If you make the trip to Munich this year, you’ll be paying slightly more for your beer in the Weisn tents. Prices for a Mass of beer are up 3-5% this year, but still holding under 10 euros. Our quick conversion indicates that’s about $13.12 for a liter of Oktoberfest beer.

In the United States, you don’t have to wait until September to get the party started. Last year, we received reports around the Fourth of July that Oktoberfest beers were spotted at beer stores. There are reports that they are going to hit the shelf at your local beer distributor even earlier this year. Paulaner just issued a press release that its Oktoberfest Weisn will be in stores by the end of June. For those that want the party to go along with their beer, Paulaner’s traveling beer garden is also going strong already. You’ll soon be able to find Oktoberfest in July celebrations as well. Immaculate Conception Church in Willoughby, Ohio will start the festivities with a three day Oktoberfest on July 19th – 21st. The Isanti County Fair, held July 24th – 30th in Cambridge, Minnesota, is a celebration of German heritage and considers itself an Oktoberfest in July as well. And the Poconos’ Wurst Festival will celebrate the best of Germany on July 20th and 21st. It may not be called Oktoberfest, but we think you’ll enjoy it all the same.

While I’m talking about Oktoberfest here, I thought I would also draw your attention to the map of Oktoberfest locations in the United States that I released in May.

You can check out the live version on our US Oktoberfest page with individual maps on each state page. We’ll be updating the map and our list of dates of Oktoberfests in the US regularly, as we receive important announcements about 2013 festivals. The La Crosse Oktoberfest, for example, has announced that its 2014 Oktoberfest will be four days long instead of nine. It is keeping the nine day schedule for this year, however.

If you would like to contribute to our Oktoberfest section, we’d love to have your help making it even better. If you have been to one of the Oktoberfests, feel free to leave more information about it in the comments on the appropriate state page. If you notice that we’ve got something wrong or they have posted dates to their celebration, that’s helpful too! Thank you in advance for your help.

Preparations here at Funtober for Fall are proceeding nicely in other areas as well. We’ve come a long way since last November. Over Memorial Day weekend, I tracked down and updated a number of fall festivals for 2013. Our list of haunted houses is looking better than ever. It isn’t quite ready for September, but it is looking great for the middle of June. We have now turned our focus to Halloween costumes for the next few weeks. This week, I took some time to make the costume pages load faster. As we work on costumes over the next few months, we’ll be writing better product descriptions, adding additional costume photos, designing a better layout and offering more costumes for sale.

I continue to learn about running a business as well. It isn’t easy. It’s a constant struggle between building sections of Funtober which have long term value and getting caught up in the day to day operation of a website. I spent some time this week jumping through hoops to get a new SSL certificate. It should be a relatively simple process and it didn’t go smoothly. Apparently, if you aren’t listed in Dun & Bradstreet and the Yellow Pages, you aren’t a business. I practically fell out of my chair. So we have a shiny new temporary SSL certificate up while they verify that Funtober exists.

Our short term goal is only 80 days away: Labor Day weekend starts August 31st. We’re counting down the days and are very excited about another year of helping people have more fun in Fall!

The post 100 Days To Oktoberfest 2013 in Munich appeared first on Funtober.

Pumpkin Pancakes! You may have to wait for fall to get a pumpkin spice latte at Starbucks. But you don’t have to wait for these delicious breakfast treats. If you can’t make it to Philadelphia for brunch, grab a pumpkin pancake recipe and enjoy!

The post You Don’t Have to Wait for Fall to Enjoy Yummy Pumpkin Pancakes! appeared first on Funtober.

If you are in the area, I hope to see you there. It should be fun! The National Haunters Convention is a tradeshow with more than 65 vendors, educational seminars, a haunted house tour, and a Saturday evening costume ball.

This is just one of the many Halloween conventions and tradeshows held throughout the country.  Hauntcon is happening next week in Dallas, Texas, for example. So you should be able to find a convention near you.

This is my first industry halloween convention and my first great opportunity to meet many of those pioneers who created the haunted house and halloween industry. If you have some convention insights or are just a beginner like me leave a message below.  I am particularly interested in meeting haunted house owners, so say hello if you see me.

Wayne Melton

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It’s been three months since I’ve posted on the Funtober blog. I’m sure it has appeared that Funtober has been in hibernation to some. But I’ve actually been hard at work behind the scenes setting the stage for this Fall. It was really just a short blog hibernation in order to allow me to get some other work done. Here’s some of the improvements that we’ve made since posting here last:

Funtober Costume Store Updates

There have been a number of upgrades to our eCommerce store, one of which removed the nasty error that some people were experiencing that prevented them from checking out with a costume in their shopping cart. It was super frustrating because the checkout process worked correctly for so many people, including myself. I tore the system apart in February and permanently fixed the problem.

Costume Store Payment Options:

Last year we only took credit cards – Visa, Mastercard, Discover and American Express. We’ve added Paypal to your purchasing options. A number of people asked for an alternative method of payment. So we listened!

Costume Selection:

Last year, we had about 750 costumes available for sale in October. We’ve doubled that number now. It’s over 1500 and growing. If you remember back to last October, you had to wade through all of the costume options by age/gender in order to find the costume that you wanted. We’ve now got this nice page listing (almost) all of our Halloween costumes by subject. We’re going to improve these pages more as Halloween draws near.

Better Server: We’ve upgraded the platform to serve web pages to you faster. It should prove more stable under the high traffic loads that we experience during September and October. The minor downtime that happened last year during September and October should be a thing of the past. We will be testing this further as the year progresses to ensure all goes smoothly.

Another Person: When I wrote the About Funtober page last year, I used a lot of “I” because this was a one person show. But that’s not the case now. I managed to convince someone else that Funtober had a pretty good chance at success. It’s going to take him some time to get up to speed on everything, but I’m sure you’ll see him posting here on the blog soon. If you notice an improvement in our Haunted House section, that’s all him.

Oktoberfest:

I removed all of the 2012 dates to Oktoberfest events and put in 2013 dates where I could find them. Three people emailed in March asking when I would have 2013 dates. So I made it a priority. We’ll be going through this list another couple times before things heat up in September.

Ghost Tours:

We went through all the ghost tours and created a brief description of them for you.

I’m sure I’m forgetting some big things. There’s been hundreds of minor changes over the past few months as part of our efforts to build the best resource for Fall fun that we can. We’ve come a long way with Funtober since day one. We passed the one year anniversary of this website a few weeks back. About 55 weeks ago, I was setting up my first server. And loading the first 100 pages of the website into Funtober. Seems like forever ago.

Feedback From You

If there’s something that we can do better, tell us! If there’s a feature that you would find helpful, we’d be happy to implement it. If there’s information that you would like, we’ll go get it. It’s hard to guess what you’ll like – so leave a comment, hit up our contact page, tweet at us or send me an email. We only bite in October.

The post An End to Our Winter Hibernation Here on the Funtober Blog appeared first on Funtober.

It’s a temporary setback, but I’m hoping that it will alleviate the recurring problem that caused the corrupt file system in the first place. In that case, any other solution would just be a temporary fix. And I expect that you will be celebrating the New Year rather than shopping for costumes, anyway. If you are here looking for a costume, I’m sorry! I should have it fixed and running by January 2, 2013.

I hope you are enjoying your holidays and I look forward to helping you find costumes and fall fun in 2013!

The post The Funtober Costume Store Will Be Unavailable Until January 2nd appeared first on Funtober.

I’m excited to speak publicly about Funtober for the first time. I’m looking forward to showing off what I’ve built. And I’ll be prepared to discuss every aspect of the company in depth. So stop by and say hello. Listen to me articulate my vision and reminisce about the past year. Ask questions. Offer feedback. Make fun of my wordpress theme. Help me with my elevator pitch. And network.

If you plan to attend, and there is something that you want to make sure that I cover, feel free to contact me or leave a comment. And if you can’t make it, but would like to offer a suggestion for Funtober, I’d love to hear it.

Have a Happy Thanksgiving! I hope to see you all on Monday.

The post Join Me at Meet the Founders on Monday! appeared first on Funtober.

Most of all, I have to thank you. And everyone else that visited Funtober this Fall. A double thank you goes out to everyone that ordered a Halloween costume, entered our costume giveaway, discovered an error in a directory, submitted an event that I missed, emailed to say that they found the website valuable, took the time to share Funtober with their friends, or did something else that I have forgotten to include here. You especially rock for helping make Funtober a success.

I’ve spent much of the past two weeks thinking about the future of Funtober. There’s a lot to do here before next Fall. Probably too much, in fact. I’d like to expand from handling events in October to the rest of Fall. Everything from Labor Day to Thanksgiving, in other words. That’s probably too much for one person to handle successfully. Hopefully I’ll get some help along the way.

I’d like to help people who love Fall and Halloween connect with each other. So I have been testing a few different ways to add some social networking features to the website. It seemed like visitors enjoyed the food and crafts – so I’ll have to have more tutorials next year.

I was asked a number of times during October whether I was planning to keep the costume store open year round or whether it would only be open during the Fall. The short answer: The costume store will be open year round. I’ve added a number of costumes for Thanksgiving and Christmas over the past week. But don’t worry – the focus here at Funtober will remain on the Fall.

As I’m sure you can tell from the prior paragraphs, my personal list of ideas for improvements for Funtober is pretty long. Even though a lot went right this year, there is still a lot of room for improvement. I’d love to hear your suggestions and feedback about Funtober. They would definitely help me add to, prioritize, and focus my list. Feel free to use the comment form below if you want your comments being displayed publicly or the contact form if you would like to keep them a bit more private.

The post Thank You! appeared first on Funtober.

If you are on the East Coast, your attention over the past few days has understandably been on Hurricane Sandy. It’s impact on Halloween this year has been tremendous, causing many cities in Connecticut, Delaware, New Jersey, New York (NYC postponed the Halloween Parade), Pennsylvania and West Virginia (snow) to delay or cancel Halloween events. Trick or treating in many communities has been postponed until the weekend, so be sure to check your local newspaper to find out whether you should go out tonight.

If you are headed out tonight, stay safe! Make sure kids look both ways before crossing the road. Adults headed to Halloween parties: don’t drink and drive! I want to see you all back next year for year two of Funtober.

Happy Halloween!

The post Happy Halloween! appeared first on Funtober.

As I write, my husband, six-month-old daughter, and I are hunkered down in our living room with an air mattress and travel crib, emergency bags packed — just in case — flashlights handy, and a wary eye on the 30-foot tree that is (still!) standing just a few feet from the front of our house: ready to face the worst of yet another hurricane.

Since work and daycare are closed until Sandy passes, and we’re still lucky enough to have power (except for about 20 minutes there a little earlier), it was a good day to whip up a last-minute Halloween treat: cupcakes! They’re the perfect dessert for a power outage: they require no refrigeration and no fussy utensils that need to be washed. Plus, with so many leaky places and trees and power lines nearby, this little legion of confectionery monsters with colorful coconut fur and candy googly-eyes helps us keep watch over every corner of our little fort. And it just goes to show that it’ll take more than a hurricane to put a total damper on our Halloween fun.

What you need:

• Cupcakes (any flavor), baked and frosted (24 regular-sized cupcakes)
• Coconut flakes, 1 lb.
• Food coloring
• Candy melts — black and white

Make the fur:

1. Mix 1 teaspoon of water with food coloring. If using more than one color, divide the coconut into separate food storage bags, depending on the number of colors you are using. Pour food coloring over coconut in bag, 1/2 teaspoon at a time. Seal the bag and shake until coconut is colored evenly. Add more food coloring to achieve desired color saturation.

2. Spread the coconut on a paper towel and let it dry for a few minutes.

3. Grab a cupcake and a large pinch of coconut flakes. Cover the top of the cupcake with coconut until it looks good and furry.

Store any leftover coconut in an airtight bag.

Make the eyes:

1. Place about 1/4–1/2 cup of candy melts in a microwave safe bowl. (You’ll need less of the black.) Microwave at full power for one minute, then stir. Continue to microwave in 30-second increments until fully melted and smooth.

2. Lay out a sheet of wax paper. Spoon the melted candy into a squeeze bottle. Gently shake the bottle upside down to eliminate air bubbles.

3. Squeeze out white candy to make a circle with a stick — like an upside down exclamation point. Make as many as you want. Be sure to make the stick thick enough — about 1/4 inch.

You can also use the candy melt to draw other features, such as mouths, hands, or ears. Use the black to create pupils.

To create details such as eyelashes, pull out a little bit of the still-warm candy with a toothpick.

Allow the candy to cool and harden completely before inserting into the cupcakes. Be sure to work quickly when handling the candy eyes, as the warmth from your fingers will cause the candy to soften; if the sticks are too thin, they’ll break. (The candy melts go a long way, so I like to make more eyes than I think I’ll need.)

And as simple as that, you’ve got a sweet, happy family of googly-eyed monsters!

If you’re also in Hurricane Sandy’s path, I hope that you’re safe and well. And wherever you are, here’s to a safe and happy Halloween!

The post Googly-Eyed Monster Cupcakes appeared first on Funtober.

While at the store buying supplies, we discovered $1.99 pumpkins. The result was that I spent Saturday night carving Jack O’Lanterns. I thought about making my own templates, but after surveying the available pumpkin carving patterns, I decided that a $5 membership at Zombie Pumpkins was worth it. I quickly destroyed both saws from my pumpkin carving kit though, and settled in to finish the pumpkin carvings with a knife. They turned out great:

I thought about carving the Funtober logo on one of the pumpkins. But I decided to save that for another night. I settled for something else instead:

We spent a while trying to figure out how to get the letters to line up properly across the three pumpkins. I had an idea this morning that might work better, so I’ll try to get another photo of them lit later. As I was downloading the photos of the pumpkins, I also found the photos of my Dracula costume from a few years back. I’ve been meaning to put up the photo of it here so that I’m not just a faceless monster. So here’s a sneak preview of someone you should avoid on Halloween:

If the power goes out, things will be pretty quiet here at Funtober. So in that event:

Happy Halloween!

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