Hey Keri! Nice to meet you! We had a temporary Party Packagers Halloween Store last year (I think it was called "BOO! The Halloween Store" or something like that. It was pretty impressive. When we talked to the manager, he said they'ed be setting up a permanent Party Packagers, but...nothing. We're really hurting for Party Supply stores here. We did have a bunch of Halloween stores last year, but most of them were Halloween Express or Halloween Discount or Depot or something? I'm pretty sure they were run by the San Francisco chain - they were pretty crappy. But at least we had a couple Spirits for the first time.
Custom costume? I'll have google.
I would LOVE to see your Spooky Town - bigger isn't always better. We've been at it a long time too - I think we started in 2002 or 2003? I think there's one photo in my album of the first 3 things we had - they looked pretty sad. So, ante up! Show me some photos.
(Actually, I usually dig through photos before I pester people, to see if I can figure out what they're about. I made an exception for the Edmontonian!
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I'm not sure if we're going to be buying much Spooky Town this year. I may go take a look at some Dept 56 stuff tomorrow - it seems almost comparable in price nowadays.
Tom