More BEBE 2014!  Our second movie, “Zombie Cheerleading Camp“, wasn’t… good. In fact it was very not good. There was an hour long (or at least it felt like an hour) fight with a stuffed squirrel.

Our third selection, “Rise of the Zombies“, is a made for TV Asylum production. This usually means “terrible“, but after the last one it’s looking positively Oscar-worthy. It also features the hardest working man in show business, Danny Trejo!

The first “BE” in BEBE is “Boiled Eggs” so we got to work on them!  We first tried some traditional food-coloring and dye but the result were disappointing. We did the old trick where you draw on the egg with crayon, but they still came out just a little too festive. It didn’t help that our lead shorty kept making them look so gosh-darned happy.

So we pulled out the the old Dudley’s Spin an Egg from last year. We didn’t have any of the dye that came with it but undiluted food-coloring seems to work pretty well.  The damn thing is still too hard to spin up and it’s still really hard to get the lid on, but it did the trick. It did stop spinning after a few eggs – the spinner lost its whatzitmajigger – but it actually worked just as well, or better, when spun manually.  In any case we got a nice set of gross-looking eggs.

These have a really long dry-time and look like they’ll remain messy for at least a few hours. We probably should have figured them out earlier.

More BEBE 2014!  We had a lot of fun with our first selection, “Deadheads“. Sure it was a little to “Scooby Doo”, but it was also laugh-out-loud funny in places that it actually wanted to be, and that’s always good news.

Our second selection is “Zombie Cheerleading Camp” and it’s… not looking good so far. The movie started with an extended still-screen, comic-book montage explaining how nazis made zombie squirrels and Americans buried the formula in the woods. Or something. From IMDB:

“Its Brains, B-R-A-I-N-S and pass the pom poms as Horror ensues when a camp full of air headed cheerleaders face a contagious Zombie Virus.”

Wish us luck on this one, folks!

We decided to try something new this year and… it didn’t go all that well. We dyed some marshmallows using the egg spinner and used the cake decorations left over from the cookies to zombie them up. We probably won’t try this again, but if you’d like to learn from our mistakes:

• The dye didn’t work that well. I think it reacted with the sugar and just made everything look brown. Perhaps brushing it on would work better?
• A snip or two with a pair of scissors can make some pretty convincing looking mouths and head wounds.
• We tried using some cereal as eyes (glued on with frosting) and they were… okay. You may want to try something different.
• Food coloring will end up much darker than you might expect.

We could probably improve our technique and eventually come up with something workable. The real problem is that after you spend all that time and effort you just won’t want to eat these. Even the shorties turned their sugar-hungry noses up at them. The dye gives them a terrible texture and an odd taste and they seem to stale almost immediately. We’re probably going to be sticking with cookies from now on.

The baskets were big hits even if they were a little light this year. There was plenty of Platter’s Chocolate; the very best kind of chocolate. It doesn’t matter where we live or how much it costs: Platter’s is worth it. My only complaint is that they haven’t (yet) embraced the zombie movement so we’re forced to deal with cute bunnies, but once you gnaw on them a while they fit in just fine.

My (twelve year old) daughter insisted on finding eggs, so we begrudgingly obliged and hid them. My 15 year old son did not insist on finding his eggs, but since his sister hid them without being asked, he kind of had to.
We raided the zombie aisle and have quite a few things to try out and review. Everybody got a “Keep Calm and Kill Zombies” t-shirt and a collection of zombie rubber ducks. There are a couple of new video games, Dead Island and ZombieU, mostly for the men-folk. Neither were reportedly very good, but they were bargain binners, so who cares? We also got a new tabletop game to try out: Zombies!!!. It’s a long one (over two hours to play) and looks pretty complicated, so we’ll probably save that for another day.

Lots to watch and do and play and eat and eat some more!

We’re kicking off Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters 2014 (tag: BEBE 2014)!  We got a bit of a late start, but we’re fine with that. One of the benefits of creating your own holiday is that there’s no reason to get up early for it. There’s no rush.

The kids have sullenly raided their baskets and are sitting on the couch like lumps. Teenagers.

We’re starting off the movies with something light: “Deadheads“. Sounds like it could be fun. From IMDB:

“Two inexplicably coherent zombies awake amidst a zombie attack, and decide to take a road trip to find the one’s lost love, unaware they are being chased by the agents of a ruthless company with its own agenda.”

We’ll be posting activities and mini-reviews throughout the day.  As usual, we”ll do full-length reviews of everything in the coming weeks, but for today, posts will be short and pithy so we can get back to the fun.

It really snuck up on us, but Boiled Eggs and Brain Eaters is only a week away! April 20th! My lovely bride and I are rushed, but are still planning to make BEBE 2014, our fifth year, a great day!

If you have suggestions for movies, games or activities, please let us know in the comments!

Well probably be doing another batch of zombie cookies and there’s already been a request to have another go at an undead bunny cake. Of course there’ll be plenty of boiled eggs, movies and games also on the menu!

We hope that you and your family will join us!