Set Painting

Today I uploaded pictures from my work at the Paint Shop of North Shore Music Theater onto Flickr, and it reminded me of all the things I learned about backgrounds in general from painting sets for live entertainment performance. There are the obvious crucial realities, like the fact that stages need to be built with weight-bearing lumber and steel to survive weeks of passionate stomping and tap dancing. Like in every business, time and material wasted on a superfluous set piece is a big, expensive pain in the neck. There are lots of things to consider, such as how set design should reflect the content of the story and cater to the taste of the audience. For example, a vampire lair should match character traits of the vampire, but it should also take into consideration whether it is a cartoony children’s villain or a deep and twisted adult villain. There are lots of basic rules in set design, and working at the theater taught me a lot about “building” a good background for any story.
One of the first things that I really learned at North Shore Music Theater (NSMT) was the impact of layering. Layers make every background infinitely more engaging. In any art class you learn about foreground, middle ground, and background, but in theater you construct an entire space according to this fundamental concept. NSMT happens to be unique because it is a theater in the round, so the focus of our sets was always the stage floor, but the same general rules apply. There are the large elements, such as the floor in our case, but usually a series of flats or drops that surround the stage; medium elements that can be mobile, or are suspended from the flies (the space out of view from the audience above the stage); and smaller place holders like props. Within the large backgrounds you have space filling elements such as buildings or trees, then smaller features such as windows or branches, and finally a smattering of details to give the impression of the setting that you are looking at. Here is the primary difference between static art and the background of a theater or film. In a gallery, the viewer has time to appreciate details on a canvas. In a show, the story would have to be pretty lame for you to pay more attention to details of the backdrop than the actors, so instead it is important to provide the ILLUSION of detail. The audience wants to discover subtle things, but you’d be out of a job faster than your head could spin if you spent precious production hours toiling over realistic flaws in brickwork. So, we layer. My experience was in the paint department, but I’m sure similar rules apply to prop and costume production as well. I’ve only worked at one theater so I’ll describe how we did it, so forgive me if other theaters do things differently but the process is probably roughly the same.
First, there is the color palette which is decided by the set designer long before the paint department starts mixing colors. The palette usually consists of base colors, the actual matched colors, and washes. When the color palette is determined and the designer sends in swatches, we start mixing huge buckets of these colors, labeled with descriptive names like “Butterscotch Tan” or “Ruby Slipper Red”. Later, you might get overwhelmed with all of the different shades of blue that you mixed, but hopefully you’ll remember that “Gatorade Blue” goes to the waterfall prop and “Facebook Blue” goes to the library furniture. When we start painting, we begin by laying down 2-3 coats of the base color or a priming color. This is like when you’re priming a canvas, and very seldom do we actually use white. Often we’ll add white to turn a leftover bucket of neutral color into a cool or warm pastel that works as a priming paint. Some materials don’t need primer at all, and then we start painting the solid base color right onto the surface. The base color is lighter than the real color that the object will be and is what will peek out if you miss any spots later. If you’re painting wood grain, it is the tan color that lies under the streaks of grain. It is the first layer that will later appear to be the lighter parts and add depth to any painted object.
Next we paint the object with 2-3 coats of the color that it is meant to be. If you’re painting leaves, this is the mid-tone green that you see when you look at it from a distance. Here is where we start layering color. Obviously if the object is supposed to look flat, you just paint solid coats and perhaps go over it with some highlights and shadows later, but since most objects benefit from some degree of texture, some of the base color should peak out from below as mild highlights. Instead of flat leaves, you now have a two toned leaf that you can easily adjust with variations of brush stroke, paint application techniques like sponging, ragging, marbling, flicking, rolling around on the surface wearing nothing but frayed rope and a pirate flag, etc. The sky is the limit, but you’re creating the illusion of detail with half the work of painstakingly rendering the details of real life. You can spice it up even more by layering textures of different colors together. I used to find this stage a little unnerving at first because things would start to look cartoony or just plain stark, but I later came to accept this stage as just one more step in the process of theater trickery.
The answer to toning down all of these bright colors is to lay down a wash. A wash is watered down paint that ties all of the other layers together. It is usually a watered down version of the main color, but sometimes it is an exciting unexpected color, like pink or green, that seems to have nothing to do with all of the other colors you just laid down but it is actually critical to tying the object in with other parts of the scenery. Before my work in the paint shop, I never knew how many different awesome ways there are to sneak shadowy purples into a color palette.
When all of the major color coats are in place, it’s critical to “help” the backgrounds with exaggerated highlights and shadows. In many cases your backdrop will be flat, and it is the paint’s job to fool the eye where lighting can’t help. Under bright lights and a huge range of viewing distances, the stage is no place to be shy. Pick a light source, be consistent, and pop your work with pastel neutral highlights and dark, neutral shadows.
Last of all is the sealer. Some colors already have a sealant in them, but the majority of the paints we used needed heavy duty protection to withstand the trauma of musical theater acting. Sealer is where the glossy shine comes from when used properly, or where a dull cloudy haze can originate if left under less than perfect conditions. Basically, sealer is a prissy royal pain and needs to dry in a warm room and be evenly distributed for best results. In some cases, tinting sealer with a little paint enriches the final appearance even more, especially if the object needs a little push in one direction or another.
Well, that’s it for now- maybe at some point I’ll upload more tidbits and doodles from the journal I kept during my breaks while we literally sat around waiting for paint to dry.

Swedish meatballs and the Nobel Museum

"Sisters" with the Halle church

There were a few weeks when I really took a snooze from posting, so I’m trying to catch up a little now. A few weekends ago Nick took me to Sweden for my birthday! We caught a flight up to Stockholm for a few days and it was the perfect trip. The joke goes, “Ryanair: flying you from nowhere to nowhere” which is pretty much true. Their airports always seem to be an hour away from wherever you’re trying to go. They also have absolutely zero customer service, but they ARE cheap and that’s really all that they claim to be- a cheap flight. Well, for people like me who have no money but plenty of time, Nick and I took an hour and a half long bus from the Ryanair airport into Stockholm and witnessed some of the countryside from a cushy velvet bus. We got to Stockholm that night and checked in with a cheery blond girl who welcomed us with the Bee Gees blaring from speakers somewhere in the background. Nick said to me, “You know, the Bee Gees are from Sweden.” Now, Nick knows a lot about music, but to this I blurted, “No they’re not!!! You’re thinking of ABBA!!!” Which is true, and thanks to Nick, I now know that quite a few other bands have also cut their teeth in Stockholm. When we went outside for some sightseeing the next day, I could see why. Stockholm is full of hip, beautiful people interested in hip, beautiful music and art. You know how everyone always looks good in a ski lodge because they all have rosy cheeks and windswept hair from the cold? Sweden is a great example of that. We experienced this many times because it was so chilly and wet outside that every few hours we would duck into another cafe for a cup of hot chocolate or one of the big cinnamon buns that we saw in all of the windows. Everyone looked so cozy in their layers of knitted sweaters and thick socks in boots. Sweden sure knows how to make places look warm. Most cafes had heavy curtains to keep out the cold and candles on the tables. The walls and furniture were all either Van Dyke brown or dark stained wood, and most interior spaces felt like you were sitting in a warm nook of someone’s log cabin. If the hot chocolate didn’t warm you up, the ambiance sure would! These are some of the places that we saw while we were there:
- Gamla Stan: An island full of medieval streets that is fun to explore at your own pace. We had fun cafe hopping here.
- Nobel Museum: It was pure coincidence that we got to go there the week that Obama’s peace prize was announced. In Gamla Stan near the palace, this museum is full of facts and contains donated personal items from former prize winners like Marie Curie’s scales!
- Vasa Museum: Possibly my favorite museum in the entire world! The Vasa is a 17th century warship that sunk only twenty minutes into its maiden voyage and sat at the bottom of the Stockholm harbor for 333 years before it was raised in the 60s almost completely intact. The ship was taken apart, preserved with wax, and built back together piece by piece! I got in for free because I looked 19 and Nick got in for half price by flashing an expired student ID. They offer free English tours and have a whole exhibit of the skeletons that they found inside and what they can tell about their lives just by their bones. You can also walk around in a mock sailor’s quarters and feel the tight living conditions of the ships of that time period.
- National Museum: Neat art museum that had an exhibit on art exhibits and different ways to display artwork. Instead of a room full of marble busts, they created a whimsical sculpture out of the busts so you could look at the individual pieces or the resulting sculpture as a whole. They even had a Caspar David Friedrich painting, “Sisters”, that included a church modeled after the one in Halle!
- Stadshuset (Stockholm City Hall): This is where they hold the Nobel Banquet every year. We saw everything from the official ballroom tiled in gold glass tiles to the banquet hall complete with an example table setting.
Of course, we couldn’t leave without trying some Swedish meatballs! I looked up the best place in Stockholm for Swedish meatballs and came up with the 100 year old Pelikan restaurant which just happened to be right near our hotel. We were not disappointed. Our waitress plopped a big bowl of mashed potatoes on the table along with Nick’s fish and my meatballs. The meatballs came with crunchy dill pickles and a lingonberry sauce which was the perfect symphony of sweet, sour, tang and comfort all in each bite. It was GOOD. The whole weekend was good! In fact, if anyone would ever like to use our itinerary, I still have it with all of the times and admission prices of attractions and what to see in different parts of town.

Family Time!

Yesterday I took a 3 hour drive up to Burlington, VT with my mother for a surprise visit to my youngest sister Carly. I found out later that Carly was planning on doing the exact same thing and going to drive down for the weekend on that very day to surprise me! We all went into Burlington’s city center for some peanut noodles and ice cream. Boy did I miss Ben and Jerry’s! Carly and I headed back home and our middle sister DeeDee came home for the weekend, too! It’s a rare occasion when the entire family is around but this weekend we all got together for family dinner and tomorrow morning we’re going to cheer my dad on in a half marathon. Looks like I should start training again! All in all, I’m wicked excited to be home with the whole family.

Back in the USA

Last get together in Halle! Wearing homemade party hats

Yesterday I returned home after spending 10 months in Germany and I’m very excited to be back. Nick and I had a party to give away books and the odds and ends that we couldn’t take with us but even then my bag weighed almost as much as me! We took a 6 hour train ride from Halle to Koblenz, where we visited our old roommate Patrizia and spent the night. She made us one last German dinner of potato salad and wursts. (The night before, another friend of ours made us a German dinner of homemade “spaetzle”, a funny kind of German noodle pressed through a sieve and served with cheese- yum!) As long as we were still in Germany, we decided to go out for some sightseeing in the evening and walked all around the Alt Stadt and over to the Deutsches Eck (“German Corner”), the only point at which the Rhine and Moselle Rivers converge. My favorite sight, however, was the Schängel Fountain, a fountain statue of a little “naughty boy” who spits out gushes of cold water at random times, usually soaking unsuspecting tourists. Luckily, Patrizia warned us to wait until after he spits to toss pennies into the fountain. At the end of the night we met Patrizia’s roommates in her “kitschy kitchen”. The kitchen was bright pink and covered from wall to wall with advent calendars, postcards, flags, stickers, plastic bead garlands, and all kinds of craft-store paraphernalia that somehow looked good together in a cozy way. Both roommates spoke English and were excited to hang out at the kitchen table staying up later than we should have. I slept like a log on the couch using an Elmo toy as a pillow and the next thing I knew it was 5 in the morning- time to start making my way to Boston! So now I’m home and I can’t wait to spend my next couple of days recovering from jetlag and figuring out what to do next.

Aubrey goes to the Antik Floh Markt

On the second week of every month Halle holds an “Antik Floh-Markt”, a big flea market just outside of town. Yesterday Nick and I went with one American and two German friends to see if we could find anything special. We took the S-Bahn one stop from the main train station to Halle Messe, a giant warehouse with a sausage stand out front. At the door you pay 4 euro admission and then you’re free to wander around two vast rooms of coin collections, old coffee grinders, VHS tapes, and GDR nostalgia. It’s really incredible sifting through little plastic egg cups and GDR dishware just like the kinds that came with our apartment. We eventually had to buy new forks because all of our GDR silverware tasted like aluminum! There are tables of floral print tablecloths, old war medals in glass cases, fancy tea sets, and bins and bins of sad looking plastic toys with smears of dirt at the joints and patches of plastic hair missing from their wigs. Last time I went to the floh markt I found three little egg cozies crocheted to look like chickens for keeping hard boiled eggs warm!
This time we went late in the afternoon, just before the vendors were getting ready to pack up. On the one hand, when you arrive late you miss out on the first picks of the day, but on the other hand, there is always something good and people are more willing to cut deals at the end of the day. Nick and our friend talked down prices for some old maps of Germany and Dresden while our German friends picked out some cooking pots for their apartment. I took care of a few early Christmas presents and bought matching crocheted pot-holders and an apron for myself. As I was rummaging through a bin of kerchiefs and handschuhe (gloves, literally, “hand shoes”!), the man hovering over his merchandise pushed a neat little pair of gray lederhosen shorts right under my nose, barking “Lederhosen, zehn euro!” I have to admit, I was tempted for a good second because they were real leather and they actually looked like my size. Then reality kicked in and I remembered that there is NEVER an occasion to wear lederhosen in real life. (Or is there….?) At a different odds and ends table I was contemplating a ceramic beer-stein in the 1 euro bin when I spotted two old GLASS SYRINGES lying in the same box! Is that even legal? These things were the girth of decent sized carrots, too!
You never know what you’re going to find. Germany now forbids all Nazi symbols and paraphernalia, but in places like flea markets you can still find old indicators of the past. Apparently these kinds of items are allowed to be sold, but only as historical artifacts. (On a separate but related note, one time I was reading the Kurt Vonnegut Jr. book Mother Night about the WWII propagandist Howard Campbell, while traveling from Germany to France. At the time I was only vaguely aware of Germany’s symbol ban and the cover had a swastika and an American flag on it. It wasn’t until I was at the airport that I remembered that a friend of mine had carried the same exact book through a different airport and was stopped and questioned about it by German security! It wouldn’t have been a huge crime but it certainly wasn’t respectful to be carrying an image like that so I quickly found a black pen and scribbled out any trace of the vulgarity before sticking the book deep into my purse.) At the flea market these kinds of things are usually pins or small objects with subtle markers, but they pop up in real life too. At one point, Nick and I were looking at different apartment over the summer and things were looking pretty good. The apartment had a balcony, a free cat, a full kitchen and even a little sauna! Unfortunately, it also had a Nazi plaque bolted on the wall behind the front door. No problem, we figured that we could just take it off of the wall, right? Nope! This devil was cemented to the wall! It was pretty absurd, but the lack of taste far outweighed the comedy of the situation and our thrill over the new place deflated pretty quickly after that.
Flea markets are one of my favorite ways to spend the day. Not everyone can stand the smell and sifting through all of the junk, but I love it because when you do find something interesting you feel like you just rescued a treasure from being buried with all of the ordinary garbage and forgotten about forever. And on the way out the door, you can buy a sausage from the wurst stand, so no matter what, you win!

Backgrounds for “Chrysalis”

Today I came home for lunch around 4 after a late group meeting with Quentin, our production supervisor, and I just couldn’t face the tram ride back to school so instead I’m finishing the backgrounds for “Chrysalis” from home. I’m posting a couple of pictures online, but I have to emphasize that most of the work that has gone into this project is collaborative in some form or another. I’m working with two other boys from my class (Maciek from Poland and Florian from Germany) officially, and unofficially getting help from anyone else who is willing to pitch in. Another friend is generating some 3D effects for a couple of scenes, and my boyfriend Nick is composing and recording the musical score.
In the beginning I drew rudimentary sketches of backgrounds for the storyboards and animatic, but then when the project was chosen I assigned background design to Florian. It turns out that Flo is a background MACHINE, and he produced more backgrounds than I could possibly use, but we had trouble finding a good composition. Eventually, I just sat down one weekend with a ballpoint pen and plotted out a set of thumbnails that had the shape and space that I needed. I guess the black ballpoint made the drawings look a little harsh because when I brought them in on Monday, Flo’s eyes bugged out and he said “No, no no!! Those are too scary for kids!” Well, whether they were scary or not, I was getting pretty scared of my deadline approaching so I handed him the wad of thumbnail drawings and told him work his magic on the details, but that the compositions were final. Maciek had a couple of great suggestions for things to put into the backgrounds, too, and in three days Flo had a neat stack of hand drawn, pen and ink backgrounds for me. What you see here are the backgrounds after I had my way with them in Photoshop. Flo drew the outlines and I did all of the color and texture design. I used the eraser almost as much as I used the brushes and I have a color palette of 6 hues and their tints and shades. I have one nighttime palette as well but I haven’t finished the night scene yet.

Figure Drawing 2

More figure drawings!

Figure Drawings 1

Here are a couple of figure drawings I did last week – we had 3-4 minutes for each sketch. I think next time we might ask the model to do more action poses so we can get a better feel for extremes (even though leisure poses are the most beautiful to draw!).

Salt Festival in Halle an der Saale

German Hallorens love their festivals and this weekend was an important one- the Salt Festival. The city I’m living in is called Halle an der Saale which means Halle on the Saale (River). Both the names “Halle” and “Saale” come from a Pre-Germanic word for salt, and for much of Halle’s history, salt harvesting was the city’s main income. Halle’s salt factory, the Saline, is located directly across the river from my school and is now a museum that you can check out for about 50 cents. Although the factory is only a museum now, on certain days of the week you can still watch how they make the salt by boiling down the brine with an traditional technique called “Schausieden”. Well, on Thursday night big trucks rolled into town with fair rides and stage equipment and by Friday night Marktplatz was teaming with Germans in medieval costumes clinking beer-steins and eating sausages from market stalls. I had a juicy meatball number called a “Boulette mit brotchen” and we all had a laugh when the man at the counter informed my Bulgarian friend that she had accidentally made a lewd joke when she tried to ask for a Knackwurst in German. Luckily, Maria has a good sense of humor. There wasn’t a lot of salt, but there were lots of tapped barrels with every flavor of beer that you can think of. Most of the beer cost about 2.50 euro for a big party cup, but I’m cheap so I went around the corner to a kebab store and bought a bottle for 1 euro (AND if you return the bottle you get money back, ChaChing!) On a side note, this week happens to be Oktoberfest in Munich and the week of my birthday. People asked me why I didn’t want to go celebrate in style down at the world-famous beer extravaganza since I’m already in Germany and all that jazz, but as much as I enjoy a beer here and there, sitting at a crowded table full of drunk tourists doesn’t sound like my ideal party. Back to Salt Fest, the fair was fun and exciting, and definitely attracted more of a local crowd. We strolled over to the medieval section of the fair with big banquet tables and meat roasting on spits surrounded by music coming from something that looked like a cross between a tuba and a bag pipe. Even better, the musicians played AND did a choreographed dance in their kilts while they played. To promote a bad joke, this one goes out to Nick- Salt Fest was sweet! Er, savoury. Haha.

Source: www.halle-ist-schoen.de

With friends at Salt Fest in Marktplatz

Halloween is Coming!

Source: http://familyfun.go.com

I love planning theme parties and Halloween is coming, so I thought I’d post some costume party ideas! I tend to take theme parties pretty seriously, so the first rule is:

NO ONE is “too cool” for dressing up. Geez, don’t disrespect the whole idea of a costume party by half-assing your getup! Your host is counting on YOU, the partygoers, to be the entertainment. And it’s fun. Go to the Salvation Army or get some face paint from the dollar store, or, if you’re a penny pincher like me, sift through the rejects of your own closet. Remember that heinous sweater from Grandma? Pop the lenses out of some cheap sunglasses and voila, you’re a nerd. Underwear outside your pants automatically makes a superhero- the rest is pretty flexible depending on how creative you are. Pretty much anything with shoulder pads is so ugly it’s funny. There’s no excuse- costumes aren’t about time or money, they’re about being clever.

Costume tip number two: if your costume is a “sexy something”, try again! Some people treat Halloween as an excuse to dress like a Playboy bunny, but that’s not really dressing up, that’s just looking like a vamp. We all already know that you’re CAPABLE of looking sexy, you don’t have to smother us with it. Direct your efforts towards looking attractive for sure, but don’t show all of your goodies at once!

You can up the ante by giving a prize for the best costume. Sometimes it’s fun to give specific instructions to force the creativity out of people, like turning it into an Anything But Clothes party. Or a Nursing Home party where everyone has to dress like an old person (knee socks, comb-overs, windbreaker suits, suspenders, bathrobes…) Nick had the idea of a Where’s Waldo party where everyone dresses like Waldo. Hobo party, Lumberjack party, Steve Urkell Party… I could churn this stuff out for hours but you get the idea.

Halloween parties are the most fun to decorate because you just make everything look creepier. Throw white sheets over furniture to make the place look deserted (preferably from a thrift store because you don’t want people spilling on your real sheets) and clap baby powder over tables and piles of old books as dust. Tea candles and mismatched candlesticks make a good atmosphere as long as they’re out of harm’s way. Arranging some twigs in a glass near flickering candlelight casts some cool shadows and you can tape heavy construction paper cutouts in front of flashlights to project images in places that people wouldn’t expect. Cobwebs are easy to replicate by taking a bag of cotton balls and draping the stretched material over furniture. Shred up old stockings with runs or cheesecloth and wrap it around stuffed gloves as bandaged mummy hands sticking out of creepy places. My mother dyes a lot of her own wool for her textile art, so I know from years of watching her experiment that you can take different shades of onion skins or tea to make natural dyes and stain material to make it look blood-stained or ancient. Most grocery stores don’t mind if you ask to collect some of the onion skins that fall off of the produce for free. The more skins you have, the richer the dye will be so stop by a few supermarkets until you have about 4 cups. Stick the skins into a stocking (for easier cleanup), tie it off, drop it in a big pot of boiling water with a cup of salt and simmer for half an hour, then add the material and simmer for another half an hour before letting it steep off of the heat overnight. The salt should set the colors on the fabric, but remember you are dealing with dye here so don’t go spilling on yourself and wear gloves unless you want purple hands.

It’s easy to make ordinary things look scary in a Halloween context like hanging up mirrors and drawing on them with soap or lipstick. Redrum, anyone? Decorate in places that people wouldn’t expect, like the bathroom. One time someone at school decorated a bathroom stall to look like a big green monster was coming out from behind the toilet! I get scared pretty easily so needless to say I almost peed myself then and there when I opened the door. But a simpler version of sprucing up the bathroom would be to make a person shaped cardboard cutout and hide it behind the shower curtain with some eerie silhouette lighting. Classic horror movies are great inspiration and people like identifying the movie motifs. Really, you could do anything, but whatever you choose, don’t try to do everything. Either go for unnatural and creepy (haunted house), or cheesy and funny (glow in the dark, witches, bats, tombstones) but don’t try to do serious scary things AND silly tacky things. And don’t spend a lot of money- you can find or make most decorations with a little bit of planning.

You COULD play haunted house sound effects and watch horror movies, but things that interrupt the party mood can be real conversation killers. I wouldn’t want to be shouting smalltalk over the Wihelm scream or actually sit down and get sucked into watching Psycho. When I see a real movie on, I want to watch it, and all of the good thrillers require your attention for suspense. That’s why they’re good, you can’t just watch some of it out of the corner of your eye and get the full effect. Instead, if you’re going to put on a movie, I’d have a stack of cult classic sci-fi and old-school horror movies that you can put on in the background and poke fun at. I’m talking about ones that are so-bad-they’re-good. Zombies, aliens, vampires… luckily, there’s no shortage of these suckers. Make sure you rent them ahead of time though because you don’t want the video store to be out. Again, if you’re cheap like me get your entertainment from the library where it’s free! (And you can usually request movies from nearby libraries if they don’t have it there.) As for music, I don’t care how cute you are, it’s going to be difficult picking up girls while dressed as a Troll doll and swinging your hips to the Monster Mash. Yes, have Thriller and Ghostbusters on hand, but I’d keep the majority of the playlist to actual party music.

Last but not least, every party needs snacks and drinks! If you’re sending out a formal invitation via Facebook or whatever, I’d tack a polite BYOB to the bottom but it is a good host’s job to make sure that the food and drinks are plentiful. Unless you’re having a small intimate cocktail party (which is also a great opportunity for a mystery party), that sometimes means choosing quantity over quality on a budget. The best (and tastiest) option is to make a punch. I can’t even begin to list some of the recipes that are out there for potent party punch, but let me tell you there are some good ones in awesome colors for Halloween. I CAN however, mention a few ways to dress up your concoction. There is the always classic floating ice hand that you can make the day before by filling a glove (non-latex if you’re worried about latex allergies) with water or juice and peeling it off when solid. Not that anyone is dumb, but accidents do happen so if you’re going to stick things in the drinks I’d either stick with objects that are too big to possibly miss or raisins instead of fake spiders and things. For extra gore-factor, drizzle some red juice concentrate on the sides of glasses like blood. Halloween is a good time to make slimy, jiggly, Jell-O shots. It’s also probably the only time of year that people buy green Jell-O. You can buy glowsticks in bulk pretty cheaply to either wear or use as cocktail stirrers. Food possibilities are endless, but you don’t need me to tell you how to go to the store and buy some chips. I’m leaving a link to one website I found though that had some pretty cute and healthy snack ideas. Sometimes people get sick of all of the sugary stuff and healthy things are refreshing.

Well that’s it for Halloween, now you can start plotting pranks!

Party food

Cool prank to scare trick or treaters