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Letter to the editor

This expert is so into decorating, it's scary

By ELIZABETH BETTENDORF, Times Correspondent
Published October 26, 2007

Each year, around the middle of October, a big cardboard box arrived in the mail from my grandmother in Chicago. The box was packed with Halloween decorations, costumes and assorted treats, usually gummy Coke bottles, wax lips and paper strips of sugar dots.

Somewhere, I have a hilarious trick-or-treat picture of me at age 9, dressed in a bride costume from that annual care package. I'm standing with my friend, Margarita, who was dressed as a hippie and flashing the peace sign.

Halloween was big then, but somehow less of the complete extravaganza it is now. I don't remember all the candy corn and chattering skulls appearing in stores until the calendar deemed it appropriate, usually sometime in early October.

For at least a decade, a mother lode of Halloween booty has started to appear in the dead of summer.

Now, the number of decorations rival Christmas.

The Home Shopping Network has special segments devoted to Halloween items, as does QVC. Not far from my home, a Halloween shop inhabits a vacant flooring store - a sure sign that while the real estate market has softened, our love of Halloween hasn't.

Thirty-something years ago, long before giant inflatable spiders graced our lawns, a simple skeleton on our front door and a hand-carved pumpkin sufficed as celebratory trimmings.

These days, our buying habits tell a different story.

According to Unity Marketing, a boutique marketing consulting company based in Pennsylvania, Americans spent $3.2-billion buying Halloween decorations last year, up more than 21 percent from 2005. That makes Halloween second only to Christmas for holiday decorating, according to a new Unity report.

Several weeks ago, a catalog arrived from Gump's in San Francisco. Gump's is a beautiful store with beautiful merchandise at the kind of prices you would expect.

On the cover? Hand-blown glass pumpkins range in price from $185 to $675. Inside, a set of lovely papier-mache cats for $85 each that look like they're a century old. On the flip side, I recently spotted a similarly retro garland made of miniature witches for $4.99 at my favorite discount store.

Karen Cuervo, who works for Tampa Bay Home Stagers in Lutz, also specializes in helping homeowners decorate for the holidays. She and the company's owner, Anne Jousou, have more clients than ever wanting to deck out their houses for Halloween. They'll even rent you some Halloween props if you want.

"Halloween is so magical. It makes you feel young," says Cuervo, who starts decorating her home for Halloween at the beginning of September.

"I like to enjoy it, and I don't like it to be over in a month. My kids and neighbors love it, too!"

Around her house, Cuervo likes to create what she calls "whimsical Halloween vignettes."

No gore or "dark side" stuff for her.

"I put around bottles of potions and spell books - all good spells, of course," she says with a laugh.

She also makes beautiful centerpieces and other decorations using natural things, such as deadwood, that she finds alongside the road.

"I've even made candle holders using a Halloween goblet, filling it with dried black beans and putting black candles inside."

After talking with Cuervo, I was so overcome with nostalgia that I vowed to pull out all my Halloween trimmings before Oct. 1 - usually my self-imposed deadline for the earliest I'm allowed to decorate.

"As a kid I loved Halloween, and as an adult I like to relive that time," Cuervo says.

Elizabeth Bettendorf can be reached at ebettendorf@hotmail.com.

[Last modified October 25, 2007, 22:24:37]