Obligatory Halloween Post

Ya'll, I really thought I posted this weeks ago.  Whoops.

I didn't go all out for Halloween this year - I threw my first Halloween party in five years! - but I did go, like, maybe 50% out.  Here's some spooky stuff:

Every flat surface in the house was littered with plastic spiders, bugs, snakes, vampire teeth, and dead rose petals.

I only got to do one dead bouquet this year, but I kind of loved it.

1.  There were also googly eyes on everything

2. Hammers are scary. What?

Funny story about the "formaldehyde" these eyeballs are soaking in:  I didn't have any food coloring, but I remembered that the ammonia test kit for my aquarium turns water greenish yellow (as long as there's no ammonia).  So I did that.  But apparently the tester drops were detecting the living hell out of something in these painted foam eyeballs, because it just kept getting greener and greener and GREENER.  So I bought food coloring.

ALL THE GOOGLY EYES

The mother of all creepy-crawlies: this  aquarium full of spiders.  I covered the wall behind it and nearby furniture with spiders, too.  Escapees.  Mwahaha.

Frank here doesn't make a great disco ball, but he tried.

Where did I even GET a glitter skull? Why do I have this?

Family photo wall, from top left:   Edith from Crimson Peak, some random internet witch, Sweeney Todd from the film version of the musical with Johnny Depp, Rupert Giles from one of the Buffy Halloween episiodes, and Igor from Young Frankenstein.

Other frames around the house were filled with spooky old Victorian homes (including the one from Practical Magic), and creepy graveyard angel statues.

"Bleeding" white taper candles made by dripping red wax all over them. I only burned myself like six times.

Booze & candy bar, with a ouija board drawn on a chalkboard I made for the kitchen, and paper bats flying around and up to the ceiling.

I re-painted the chalkboard labels on these canisters and added some more to the new canisters so they'd all match.  They're labeled with spell ingredients from Macbeth.

Danger noodle ftw.

It me!  I was a witch.  My friend Laurie insisted on getting a photo of me from above for some reason, which is why this looks like a selfie.  I think she liked the hat. It is a pretty cool hat.









← that's a tattoo on my shoulder, not a visible bra strap

Every witch needs her black cat, right?  I have two.  This one is Rabi.





















Stay spooky, friends.  KTHXBAI.

Whew!

I know, it's been a hot minute since I posted here, but that's because I haven't been working on any projects around the house.  I've been painting, sketching along with the Inktober drawing challenge, and crocheting all the things. I'm also prepping for a Halloween party, which I haven't thrown since 2014!

I started a fish tank, too. Right now, it's devoid of actual fish - I let it sit a couple of weeks to cycle, got a couple of plants (the leafy little Anubias nana and the Marimo moss ball (actually a beneficial algae) above), and have been contemplating getting a bunch more plants and a Betta but not actually doing it. Aside from a bit of mold on the wood (need some snails to eat it) it's coming along beautifully for, you know, not having any fish in it. Because it's a fish tank.  Let's be real: it's a box of water with a log in it. But it'll grow.

I do have several furniture projects planned:

• Refinishing the once-and-forever art table, which I've been "working on" refinishing for over a year now
• Refinishing my nightstand, an antique plant stand/hall table 
• Refinishing a little wooden chowki table that's seen better days
• Frosting the glass on the doors of my Ikea HEMNES pantry cabinet, and painting the rest of the unit. 
• Staining my Ikea FORHOJA kitchen cart, something I've been thinking about for three years and hadn't decided on until recently
• Possibly building a big honking sideboard for the living room from scratch. Sort of. 

Lots of projects to keep me in the garage this winter! 

But this month, I'm mostly focused on the Halloween party: 

• Buy all the spooky things
• Make all the other things spooky
• Don't have a heart attack over established friends base meeting new friends from work at the party
• Spray-paint the dog* 
• Finish crocheting the little pseudo-Victorian boot spats I'm making for my costume, block them, and sew buttons on 

* not really, but Daisy is getting a body paint costume, as soon as I order some dog-safe paint

I'm working on a painting right now, slowly, and I have no idea when I'll be finished.  But here's the last one I made, finished three weeks ago: 

I also painted this little papier-maché skull for Halloween.  It's not shaped much like an actual human skull, but I tried to get it as realistic-looking as I could anyway.  I'm kind of proud of poor Yoric here. As a friend said to me this morning, it's hard to paint dimension and shape onto something that has none.  Rewarding, when you get it right, but hard.  

Anyway, I'm off to Halloween all the things.  See you again soon! 

Halloween Highlights

The 2014 Halloween party is dead. Long live the 2014 Halloween party.  *waves tiny flag*  #threedayhangover #notreally

So I didn't go all-out for Halloween this year - the usual decorations, for the most part, plus too much food, too much booze, lol.  I managed to throw my back out Saturday afternoon while getting ready for the party, and I still can't walk fully upright. It's fun.

This was the biggest hit of the entire party - and I have to say, I enjoyed hearing people howl with laughter after they went down the hall to the restroom, at both this "melted witch" (I got the idea from Pinterest), and at the artwork in the bathroom - I replaced the botanical prints in the frames on the walls with print-outs of funny s-rays, including Kermit the Frog with a hand skeleton, heehee).


Hint: no matter how clean the tub is, the water still looks kinda dirty...2-3 drops of blue food coloring made it look crystal-clear and clean.

My personal favorite Thing:  my spider-arium, filled with polyester "cobwebbing", some "mummy gauze", and a TON of hot-glue strings; as well as two large plastic-and-felt tarantulas, and a few packages of little plastic spideys (some of which escaped and were crawling up the dining room walls away from the tank).

This year I draped all the furniture in white curtains and sheets, as if the house was all shut up and vacant - it was pretty neat looking, if I do say so myself; and it saved my couch from a pretty bad drink spill, hehe.

( I was a biker dude for Halloween this year, complete with makeup-goatee and 5:00 shadow - that's my jacket on the chair in the pic).

This pic is mostly to say, "Hey, look at this awesome giant Ficus tree!"  it's seven feet tall;  I purchased it and all of the white curtains that I used for the furniture (98" white RITVA curtains from Ikea) from my old dance studio which went out of business recently.

THE AFTERMATH.

Good lord, that's a lot of cleanup.

I may or may not be personally responsible for the empty tequila and whiskey bottles.    0:)








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Hallo-week 4: Spooky Glow & Dead Things

"Bleeding" candles, made by dripping red wax down the sides of white candles. 

Low lighting (achieved by removing bulbs - a bit ghetto, I know, but it's what I had) + nifty "mummy" gauze bits strung all over light fixtures.  

Red/range glow in hallways, done by draping red and orange sheer fabrics over the light fixtures (I was very careful not to touch the fabric to the glass of the light fixtures.  No sense risking fire).   + More "mummy" gauze draped across doorways.

 Cute little Halloween bottle labels from the party store.  Most of these are bottles of mead that my boyfriend brews at home.  (Look - more "blood" on the countertops that I had to clean up later). 

Every available surface had dead rose petals and leaves scattered across it, vases full of dead roses and bunches of dried herbs from the garden, and as many drippy candles as I could pack in.

The end. 

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Hallo-week 3: Watch Your Step

Visitors and guests walked through my front door, about which I posted yesterday, to this:

 Bloody footprints tracked all over the house from front to back, and all through the living room and kitchen.  Don't worry, it's just acrylic craft paint in water - it should clean right up.  I hope.

Creepy?  Hell yes.  But, as it turns out, a little too creepy for some people.  In my enthusiasm for the holiday, I forgot that some people are genuinely *freaked out* by the sight of blood, especially lots of it, and this little Halloween trick ended up looking a bit too real for some of my friends.  (To whom I sincerely apologize.  :(

The scene in the refrigerator went over a little better than the floors did - most people thought it was cute and inventive.  The packages of "meat" (plastic food storage containers wrapped in painted paper) and hospital bags of candy "blood"...although the "blood" dripped on the shelves in the fridge? Not so much.

Not that you'd know it from some of the pictures of my sewing room that I've posted in the past, but I am a bit of a neat-freak (to those of you who just guffawed at that, I say :P   ).   The "blood" on the floors even creeped ME out all night long, not because it was "blood" (I'm okay with blood, even the real stuff), but because it wasn't CLEAN!  HORROR!   And apparently I wasn't the only one.

On the plus side, the stuff did clean up nearly as easily as I thought it would:  it wasn't easy enough to just mop, I did end up on my hands and knees sponging off the floors, but it wasn't a huge undertaking.  Although, on the tile in the kitchen and entryway I discovered that I hadn't been as careful with the footprints as I thought, and some of my grout is stained and now will have to be bleached and re-sealed.  ARGH.

So, nifty, spooky, creepy Halloween idea?  Yes.  Doing this ever again?  Hell no.  


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Hallo-week 2: Come On In!

Front entry:  bats, webs, and SKELETON FLAMINGOS.  I heart my skeleton flingos. Hee!  <3

The bats are just cut from light construction paper and stapled to the wall and post.  The planters, by the way, are filled with a mix of Sanseviera, Dracaena marginata, and red Caladiums...not that you can see them all that well in this picture.  The decorative piece above the doorway? Is a $10 plastic doormat.

Purple/red glow on the front porch after dark.  Yay!

And a blue tint on the back porch - the lights are purple like the ones on the front porch.  I've already replaced the blue bulb in the overhead light with a white one again - for security reasons - but I'm actually contemplating leaving the purple lights.  They're so cute! And it's much nicer to have them on at night when I'm relaxing outside than a bright glare from above.  We'll see.

Here's the little "lantern" I made with the Ikea JÄTTEBRA plant cachepot - all it needed was a candle.  I love the way it looks kinda starry.  :) 

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Hallo-week Episode 1: The Food

Decided to do Halloween-week here in The Land of Laura.  #1, because it's my favorite holiday.  2, it's also my birthday-week, and I can make five Halloween posts in a row if I want to, so there.  :P   3.  Because I had my annual Halloween-Birthday* party this past weekend, and I have *lots* of pictures.

Enjoy!

Yup. That's one of the cutting boards I made last week.

Thing the first:  the dining room table!     Complete with cheeses and meat cleavers (MWAHAHAAA!!!), "bleeding" candles, dead flowers, black doilies on old tarnished silver, red-and-black table linens (and curtains, in the background), and...

THE MOST AWESOME CUPCAKES IN THE WORLD, instead of a single birthday cake, made by my best friend, who is a *fantabulous* baker.  These are  Tiramisu cupcakes with cream-cheese icing, a wonderully squishy center full of a mixture of Kahlua and espresso, and topped with cinnamon and chocolate-covered espresso beans.  Pardon me while I have a cake-gasm.  Mmmm.  Plus? Cute little "Poison" and "Toxic" cupcake paper cups.  :)

(Know what else is cool?  The cuppies 100% vegan.  Even the cream cheese icing, which I think is better than the "real" thing!)



More tomorrow!




* which shall hereafter be known as "Birth-O-Ween", after one of my guests wished me a happy one of those as he left Saturday night, and it totally cracked me UP.