this:

Stunning, absolutely stunning! I picked up four of these, one for year round display, and three as back-ups.

I don't want to take her out of the package until we get moved back to the other house, so here's another grainy picture from the package.

So all in all, this turned to be a pretty decent Halloween haul. Many thanks to Dollar Tree, as they were, at least for this year, my last hope.

                

Thanks for taking a moment to look at my page.