The next 3 days or so is the final rush for online Halloween shopping, so retailers are offering some good deals. Costumes are flying off the shelves too, so if you don’t have your costume yet then you need to either buy RIGHT NOW or plan to wear a DIY get-up. I did some online shopping this morning and had an eerily perfect experience, but I’ll save the details for after the deals and coupons below. Some of them expire this weekend, so don’t wait!
Extremely Time-Sensitive Deals
- Fright Catalog: Same day shipping on most orders placed by Noon EST. Variable shipping costs. Place an order of $50 or more TODAY (October 21st, 2006) and receive 2 R.I.P. Rewards cards worth $10 each for future purchases of $40 or more (details here).
- Buy Costumes: $0.99 FedEx Ground shipping and $5.99 FedEx Express shipping for orders over $60. Expires Sunday October 22, at 11:00 P.M. CST. Not sure which shipping method you will need? Check their handy “order by” chart.
- Hot Topic: 50% off all pre-packaged costumes. Orders must be received by Monday, October 23rd to arrive by Halloween.
More Great Deals
So this is the first year that Sean and I are buying our costumes (here are some of our past homemade costumes). Buy Costumes is always our first choice for online Halloween shopping, but the costume I wanted had been out of stock during the critical time of Oct 12th until this morning. When I woke up and saw an e-mail alert that was a mere 15 minutes old, I scrambled to place my order before my costume sold out again. The product page noted that every other size was sold out for the season and only my size was available. No pressure or anything. I placed my order as fast as I could, and afterwards the costume page was noted as being “sold out for the season”. Wow, I got the last one! Fast forward 4.5 hours and I just received my shipment confirmation e-mail, ensuring that I’ll have my outfit in time for the costume party I will be attending on the 28th. Now that’s Halloween magic.
We just got word of an excellent shipping promotion going on over at BuyCostumes. Starting today and only lasting 6 days, Oct 7-12, they are offering $0.99 shipping on all orders over $30. If you don’t know already, BuyCostumes has more costumes than your local costume shop without all the crowds. So avoid the traffic and have your costume delivered for under a dollar before it’s too late.
Target.com is also offering a great shipping deal on Halloween costumes. You get free shipping on all costumes purchased online from now until October 14th. We went to a few local Target stores on the first of October and they were already sold out of a bunch of Halloween items. They have some nice decor items that look like they will sell out real quick as well. So hurry and buy online while the shipping is free and the best stuff is in stock.
Buy.com is also pushing their Halloween section with up to 50% off their selection of costumes, toys, scary movies, and more. There are some scary movie box sets that look pretty appetising with this added discount. These deals die on October 31st. In addition to this up to 50% off deal Buy.com is offering $10 off any purchase of $30 if you use Google Checkout to buy the item(s).
Check back later for some more Halloween steals and deals as it becomes closer and closer to the night we’re all dying for.
Oh, the many delicious facets of Halloween. While adults may spend days deciding how to spend their Halloween night (costume party? haunt? trick or treat chaperone?), most kids can immediately tell you what their plans entail: collecting and devouring as much candy as humanly possible.
We at 365 Halloween fall into a small minority when it comes to our candy policy; we don’t give any out. Yes, we’re the hippie neighbors that many kids scowl at while watching fruit strips, boxes of raisins, and stickers plop into their candy sacks. But one peek into those bulging bags of sugar and we know they won’t miss one mini Snickers bar. On average, most Americans consume 142 pounds of sugar per year, and given the scientific data on sugar consumption and the symptoms everyone can feel for themselves, we’d rather focus on other aspects of Halloween and give out healthy treats.
Since other Halloweenies out there in Interwebland have already plunged head first into this season’s newest candies, we’ll leave the reviews to them. X-Entertainment has a 2 part series, and as usual, Matt never disappoints. I-Mockery reviews over 30 varieties of candy which is a whopping 3 pages long. Your afternoon is spent if you sit down for these 2 entire articles. For a shorter read with some fun animations, Jason has written his personal thoughts on this year’s haul.
What are your thoughts on giving out candy for Halloween? Do you give out the usual treats, opt for something healthier, give out non-edibles, or give nothing at all? We’re definitely going to have an article about low-sugar alternatives to passing out candy, so check back for that in a few days.
Etsy is the handmade little sister to eBay, and around fall the selection of DIY goodies takes on a decidedly darker tone. Think of the transformation that Martha Stewart undergoes during October; less kountry kitchen and more haunted house. There’s always a small availability of spooky items year-round, but right now Etsy is brimming with them. Artists like Nanny Norton stock their shops with handmade items like the art print entitled “Father and Son Pumpkin Under the Harvest Moon“. More unconventional mediums such as felt are utilized by Beesocks in creating decorative pieces like Mr and Mrs Frank N Stein Felt People. The site is really a mixed bag, and aside from the criteria of everything being handmade, you’re never sure what you’ll find when searching for Halloween themed items.
Charlie the Halloween Ghost Art Doll made by artfreak is 8.5″ tall and could make a great centerpiece for your mantle, Halloween village, or other holiday display. He joins other Halloween dolls like FrankenLobster and the creepy-cute cats and bats from blacklilypie. But Etsy artists create more Halloween decor than just dolls; Allen Kaperak bottles Disembodied Tongues, Trollflings creates mini Halloween trees and cyclops pumpkin pins, mirrorgirl makes coasters from vintage Halloween ephemera, and Sneddonia creates intricate spiderwebs and luminaries from copper.
If you’ll be attending or throwing any parties where there will be gift or candy bags, Nycole’s set of Halloween gift tags will be the memorable finishing touch. Just like your guests, each one is a little different. If you want something cute for you and your little monsters to wear during the season, check out the bat print bibs by Chenille Boutique.
There are many traditions that we begin on October 1st, and decorating our computers is one of the easier ones. A quick online search and you can convert your desktop and chat program into a spooky experience that evokes Halloween spirit all month long. After Sean created us some amazing banners, I was feeling inspired and decided to make a few buddy icons for 365 Halloween readers. The larger sized ones are compatible with Yahoo Instant Messenger and MSN Instant Messenger, while the smaller ones are geared towards AIM and Trillian users. Of course, you’re free to use them as a message board avatar, on your MySpace, on your website, etc. Just be sure to right-click and “Save As” rather than trying to hotlink, and do not redistribute.
But what if evil clowns, wild-eyed pumpkins, and candycandycandy aren’t your thing? I spent a good chunk of time today scouring websites for the best free Halloween icons (both buddy icons and desktop icons) and came up with a few great sites. A lot of what’s available online is fairly hideous, so you can save a lot of time by just heading straight here:
Pixelgirl Presents (desktop icons)- The absolute best. These are beautiful, high quality designs, and there are lots of icon sets. You have to browse through all holiday themed sets, but the section isn’t too huge so it’s worth it. You get even more choices if you’re on a Mac.
Icon Factory (desktop icons)- A close second, with several equally well designed icon sets. Very creative, and again, more selection if you’re on a Mac.
Icon Archive (desktop icons)- Several cute sets, with Hide’s Halloween being the best.
Acme Icon (buddy icons)- There are 7 funny icons that you can customize, and there is a nifty “IM your icon to a buddy” feature.
Iconator (buddy icons)- You’ll have to wade through a lot of the aforementioned hideous icons here, but this is the largest selection and there are some good styles.
Do you have an icon site to recommend? What are your favorite Halloween-related desktop icon sets?
It may be a little early for some of you, but we’ve got a couple spooky listening suggestions to put you in the Halloween mood. Music and broadcasts with a creepy, horror theme to them are part of a small but growing genre. Rue Morgue Radio claims to be “the world’s original all horror broadcast”, and at just over 2 years old it appears to still be leading the way. From their parent company, Rue Morgue Magazine (around since Halloween 1997), RMR features music, film and other art with a horror theme. Every Friday you’ll hear music from the likes of the Misfits, Barnes & Barnes, Alice Cooper, and Midnight Syndicate and interviews with notable horror movie makers and writers. There are also excerpts and trailers from movies (both new and old), and reviews of horror movies from a duo called The Caustic Critics. Like any podcast, some episodes are much better than others, but it’s an overall excellent broadcast that we tune into every week.
One of the bands featured several times on RMR is Creature Feature, a 2 piece band from Ventura, California that makes us squirm with delight! The first thought that popped into our heads as “The Greatest Show Unearthed” began playing was an easy, if incomplete, comparison. Creature Feature sounds like the soundtrack to a Tim Burton movie. Their lyrics read like one of his poems, and the mood and tone are of the same casual insanity. But beyond the lack of pretense and seemingly perfect aptitude for all things macabe, Creature Feature posesses a greater flexability. Of the 4 songs available on their MySpace page (their website is in the works), we hear promises of dark fun with a price, light-hearted nursery rhyme style obituaries, a tense zompocalypse narration, and a first person kidnapping plot with some genuinly creepy moments. Needless to say, we’re in love. Creature Feature will be playing in October in San Diego and we’re planning on doing a blog post about the show, so tune in next month for more on Curtis Rx and Erik X, aka Creature Feature.