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.