I am a fanatic for Halloween – not just the movie but also for the holiday. When the leaves start changing, the weather starts getting cooler, and the sunlight starts getting shorter and shorter, I start thinking in orange and black.

Recently, I picked up a couple of Halloween magazines to give some tips on how to make Halloween crafts without spending tons of money. They’re pretty useful, because all of those masks and props that use latex and animatronics are really, really expensive. I went into Spirit of Halloween yesterday at the mall and they had some really cool animatronic designs, but for a price – a good $150 each. I don’t know about anyone else, but I really don’t have that kind of change lying around to buy something that’ll only be seen by me and my roommates in my townhouse.

So I left it up to my magazines to leave me with some cool Halloween tips for treats and decorations. Halloween Food, Fun & Crafts has some pretty creative ideas for festive treats, especially a double-Bundt cake jack-o-lantern. Taste of Home’s Halloween Party Favorites serves up some treats like jack-o-lanterns made out of oranges, or some pumpkin carving tips. Both offer something different, and although the recipes won’t cater towards everyone (especially those not good at arts and crafts), they give ideas that you can throw around for Halloween.

So far, my girlfriend and I have made one recipe from Halloween Food, Fun & Crafts, and it wasn’t as easy as they made it seem. They’re called “Friendly Ghost Puffs,” a biscuit cookie filled with orange sherbet and shaped like a ghost. The biscuits are hard to mold, and they puff up a lot in the oven. Also, you must cut each ghost in half, to create two halves so that you can sandwich them together with the orange sherbet in-between, and cutting the ghosts is no easy chore. But they taste good, even if they aren’t quick and easy.

I also stopped at Yankee Candle and managed to buy the Yankee Candle 2008 Haunted House. It was well worth it, and I think most are sold out now. I also picked up some of the Boney Bunch crew, including the Skeleton Head, the Skeleton Hearse, and the Skeleton with Spider Web. In addition, I got a Halloween car freshener, plus a nice witch and some window clings from the Christmas Tree Shops. It’s going to be a mighty fine decorating year for me.

So that’s basically it of my obsession of Halloween right now – making crafts, searching out crafts. I’m always thinking about things for Halloween, and hopefully I can plan a really scary Halloween prank for kids that come trick-or-treating at my house.