Left it a bit late to get your Halloween outfit sorted this year? Did you fail to pay heed to Emma’s Best Halloween Outfit recommendations last week and now find yourself in a panic?

Well now, shame on you, whatever were you thinking? Fortunately, I have been spending some quality time with the internet recently and am able to point you in the direction of some pretty darn amazing DIY Halloween costumes that you should be able to whip up in no time at all.

1. Customise a cardboard tube

I stumbled upon this rather wonderful Spike Through The Stomach costume by gnatquill on Instructables. You should be able to make this one pretty quickly and it doesn’t require much more than some cardboard tubes, paint, elastic and some clothes you don’t mind destroying.

It was one of many wonderful entries in the Instructables Halloween Competition, which is a great place to take a look if you are lacking inspiration, plus the competition runs until 7th November so it’s not too late to enter either!

2. Transform a hooded top

Another great idea, when time is of the essence and you have a spare hoodie to hand, comes from Martha Stewart’s Crafts Dept. The wolf is just one of the examples of what can be done with a hoodie, some felt, fabric glue and a bit of imagination. If you head over to the original post you can also see the really rather impressive dinosaur hoodie and *the* best frog I have ever laid my eyes on.

This is definitely a very versatile project with endless potential for customisation which would work really well for small people too.

3. Real Vampires wear tracksuits

I will be exceedingly surprised if there isn’t an whole slew of True Blood-inspired costumes on show this Halloween. If you really want to nail the look of your favourite character then look no further than the True Blood wiki for a comprehensive True Blood Halloween Costume How-To.

If you can pull off the tracksuit and hair foils just like a certain Eric Northman then you will have no complaints from me!

4. Go ga ga for Gaga!

Yup, to finish up it has to be the obligatory Lady Gaga costume because you just know that’s who all the cool kids will be at Halloween this year! And thanks to the lovely folk over at craftster you can make everything from a Lady Gaga red lace hat just like the one she wore to the VMA’s to a mirrorball bra a la Just Dance.

If you are really cutting it fine then throw on a leather jacket, grab yourself some coke cans and wrap them in your hair. There are some great hair and make-up tips for the Telephone look on Instructables from angelabchua

Will you be donning a DIY Halloween costume this year? I can’t wait to see what you come up with!

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Halloween. A time when children dress up as cute little pumpkins and witches, teenage girls put together a ‘costume’ that merges scary with slutty, and grown ups desperately attempt to create something that looks cool and yet effortless.

No doubt this year’s ghoulish festivities will be primarily built around the Twilight and True Blood franchises, for kids and adults. But here at Dork Adore, we’d like to suggest a few more alternative costumes.

Let’s kick off with this Cyberman costume on the right from Littlewoods (£56.40). The Doctor Who nemesis’s outfit comes complete with silver jumpsuit and mask. There’s a more expensive Cyberman costume from Jokes Around, which looks slightly less like a gimpsuit…

Geek chic

Seeing as you’re reading this on a site dedicated to everything dorky, we’re probably right to assume you like to embrace your nerdy side. So why not go the whole hog and kit yourself out in a Nerd costume?

The Nerd costume (Fancydress.com, £27.99) is a short-sleeved one-piece, with an extra- high waist, matching bow tie and pocket protector.

Wear it with big black rimmed glasses and some stick on zits for the full effect.

Goblin costume…for your dog

Isn’t half the fun of Halloween in dressing your dog up in something ridiculous? No?

Perhaps this Goblin costume will change your mind. The black harness is attached to the dog, with an angry-looking goblin perched on top, ready for battle. There’s a headless horseman and a cowboy one too if you’re warming to the pet costume idea.

£18.49 might seem like a lot for a pet costume, but I think we can all agree the dog looks damn happy about wearing it.

Mario

It’s-a-me, Mario!

Super Mario Bros is 25 this year, so why not celebrate the Italian plumbing duo’s birthday by pulling on Mario’s famous blue overalls?

The Adult Deluxe Mario Costume, which comes with a jumpsuit, inflatable belly, gloves, hat and authentic moustache, is from Allfancydress (£43.99).

If you’ve got a willing child who’s happy to be your sidekick, you could get this Toad Child Costume from Costume Express ($24.99). There’s also a Princess Peach costume for $49.99 and a Yoshi costume.

Spaghetti Cat costume

A special mention goes to this handmade meme costume of Spaghetti cat, which scares the living daylights out of me.

Imagine that arriving on your doorstep *shudder*.

What will you be dressing up as this Halloween?

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There’s still a smidgen of time left to order a Christmas present for that lovable dork in your life! Here’s a few suggestions from us at Dork Adore.

For the vampire fan…

Have you got someone in the family who’s as addicted to Vampire shows as we are at Dork Adore? I think I’ve found the best gift to keep them happy and quiet.

Browsing Ebay, I came across this set of True Blood books for £16.99. They’ll be able to get ahead on the story, and sit through series 2 smug in the knowledge that they already know what’s going to happen.

For the games fan…

Head over to Argos and you’ll find some great console package deals to keep everyone happy. Don’t have a Wii yet? Argos are offering a package deal for £169.99 including the Wii console, Wii Sports game and Wii Sports Resort, along with a bunch of accessories, Big Beach sports game and docking station for free.

For the music fan…

Save yourself a bit of time by nailing your Christmas food shop and present shop in one at Tesco.

They’ve got this iPod Nano, the brand new version with a built in video camera and FM radio, for just £114.97. That will give you enough change out of £150 for a set of speakers like the ones we featured in our Stocking Filler post recently.

For the craft fan…

The Make Lounge is a studio that offers workshops on everything from cupcake decorating to creating your own jewellery. They’re offering vouchers that can be printed or e-mailed to the recipient on Christmas Day.

For the shopping fan…

Pretty much every shop on the high street has some form of gift voucher. This year however, Oasis has stepped up their game with a mobile gift voucher. Simply pay online, and they’ll send your recipient the voucher over text message, which they can use in any store. You can also choose when you want the text to be sent. A great very last minute gift if there’s anyone you’ve forgotten!

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You can’t open Google, turn on the telly or talk to certain people called Charles at the moment without being assaulted by vampires, actors who have played vampires falling out of sub-standard nightclubs, and interviews with people who have written about vampires.

You can’t blame it on Halloween – the whole of 2009 seems to be the year of the vampire. Also, the ox, but he doesn’t seem to be getting so much publicity.

But vampires aren’t even that good . They’re fussy eaters, pretty antisocial and will never be able to partake in a summer picnic, unless it’s at night, which is rubbish.

I think we need to regain a bit of vampire perspective, and so I’ve collated the top five things that are better than vampires.

• Browser shortcuts to specific Google docs
  

These are way better than vampires: they are productivity gold in a way Bram Stoker could never comprehend. Now, I can get to my ‘huh, what an awful lot of people are yet to pay me’ spreadsheet in seconds. You can even have a ‘new document’ shortcut, which is why I’ve created 67 new documents in the last three days.

• The Motorola Droid

Last week I wrote about how much I wanted an Android phone that wasn’t ugly, but had yet to be convinced. This week, I have all my hopes pinned on Motorola (a sentence I never thought I’d be writing), as the Motorola Droid has been officially launched in the US, with rumours of it coming over here.

It runs Android 2.0, has a 5-megapixel camera and a QWERTY keyboard (not entirely sold on that one).  It’s official: cute little android characters are cooler than vampires.

• Fireworks night

On the surface, you might think fireworks and vampires go together, both requiring night as they do. But I have never seen a vampire display, and the latest vampires do not explode into awesome shapes, like lips and hearts. Fireworks do in both cases.

• Philippe Starck
  

If you did not see him in his ‘Masterchef for people that want to design knives, forks and chairs’ programme on BBC2, get thee to iPlayer.

He was the best French man I have ever seen, and should almost certainly be releasing a Christmas coaching video on how to be so awesome-ly French. You never see a French vampire, now do you? (Oh, and the programme was called Design for Life, in case the previous explanation yielded no results in the BBC’s stupid search facility. Katie wrote about the winner the show and her Kaspa Lamps here. She was also inexplicably rude about Philppe Starck.)

• Werewolves

The main reason werewolves are better than vampires comes down to your basic Mean Girls halloween conundrum. If we can make werewolves the new vampires, it can only result in Hilarious Consequences as girls try to work out how to make a Sexy Werewolf costume.

Because face it – there’s nothing sexy about a hairy wolf. There just isn’t.

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Twilight is not a good vampire story. This is mainly because it doesn’t have any vampires in it. They can go outside in the daytime. They glitter in sunlight. What you have there, people, is more of a murderous, blood-drinking pixie.

Here are six shows and films that are better than Twilight…

• Ultraviolet (1998)

It only ran for six episodes on Channel 4, but Ultraviolet is still a definitive take on the modern vampire. Downbeat, menacing and claustrophobic, it starred Jack Davenport as a London police detective recruited by a shady group of vampire-hunters (including The Wire’s Idris Elba) with ties to both the government and the Catholic Church.

The clever, logical way the series thought through how vampires, with their traditional strengths and limitations, would operate in contemporary London, remains impressive ten years on. Not to mention their hunters – why use stakes when you can use assault rifles and carbon bullets? But its best trick was to make you think the vampires kind of had a point. A hated minority being hunted down by a Vatican-funded death squad, just trying to survive? They must be the good guys, right?

• Vampire’s Kiss (1989)

Businessman Nicolas Cage gets bitten by a Jennifer Beals-shaped vampire and starts going a little unhinged, in this little-known, alternately funny and disturbing film. He thinks he’s becoming one of the undead, starts avoiding sunlight and gets special ceramic fangs made so he can bite women in nightclubs. I find Nicolas Cage creepy and uncomfortable in most roles, but this part plays directly to those, uh, strengths.

• Angel (1999-2004)

Look, I preferred it to Buffy, okay? Angel spent most of its time snarkily undermining the heroics of its central character, had a nice line in moody philosophising and its middle three years essentially made up one massive, crazily apocalyptic storyline. Unexpectedly cancelled after five series, it went out with a rain-drenched, Blakes 7-style ending born of angry defiance.

• Blade (1998)

After three films and a TV series, still nothing in the Blade oeuvre matches the first ten minutes of the first film, in which Wesley Snipes, armed with a shotgun, a sword and a black leather trenchcoat, slaughters an entire nightclub full of techno-loving vampires. Cheap thrills, yes, but they did make my 18-year-old boy-self think he was about to see the most kick-ass film of all time. It didn’t quite turn out that way, but the rest of the film does offer some great fight scenes, some nice mythology-building (sadly abandoned in favour of over-the-top insanity in later instalments) and the most surreal action hero one-liner ever. Apropos of nothing – “some motherfucker’s always trying to ice-skate uphill”.

• The Lost Boys (1987)

Dude, it’s The Lost Boys. I don’t need to explain this. Although when checking Wikipedia to see when it was released, I discovered that a sequel has been greenlit, with the Kiefer Sutherland role taken by his brother,  Angus Sutherland. I am not making this up, but I really hope Wikipedia is. [Update: Looks like Lost Boys: The Tribe is already out on DVD with a third one on the way]

• …and True Blood?

I’m watching at Channel 4 speed, so it’s early days, but so far I’m frustrated. It takes a great concept (vampires have revealed themselves to the world) and spends all its time in a small, cut-off town where the locals would probably be equally awestruck and intrigued if there was a sudden influx of Belgians. I mean, show me Chicago or New York now we all know the living dead are among us. Because things are probably kicking off. Well, maybe later in the series.

Book tickets to see Twilight The New Moon

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True Blood is a great source of crochet crafty goodness thanks to an embarrassment of afghans, which seem to adorn every sofa on set.

And if you’d like to get yourself kitted out with Lafayette’s chosen granny blanket, the kindly Betty McKnit has added a free pattern to her Ravelry page.

Or, for those without a Ravelry account, you can get it direct here: Lafayette’s Afghan.

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It’s finally Friday, and after a long and busy week, you’re probably considering your options. Do you:

a) Hit the pub and pay £20 for a £3 bottle of wine?

b) Stay in and enjoy some of the best TV in a long time, in your pyjamas with a glass of tasty plonk that cost you half the price?

Call me sad, but I’m going to grab my slanket and go for option b). We are in a recession, after all.

Here are 5 reasons why you should too:

1) Peep Show

This no frills comedy takes us through the daily lives of flatmates Jez and Mark, from their socially awkward point of view. I’m a relative newbie to the show (you can catch up on past episodes on 4OD) and it’s now into its 6th series. Watch it if you’ve ever worked in an office, had a bizarre flatmate, or embarrassed yourself horribly in public with your lack of social etiquette.

2) The IT Crowd

Straight after Peep Show you’ve got The IT Crowd which focuses on, you’ve guessed it, the IT department of a company. The cast is made up of Katherine Parkinson (from the Katy Brand Show and erm…that Maltesers advert) Irish lovely Chris O’Dowd (shortly to appear in Gulliver’s Travels) and Richard Ayoade (co-writer of Garth Marenghi and actor in The Mighty Boosh).  Moss (played by Ayoade) is the clear star, and the secret object of many viewers’ affections.

What’s not to love about a man who gives his afro a side parting?

You can catch The IT Crowd at 10.35 on Channel 4.

3) True blood

I know this is a repeat from Wednesday’s showing, but I’m more likely to get a chance to sit down and watch it now than earlier in the week. Obviously this is going to require some stealth Twitter and Facebook avoidance. For those not familiar with True Blood, it’s basically Twilight with added male nudity, and fewer scenes with Robert Pattinson pouting into the distance.

It centres around Clairvoyant waitress Sookie Stackhouse, who meets and falls in love with her first ever vampire, Bill Compton.  Keep an eye out for the chemistry between the two leads, as it’s since spilled over into real life and the pair are engaged.

You can see it at 11.05pm on Channel 4.

4) Flash Forward

Missing Lost? Then check out Flash Forward.  The show kicked off last week and is based on a mysterious event that causes the whole population of the world to black out simultaneously. The cast is led by the rather gorgeous Joseph Fiennes, and it’s on at 10pm on Five.

5) Autumnwatch

Yeah, I know this won’t win me any cool points, but they have badgers on the show! Real life badgers. And baby hedgehogs! Can you tell that I’m a wildlife geek? It’s literally the most relaxing thing you can watch on a Friday night, and it kicks off at 9pm on BBC2.

So what’s it going to be? Going out or staying in?

Image courtesy of Flickr user SFB579

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