Did you know? Halloween started in the U.S. as a harvest festival. Our Irish emigrants brought us the Jack o’ Lantern—originally oversized rutabagas, turnips and potatoes were hollowed out, carved into faces and illuminated with candles. In the old country on Halloween, Irish peasants would beg the rich for food. For those that refused, they would play a practical joke. In an effort to avoid being tricked, the rich would hand out cookies, candy, and fruit – a practice that morphed into trick-or-treating today.

Halloween is now the sweetest holiday of the year with over 25% of candy sold in the two months prior to Halloween in the U.S. Chocolate is the favorite sweet; Snickers tops the list of most wanted candy bars. But it is not all about “empty” calories, pumpkins originated in Mexico over 9,000 years ago; they are one of America’s oldest known vegetables and a great source of vitamin A, beta-carotene and potassium. And your family can roast the seeds for protein and iron.

How to Roast Pumpkin Seeds

1. Rinse pumpkin seeds under cold water and pick out the pulp and strings. (This is easiest just after you’ve removed the seeds from the pumpkin, before the pulp has dried.)
2. Place the pumpkin seeds in a single layer on an oiled baking sheet, stirring to coat. If you prefer, omit the oil and coat with non-stick cooking spray.
3. Sprinkle with salt and bake at 325 degrees F until toasted, about 25 minutes, checking and stirring after 10 minutes.
4. Let cool and store in an air-tight container.

Halloween’s not just for children any more over 60% of adults get into the Halloween spirit (and admit to sneaking into their children’s candy every now and then). Consumers spend $1.5 billion on Halloween costumes each year, $2.5 on Halloween decorations and crafts and over $50 million on Halloween greeting cards.

Now you can get your family in the Halloween spirit with these free, spooktacular ideas:

• Print FREE Halloween party Invitations to get the party started. Free borders, text, images and more included.
• Add Halloween clip art for a ghastly touch to all your craft projects.
• Decorate your screen with a superior 3D Halloween Screensaver.
• Turn your wallpaper into a haunted cave—complete with 3D witch, ghouls and more.
• Download FREE Halloween sound effects to get in the creepy spirit!
• Play Halloween games until the haunting begins.
• Create a greeting card with your favorite goblin’s picture. Totally adorable.

All these Halloween products are available FREE at Freeze.com.

Create lasting Halloween memories for you and your family. Quality time doesn’t have to be expensive.

Comments and/or ideas? Contact support@teamfreeze.com

Tags: halloween, halloween ringtones, screensavers, family fun, clipart, wallpapers, invitations, freeze.com, games, sound effects

Also available for Halloween:

Screensavers
3D Halloween

Classic Haunted House

Pumpkin Patch

Trick Or Treat

3D Falling Leaves

Animated Wallpapers
3D Halloween

3D Falling Leaves

Jack O’ Lanterns

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Haunted House #1

Haunted House #2

Haunted House #3

Haunted House #4

Haunted House #5

Other Halloween Ideas
Halloween Invitations
Halloween Game Pack
Halloween Clip Art
Halloween Sound Effects
Halloween Smileys

Tags: screensavers, halloween, wallpapers, animated wallpaper

I have several instant messenger programs – ICQ, Yahoo, Windows Live Messenger, Trillian, etc.

Anyway, I like to change up my avatar (display picture) just like I like to change up my desktop wallpapers (using YourScreen). Even though I love making my own graphics, I get sick of coming up with ideas faster than I want to change out my avatar.

SO – the other day when I was browsing through the Clip Art Collection on freeze.com, I had a plan. I downloaded some of the clip art and ran it through PhotoShop – just changing the colors up on it a bit (if you have PhotoShop, just open the file and select Image/Adjustments/Hue Saturation and slide the bars around until you get a color you like). Of course this perfectly good green butterfly right here:

would have worked out just fine. However, I’m a much bigger fan of browns and pinks. So… I made it look like this:

and scaled it down a tad bit. Viola – one of a kind avatar!

Perfect! And the best part is – they’re all FREE. There are a ton – something like 673 pages worth – of this stuff. It’s completely great. They come in 3 sizes – big enough to do pretty much whatever you want with them. They even work out nicely to put up on your MySpace page.

Go get yourself some. You have no idea what you’re missing.

However, it seems as if Carol doesn’t care about specific color, dimension, or even tangibility of the “stuff” she likes to accumulate – she just likes really, really cool and useful “stuff”. That’s why it comes as no surprise to us that when she stumbed across the Freeze Clip Art Collection, she chose a funky cool piece of clip art (a bright yellow letter I surrounded by cool green designs) to lead off her blog post announcing her status as an “Inveterate collector”. Carol, you have great taste. The only thing that would make that piece of clip art cooler on that page is if it was pink.

Freeze offers over 18,000 pieces of clip art, available in small (160 X 120), medium (320 X 240), and large (640 X 480) sizes. The best part? It’s all FREE. When I started working here and was tasked with managing the strategy for this product category, I initially spent a good share of my time browsing through the collection. I have found everything from school buses and dragonflies to skulls and beer mugs. And the graphics are actually very good – not cheesy like most clip art collections. I was impressed to say the least.

Psst – want a little inside scoop? Rumor has it that plans are also in the works to offer vector-based downloads in Q2 of this year! Perfect for you graphic design geeks (like myself) out there who are constantly on the lookout for great graphics that you can actually SCALE UP to the size you need. Oooh, sweet! VECTOR for president!

Tags: clip art, graphics, graphic design