The D.I.Y. Halloween Contest for Halloween 2007 starts now!

4Seasons Halloween Holiday Store is located HERE. Shop for unique costumes HERE.

Child Deluxe Dinosaur Costume * Adult Sexy Fairy Costume * Adult Plus Premium Vampire Costume * Adult Premium Gothic Vampire * Bunting Fireman Costume * Bunting Policeman Costume * Bunting lil Soldier * Child Punk Skeleton Girl Costume

Searching for great Halloween information and news, the Holiday Netter reports a great Do it Yourself contest from Makezine.com. It includes a great way to interact with a great community of Halloween enthusiasts who are working on D.I.Y. projects.

Visit the Contest Page HERE

Here is an idea what the contest is all about:

Makers and Crafters, it’s time to enter our 2nd annual ghoulishly fun Halloween contests! Anyone, anywhere, can enter all or just some of the contests. We’ll have lots of updates and posts regarding all these, but this announcement is to get you started and planning and has more information about where to enter, and our friends @ Instructables and Popular Science.
We’re calling this year’s contests DIY HALLOWEEN. Last year’s were so big, with thousands of entries, that we even published our first MAKE: Halloween special edition on newsstands right now!
THE DIY HALLOWEEN CONTESTS!Entering is easy: just upload your photos to the DIY HALLOWEEN Flickr photo pool and tag them “DIYHALLOWEEN.”
Or email them to make.magazine@gmail.com
Or put them on Instructables in the MAKE group with a tag “DIYHALLOWEEN” and the "DIY HALLOWEEN" group. When you enter your projects on Instructables be sure to check out their "how to enter" guide too... If you enter your projects there you're automatically entered in the MAKE contest(s)! - Link.
When you take photos, take the best pix you can — see suggestions below — basically we want your high-res photos for a future MAKE Halloween issue!

Hack-o’-Lantern contest: Decorate a pumpkin any way you see fit, or unfit. It’s that easy. Then upload, post the project or email your photos, as described above. We’ll also post a roundup of ways to decorate a pumpkin as it gets closer to Halloween.

Costume contest: Dressing up? Making your own costume? As long as you “make” something, you can enter. Any costume with homemade elements on it, in it, or used with it is OK. Take your best photos and upload, post the project or email them. We’ll continue to post fun costumes and how-tos as well.

Decorations, Haunted house, gadgets, and more contest: Decorations at home, work, wherever, a haunted house, lawn gadgets, anything Halloweeny. If you’re one of those makers or crafters who goes all out and makes their surroundings spooky in some way, take a photo! Throughout the contest, we will spotlight some of our favorite Halloween-related projects to inspire folks.

Food contest: The grosser the better. Brain jello molds, meat heads, rat cakes — we saw some of the grossest food creations last year, let’s top them this year!

Trick-or-Treat contest: This is the easiest one, no photos necessary. If you have a blog, a website, or anything online, just post a link to the Halloween section of MAKE. We will pick 20 people we see linking to us. It works best if you have a blog-like site; we’ll be using the Technorati service to track who is linking to us and our internal logs. You can post a link to us in your sidebar, a link about this contest, anything, really. Do a post about DIY Halloween, it doesn’t matter to us, but we can see it best if it’s on a blog, and making it fun always helps (extra credit if it’s a spooky story).
Prizes!Besides the glory and fame of being a winner of the DIY Halloween Contests, we’re going to give away some stuff. We're working on the complete list (check back soon) but the grand prize is going to be a trip to Maker Faire San Francisco!
The other prizes so far include just about everything found in our Maker store - kits, books and more!
DeadlineHave your entries in before Sunday, Nov. 4, 2007, at 1:59 p.m. EST. We’re giving you a little time to take photos and get them up post-Halloween, but you can enter any time, starting now. Contest is open to anyone on planet Earth or surrounding orbit.
RulesWhen you enter, you’re giving us permission to use the photos in a future MAKE issue. That’s pretty much it. The winners will be contacted, so please make it easy to find you (using Flickr or Instructables works great since we can email you through those sites).

Remember you can enter at any time just by tagging your photos on Flickr with “DIYHALLOWEEN” and adding them to the DIY HALLOWEEN photo pool, or by emailing them to us (make.magazine@gmail.com), or by putting them on Instructables in the MAKE/DIYHALLOWEEN group with a tag “DIYHALLOWEEN.” To enter the Treat-or-Treat contest, just post about DIY HALLOWEEN or the contest on your blog. And lastly, if you want to use MAKE and/or CRAFT logos in your projects or posts, get ’em here (MAKE logos — CRAFT logos).
SuggestionsTake good photos, because if you win, your project may appear in a future issue of MAKE! Try to shoot high-res, at least 4 megapixel. (Our photo editor likes at least 300dpi @ 4"x5" or larger.)
Also: It’s a great idea to do a how-to; if you show you made something, you’re more likely to win. You don’t need to, but — it’s a good way to win :)
SO! What are you waiting for? Scare us! Inspire us! Humor us!
*Extra Credit: Halloween eventsKnow of a great Halloween-related event that MAKE should cover? Tell us about it ASAP at editor@makezine.com, and we'll consider sending a photographer to the event!
And if you attend a great Halloween event this year, please take your camera and send us your good-quality photos, 300dpi @ 4"x5" or larger.
Posted by Phillip Torrone Sep 23, 2007 05:00 PM

The Pumpkin, The Jack-O-Lantern, Halloween traditions

Please visit 4Seasons Halloween Store HERE

As leaves change from summer greens, to the colorful array of fall foliage in the northern regions of the United States, the pumpkin is becoming king of the patch. Soon these fall pumpkins will be sitting on stoops, and stairs, and windows, and lawns across America. Jack-O-Lantern is back in town, and here is our favorite updated Pumkpins for Halloween discussion for 2007.

A Jack-O-Lantern is easily recognizable as the most common display for the Holiday of Halloween. Pumkpins are native to the Americas, was not discovered by the Europeans until found by Colonial Americans. The pumkin was used in the Americas for Jack-O-Lanterns as they were larger, and better suited than the Turnips and Gourds that the Irish would use to celebrate Halloween before coming to America.

Halloween the holiday was not celebrated widespread across America until the 1800's. Before then, many people dismessed much of the celebration because if the beliefs and actions of the old druid priests who brought forward the idea of night to celebrate the closeness of dimensions between the living and the dead. The past and the future. The Irish community on America brought this seasonal celebration to America, and they found the Native Pumkins best suited for their Jack-O-Lantern display.

The inflatable display below is The Ghost in a Pumpkin: This display stands over ten feet tall and will be a great addition to your Halloween Display. Click on the Image to see the description. Cost $99 with great shipping!





This beautiful Jack-O-Lanter glass lamp by Meyda Tiffany is the accent lamp for the Halloween home. celebrate this season with this beautiful accent Jack-O-Lanter Lamp by Meyda Tiffany

Hard to find Transformers Halloween Costumes

Visit the 4Seasons Holiday Shop with Halloween Costumes available HERE

Happy Halloween! While doing our yearly shopping for Halloween costumes this year, we noticed that one of the hottest child costumes this year is the from the recent movie Transformers.

Hard to find is an understatement when talking about the lack of the availability of this child costume. We've checked with all of our Halloween Costume companies only to find that currently all of these dealers are running, or have already, run out of stock.

Looking for a child's transformer costume? The Holiday Netter has listed all the current Costume sites that we work with to give you an opportunity to check with all these companies from one location.

We recommend that you visit the Costume Store using each of the links below. Have the company send you a notification when the costumes become available, and you will have a notice when you can purchase these costumes.

After talking with personell at each of these companies, The Holiday Netter has received word that these costumes will again become available around the first of October.

Here are the list of companies the Holiday Netter recommends you check with, and sign up for email notification when the Transformer Optimus Prime Costumes become available.

When visiting these sites, search transformers costumes or optimus prime costume.

AnyTimeCostumes

Buy.com

Buycostumes.com

Costume Craze

CostumeCity.com

Costumeman

1/2 Price Costumes

Halloween Costumes 4 U

Halloween Only

Where's the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown?

4Seasons Halloween Costume Shop HERE

Hold onto your blanket, Linus. There may not be a Great Pumpkin this year.
A bumper crop of hot summer weather has left much of the region with a pumpkin harvest that's decidedly on the small side.
The stretch of hot weather in August created drought conditions that stunted the growth of pumpkins, growers say.

"We don't have the numbers and they are definitely smaller," says Camie Goetsch, owner of Green Acres Farm Market at the corner of U.S. 31 and Lake Michigan Drive in Grand Haven.
"We are known for big, quality pumpkins. Everyone comes from miles away for our pumpkins. Our pumpkins this year are big, but not what we normally have," said Goetsch, who expects to sell 20,000 to 30,000 pumpkins supplied by two local farms.
Goetsch plans to absorb the loss herself.
"I have a hard time charging more to the public because I depend on repeat business," she said.
The market usually sells out a week before Halloween, but this year she expects her pumpkins to disappear even earlier.
The hot weather means many pumpkin crops are ripening earlier than normal this year. And the presence of so many pumpkins so early at area farmer's markets leave some wondering whether the jack-o-lanterns will hold out for Halloween.
The good news is that West Michigan's pumpkin crop is fairing better than those harvests in Southwest Michigan or the Chicago area, says Bill Steenwyk, district extension educator for commercial vegetables at Michigan State University's Clarksville Horticultural Experiment Station in Ionia County. Flooded fields in those areas caused some pumpkin crops to rot.

"Many other areas were quite a bit wetter than we are," Steenwyk said.
Operations like Post Family Farm in Hudsonville kept their pumpkin plants well-watered. And the farm's sandy soil mitigated the arrival of heavy rains last month, keeping the pumpkins from getting too soggy.
"We had excellent pumpkin crop conditions," said Bill Post, who sells most of his pumpkins to U-pick customers. The 80-acre spread includes a farm market, hay rides, a greenhouse, pumpkin train, corn maze, sleigh rides, ice skating and Christmas trees.

Jerry Paulson's 7-acre pumpkin patch tucked into his 100-acre farm in Belding has seen better years. He sells most of his pumpkins at his farm's roadside market. They range from half-pound decorations to 200-pound show stoppers.
"They got ripe early because of the hot and dry weather," said Paulson, who began to see his pumpkins blush orange the first week of August.
Paulson, who also provides pumpkins to the Lowell Fall Festival and Meijer Gardens, says he plans to keep his at the same price.
At the stores, pumpkins are likely to be a little smaller and a little pricier.
"I don't think customers will notice much," says Stacie Behler, spokeswoman for the Walker-based Meijer stores.

Help save Halloween!

4Seasons Holiday store is open for Halloween costume shopping now. The store can be found HERE

Halloween is in trouble. Each year editorials in magazines and newspapers and on television warn of dangers to children. And each year more communities "ban" Halloween.
So what? Who needs it? What is Halloween anyway? It's just an excuse for big kids to make trouble, little kids to eat too much candy, and candy companies to peddle their wares. Bah, goblin-bug!
Or so I thought until, despite all the warnings, I took my wife and son Sean out last Halloween. Sean was happy to see all the ghosts and gobblins around the neighborhood. He could hardly contain himself when after a proper approach and "Trick-or-Treat", how happy he was at the smiles and words of praise and handfuls of candy that greeted him. He wouldn't let me take him home either, watching all the doings intently.
The same as previous years, many of the people we visited were folks we only see at Halloween even though they live just a few doors away. Most of them, the elderly especially, had bought supplies of candy and were waiting. Most gave out two or three times as much per kid as they had originally intended, because there were so few kids out. And they were as delighted to see the kids as the kids were to see them.
When I got home, I couldn't help but wonder what had gone wrong with Halloween. And it occurred to me that it wasn't just a handful of crazy people who were endangering this tradition and the joy it can bring to little children and adults as well. It's apathy on the part of everyone else, the failure to recognize that Halloween plays an important function in our society, the unwillingness to speak out in defense of Halloween when the media were so unanimously against it.
So what's so important about Halloween?
Maybe at one time Halloween helped exorcise fears of death and ghosts and goblins by making fun of them. Maybe, too, in a time of rigidly prescribed social behavior, Halloween was the occasion for socially condoned mischief -- a time for misrule and letting loose. Although such elements still remain, the emphasis has shifted and the importance of the day and its rituals has actually grown.
Nowadays people often don't know their near neighbors, much less the neighbors a few blocks away. For little children these strange houses and strange people are a source of fear and anxiety. Children have been taught not to trust or talk to strangers, to beware of them. But on Halloween that prohibition is lifted; and, with fear, but impelled by curiosity and greed for candy and other loot, little ones ring doorbells at houses of strangers to find time and again that these strangers are really friendly people like the people they know well. In the course of the evening they gain confidence in themselves and in their neighborhood and come away not only with bags full of candy to be enjoyed for weeks after, but also a warm feeling about their neighborhood and people in general.
As for adults, especially the elderly and those who never had children or who haven't had young children at home for some time, children in the neighborhood are normally a source of anxiety and distrust. What mischief and vandalism might this strange new generation growing up with television violence be capable of? On Halloween night their fears too are exorcised, as wildly and imaginatively costumed kids parade to the door, a reminder of what they themselves did as children -- a common link of experience.
Looked at another way, Halloween is a time that reconfirms the social bond of a neighborhood (particularly the bond between strangers of different generations) by a ritual act of trade. Children go to lengths to dress up and overcome their fear of strangers in exchange for candy. And adults buy the candy and overcome their distrust of strange children in exchange for the pleasure of seeing their wild outfits and vicariously reliving their own adventures as children.
In other words, the true value and importance of Halloween comes not from parading in costumes in front of close friends and family, but from this interchange with strangers, exorcising our fears of strangers, reaffirming our social bond with the people of the neighborhood who we rarely, if ever, see the rest of the year.
So when you hear all those warnings about pins and poison, use caution and common sense. But don't just abandon a tradition that you yourself loved as a child, that your own children look forward to months in advance, and that helps preserve our sense of fellowship and community with our neighbors in the midst of all this madness.

Here are today's treats for this Halloween's internet surfing!

The Holiday Netter is working on bringing the best information to your door from the Netter Desk in Houston Texas. Looking over what's good on the Nett for this coming Halloween, The Netter finds these great Halloween sites to visit. BOO!

Visit the 4Season Halloween Store HERE

The Halloween Forum is HERE


TheHalloweenNetwork.com
HalloweenDirectory.com
HalloweenNews.com
CavernsOfBlood.com
HauntMail.com
HalloweenForum.com
CostumeMagazine.com
HalloweenSyndicate.com
CreakyDoor.com
TheHalloweenSite.com
BestOfHalloween.com
HalloweenBanners.com
HalloweenShopper.com
HalloweenJackpot.com
HauntedHumor.com
HalloweenWebCam.com
HalloweenSafety.com
CostumeGuide.com
HalloweenNewsletter.com
HalloweenChat.com
HalloweenGallery.com
iScare.com
HauntedCards.com
ScaryDomains.com
HalloweenToolbar.com
HalloweenShowcase.com
HalloweenRadio.com
BlogCrypt.com
HalloweenWebmaster.com
SinisterSpace.com

BuyInflatables.comOver 500 inflatables to choose from for every holiday and occasion including Halloween.Lowest Prices Guaranteed - Best Customer Service - Great Products
PureCostumes.comYour online shopping source for unique Halloween costumes and costume wigs for adults, teens, and kids. Our prices are guaranteed and are directly from the manufacturers. We pride ourselves on our competitive prices and superior services.
bigscreamtv.comRevolutionary Halloween DVDs: the programs are used in crowd-stumping illusions. Create Hollywood quality, theme-park tricks! Also: X-treme Haunted House Make-Over for the best tricks ever!
monsterguts.comYour source for do-it-yourself prop building supplies. Motors, strobes, air cylinders and more. We have the guts to make your monsters come alive.
wondercostumes.comYour source for latest halloween costumes, movie costumes, pirate costumes, Renaissance, Medieval, Gothic costumes for every occasion at bargain prices.
AnytimeCostumes.comOne-stop costumes shop! Explore hundreds of costumes from Infant to Plus Sizes along with Wigs, Hats, Masks, Make-up and accessories. Huge selection and year-round availability.
HauntedFog.comHalloween products for the Home & Yard Haunters. Fog/Bubble Machines, Strobe/Black/Laser Lights, Fake Flame products, Custom Fangs, Body props, Tombstones and more..
HalloweenUnlimited.comHalloween Costumes, Adult Halloween Costumes and Halloween Masks are our specialty. Our sexy costumes are a must see. If you need a wig or hat we have hundreds to choose from. We have great props and fog machines and strobe lights to achieve the scariest effects to fit your need.
Horrorivia.comThe Horror Movie Trivia Game, 1,700+ questions. Packaged in a coffin box with a laminated game board, skull tokens and trivia cards. DVD version available.

Updated 4Seasons Halloween Costume Links 09/23/3007 3:35PM CDT

Visit 4Seasons Holiday Store HERE

3-in1 Kids Costume * Kids Frankenstein Costume * Adult Vampire * Muscle Guard * Kid Stormtrooper Costume * Adult Chewbacca Costume * Toddler Tigger Costume * Child Tin Man Costume * Adult Lucky Man Costume * Superman Costume * Child Chewbacca Costume * Child Scarecrow Costume * Child Astronaut Costume * Child Tazmanian Devil Costume * Child Anakin Skywalker Costume * Child Gorilla Costume * Adult Elvis Costume * Adult sexy Little Bo Peep Costume * Toddler Lil Champion Costume * Adult Midnight Fairy Costume * Child Black Spiderman Costume * Child Optimus Prime Transformer Costume * Toddler Snow White Costume * Deluxe 300 Spartans Costume * Adult Sexy Buccaneer Costume * Adult Rip-Away Clark Kent/Superman Costume * Child Penguin Costume * Child Black Firefighter Costume * Infant Cat in the Hat Costume * Child Harry Potter Robe * Child Harry Potter Quidditch Robe * Child White Ninja Costume * Premium Collectors 300 Spartans Costume * Premium Caribbean Pirate Costume * Toddler Thing 2 Costume * Child Gandalf Costume * Child Space Suit Costume * Adult Deluxe Santa Suit * Adult "Bah Hum Bug" Santa Suit * V for Vendetta Costume kit * Adult Zorro Costume * Child Deluxe Dinosaur Costume * Adult Sexy Fairy Costume * Adult Plus Premium Vampire Costume * Adult Premium Gothic Vampire * Bunting Fireman Costume * Bunting Policeman Costume * Bunting lil Soldier * Child Punk Skeleton Girl Costume * Freak N Monster * Supreme Adult Spider Man Costume * Jr. Air Force Pilot * Bunting Baby Bat Costume * Adult Speedway Chic Costume * Child Curious George Costume * Adult Lil Dead Riding Hood Costume * Premium Child Angel Costume * Deluxe Child Yoda Costume * Adult Deluxe Thing 2 Costume * Red Luscious Pimp Costume * Mexican Serape Costume * Adult Premium Clown Costume * Velvet Mrs. Claus Costume * Deluxe Adult Chicken Suit * Child Roman Boy Costume * Infant Captain America Costume * Adult Zebra Mac Daddy Costume * Adult Confederate Soldier Costume * Premium Leprechaun * MOREMore Costumes Here * Child Boba Fett Costume * Troy High School Musical Costume * Adult Premium King Costume * Adult Premium Maiden Costume * Adult Mummy Queen Costume * Wonder Woman Costume * Child The Mummy Costume * Adult Nuts and Bolts Costume * Statue of Liberty Costume * Adult Complete Premium Zombie Costume * Statue Costume *