.flickr-photo { }
.flickr-frame { float: left; text-align: center; margin-right: 15px; margin-bottom: 15px; }
.flickr-caption { font-size: 0.8em; margin-top: 0px; }

Katie got a great Halloween costume this year!,
originally uploaded by Ben Brown.

I saw this and thought it was cool, but then realized it was edited with a program like Photoshop. I new a girl in High school that would do bazaar stuff like that to her eye lids. A costume that would really have me looking twice.

Halloween is a holiday that is celebrated throughout the world in many different ways. In the post Halloween Celebrations Throughout the World, Darlene McFarlane tells gives us some of the history behind one of the worlds oldest holidays. Locations that she focuses on include Austria, Spain, Japan, Germany, Italy, Mexico, Russia, Ireland, Scotland, North America, Russia, and India. In addition to telling the readers about Halloween customs in a variety of locations, she also has some very nice photos within the post.

My favorite picture is the Jack-o-lantern pic in the Ireland Halloween section where we find out that the name Jack-O-Lantern comes from a man named “Stingy Jack”, which is also a story that is shared in Scotland. But instead of a pumpkin, “Stingy Jack’s” Lantern was a carved out turnip with a piece of coal. Give the Halloween Celebrations post a read, it truly is a fascinating Halloween post.

It’s that time… the drawing for the two $50 gift certificates to be used at Dreamascream.com has been completed. We used Random.org to pick the winners. And the winners are:

Matt from Contest Beat wins one Halloween costume $50 gift certificate to be used at DreamaScream.
Anastasia from Media Mafia wins the second $50 Halloween costume gift certificate!

Congratulations to all and have a safe and Happy Halloween!

And a special thanks to the fine folks at Dreamascream that made this contest possible!

The Dreamascream Halloween Costume Giveaway is rapidly approaching its close. Lots of activity is happening on the blog, with some last minute tweaking of a few posts. I actually had my designer make a new wider logo for the contest to be used on the blog.

I then placed the Halloween Costume Giveaway banner on all the pages that receive the most traffic, which would be all of the Halloween Links pages.

So get your entries in before it is too late.

Just checking out the traffic from yesterday, here is a pic of the Halloween Keywords that were used to find the site.

The Top posts for yesterday were the Halloween Links post and the Halloween Resources post Great Halloween sites for 2007. The Halloween Costume Contest post was the next highest seen page and the runner up was the Halloween Costumes from the Movies post.

Two Days Left-Enter Now!
The Dreamascream Halloween Costume Giveaway is wrapping up. Two days left for the contest. Lots of entries have been received by people who joined the newsletter, and only handful joined by doing a Halloween video or writing a Halloween costume post. It would seem like their would be more of the later two, as you get more entries for these two, but the easiest way to enter is just by signing up for the Halloween Newsletter.

It has been a while since I did an update, but sadly the entries have not come poring in for the Halloween Costume Giveaway.

Anastasia from Enter Now, a sweepstakes site did a post about the Halloween contest. We have also had a lot of entries from people who signed for the Newsletter. The only video thus far was the one done by buddy Jim.

Halloween Contest for Mutts

Today I found a cool Halloween Costume contest that is literally for the dogs. The site Luvmutt.com is having a Halloween contest as well. For this contest, all you need to do is send them a pic of your dog, I mean mutt(No purebreeds aloud) in a Halloween contest. The contest is running now until the end of the month. Prizes have yet to be disclosed. But being it is a Halloween Costume contest for Mutts, I just had to inform any readers who may have a Mutt and want to enter them into either contest. Sure, I will accept Halloween posts about pet costumes as well.

Yesterdays Halloween Contest Activities

In addition to chatting with Emperor Anton on Twitter in the morning, I started a Halloween Links page on Jottit.com after seeing a link for it on one of the tweets in my Twitter stream. Another way I can show some link love to any other Halloween sites that get involved in the Dreamascream.com Halloween Costume Giveaway.

I also created a Halloween Contest Group on Viddler, where the videos for the Halloween contest are being hosted. At the time of the creation of this post, the only Halloween video in the group has been viewed well over 200x.

I also submitted the Halloween Costume Contest to Sweeprs.com which is a digg like contest/sweepstakes site, where you can submit your contest and others vote on it. Speaking of Digg, if you want to Digg the contest here is the Halloween Contest Digg Link.

Click on the picture to go to the Halloween Contest page.

My friend Jim made this video for me for the Dreamascream Halloween Costume Giveaway.
One of the ways to enter the contest is to make a Halloween video on Viddler.com, which can be anything from a kids Halloween parade, a homemade Halloween horror movie, or a video of you telling a Halloween joke. In other words it does not need to be anything fancy. Just make sure you tag the video Dreamascream, and put a link to Dreamascream in the comments.
Viddler is a cool site for posting these videos, because you can use either a webcam or any camera that makes movies.
So head on over to Viddler and get your Halloween video entry in for the Dreamascream Halloween Costume Giveaway.

Today is the day of the BlogCatalog Bloggers Unite Against Abuse. 1000+ Bloggers from all over the globe are blogging about various aspects of abuse. Some of the topics include:

• Child Abuse
• Animal/pet abuse
• Elderly Abuse
• Environmental Abuse
• Political abuse
• Domestic Abuse

This blog since it is a Halloween blog is going to be blogging about child abuse. The post represents my opinions, and is not based on fact. I also use a tremendous amount of hypothetical situations.

Stop Child Abuse

What exactly is Child Abuse?

• Emotional abuse- this can include terrorizing of children to outright neglect or abandonment. Far more difficult to ascertain in many respects, because it does not often leave any outward signs. Also what may be emotional abuse to one person, may be a form of discipline by another. I do feel it is a really important type of abuse that needs to be considered, because emotional pain is often far worse than physical pain, and often times last much longer, and also affects the children when they become adults.
• Physical abuse-Often times physical abuse and emotional abuse go hand in hand, but not always. One may use physical abuse to control or it maybe a direct result of the emotional abuse. But in other instances, emotional and physical abuse do not go hand in hand. Physical abuse is the more serious of the two because it can often lead to a defenseless child being killed.
  • Say a parent is driving their car, and the child is in the front or back seat not belted in or using an appropriate car seat and an accident occurs. I would consider this to be physical abuse.
  • Back to the subject of Halloween, your child decides to wear a costume that is way to big for him or her, and proceeds to go out on Hallows eve and has an accident that involves an emergency room visit. It was a preventable accident. See our Halloween Safety tips post for tips to a safe Halloween.
• Sexual Abuse- in many parts of the world to include the US, children are often sold into a life of prostitution or are forced to participate in the sex trades by making movies or other forms of pornography. I am not going to go into any detail here, but please be aware it does exist. Further reading on the subject can be found in the links below.

Suffice it to say, Child Abuse is a serious problem that exists in all levels of our society and in many different ways. Below you will find posts of some bloggers that participated in the Blogging Against Abuse Blogging event that had the subject of Child abuse as their topic. This is not an all inclusive list, so if I missed any of the child abuse blogs, please drop me a line and I will add you to the list.

• Blogging For Hope. Reduce Abuse For Our Children’s Sakes.
• Cure forAids -Rape a child Myth – the shocking truth!
• Blogging for Hope – Child Abuse
• Blog Against Abuse: The Breaking of a Child
• Child Molestation affects siblings, too
• Dear Mommy-Lets Stop Child Abandonment
• Stop Child Molestation! Stop Child Abuse!
• Stop the Abuse. Blogging for a Cause …
• Child Abuse – A Heinous Crime

I went to bed last night and realized I forgot to write a Halloween Costume Giveaway update post, but fortunately or unfortunately as the case may be, there were no new blog submissions for the contest, so I did not fail to give anyone a link that entered.

Halloween Contest Promotional Activities

Here is what I was doing yesterday.

I got notification that Screamdream was added to FuelMyblog, and I just added the FuelMyblog widget to the sidebar. I also inquired about sponsoring a similiar contest on FuelMyblog. No reply as of yet.

Joined blogging against abuse or signed up to do an abuse post, which will be the post that follows this post. The Blogcatalog blogging event is an event where bloggers agree to post about abuse. What type of abuse is determined by the blog owners. I will be doing a post on this blog about Child Abuse.

• Created a Twitter Account and proceeded to modify my Twitter profile.
• Created a Viddler account and actually contacted Viddler about submitting the contest, I did not put a video on Viddler yet, because I really dislike my voice. I have a buddy who I swear sounds like a newscaster who I will be getting to make a video about the contest, hopefully this will be happening on Friday.
• I had a buddy who was responsible for this blog Digg the contest here is the Digg Halloween Contest link if you would like to Digg it too…please.
• I was also on Bumpzee a bit yesterday…seems like the greater percentage of visits are from Bumpzee vs Mybloglog and Blogcatalog.
• Started to edit the Halloween Links or resources post inorder to numerate it, but I decided my efforts could better be spent elsewere. I may get back to the numeration of the Halloween links at another time.

Today, I will be answering emails, and maybe checking out a few other blogs, but it should be a pretty low key day once I finish the Child Abuse post.