Halloween Digital Desktop Decorating

Let's face it, we are a computer nation. We have computers at home, at work and at play. I've worked day jobs that don't even have windows in the room. I've worked freelance gigs that don't even have an office. So what becomes my window? My desktop. What becomes my office? My laptop. So why not decorate those things that we see and use every day in the spirit of Halloween?

Since about October 1st I've changed my desktop wallpaper and icons to Halloween themes. Digital Decorating, I call it. It's fun... and come November 1st I don't have the hassle of putting everything back into big plastic orange bins with black lids.


Open up Google... Click "Images"... type something Halloweeny (snicker... "weenie")-- for instance "jack o' lantern"... hit 'search'... change the image size to 'large' or 'extra large'... start picking an image to use as your wallpaper. This image I'm using as my desktop right now. Got it from a website for a Hudson Valley "Great Jack o' Lantern Blaze" which is something I HAVE to go visit next year. See that? By changing my desktop wallpaper I discovered a cool Halloween thing to do at the same time. I'm all about multitasking.

I even went one step further and snagged some Halloween themed icons for my Mac laptop. There are plenty of websites that offer Freeware icons, but I've cobbled together my favorites from various sets from a great website called IconFactory. They offer icon sets for both Mac and PC and most are Freeware.


They've actually got a whole scary theme to the site right now.

I'm using icons from a bunch of different collections, namely "Creeps," "Halloween 2004," and "Haunted Hard Drives."


(My hard drive is currently Frankenstein's Monster... but I think I may change it back to a Creature From the Black Lagoon.) It's a great site with icons, wallpapers and there are even instructions on how to replace the icons on your system if you don't know how.

All that and no dusty orange bins to worry about in November.