The Party

So, somehow I started a tradition of throwing a Halloween party. I've done it three years now. But this year, I was so happy to be able to show off my decorations! As you've seen most of them, I wanted to show some final pictures, now that most are packed away for next year.

And this is my husband, who dressed as his inner child (really, an excuse to wear his footie pajamas I got him last year).

Stone Candlestick Holders

I love the look the stone spray paint offers. LOVE IT! My husband now gets mad when I use it because he enjoys it so much, he thinks it's his to use. But I used it anyway.

On my trip to the dollar store this week, I bought regular glass candlestick holders.

I don't think I would have looked twice at them, but I began scouring the store for stuff to use the spray paint on because I still had a lot of it. When I came across these, I knew they'd be perfect.

And, in my humble opinion, I believe I was right.

The candles are actually red, but spray painted black so when they burn, they'll have a bleeding effect. Oh, I can't wait until Saturday!

Christmas Decorations for Halloween

Last week when I went to the dollar store, they were still stockpiled with Halloween goodies. When I went this week, however, Christmas had arrived, leaving only a few sad shelves of paper plates with pumpkins and ghosts on them.

Ha! Like that would stop me!

Found some cute birds that would go on a Christmas tree.

Sorry, but birds do not represent Christmas to me. They are dirty creatures. Dirty, I tell you! And, one of them stole my bagel once while I was walking down the boardwalk in Atlantic City. Flew right by my head to do so. OK, maybe not any bird that looks like the ones pictured...but my dislike for any member of the bagel snatcher's species are not nice!

See? Even Beth and Buster know of their evil!

Anyway, I'm on a spray painting kick lately. So, what did I do? I brought the evil out in these birds!

Even the feathered tail looked even more evil with the weird spray paint effect.

I used some magenta nail polish on their eyes to really bring out the evil and my chandelier is now evil-ized!

Oh, my Halloween dining room is really turning out to be great!

Oh! I Keep Forgetting!

I ran out of spray paint, but I finished one of the end tables I bought a few weeks ago. And I love it. I'll love it even more when its mate is done.

I almost hate to admit it, but at the same time I have a love/hate relationship with her. The paper is from a Martha Stewart collection I found on clearance at Wal-Mart.

You can see a little hint of it in the staging of my photography project.

Oh, and I absolutely love those specialty scissors!

Point and Shoot. I Can Do That!

I consider myself a less-than-amateur photographer. At the same time, I consider myself a professional picture taker. I took one photography class in high school and I don't really remember a lot from it, other than the smell of the darkroom chemicals, which I came to appreciate. But when I do take photos, I'll catch them at an awkward angle, or I'll haphazardly find some good uses of light. Most of these accidents occur when I'm trying to balance a drink in one hand, and take the picture with the other.

I decided to stage some fun shots around an old book of poetry, including Poe's "The Raven", I found at the library, and spice them up for Halloween.

The wine with the funky label I happened to find the week before. And I used the leftover fabric from Lenny's cape as a backdrop.

After taking the pictures, I cropped and edited them with the photo software on the Costco Web site, where I then ordered the prints.

Here's what the full staging area looks like. Scotch tape holding the fabric up, and a corner of it tied to a chair. Oh, how classy.

I used scrapbooking scissors to cut the edges of some scrapbooking paper and black mat, then some spray adhesive to get the layered look.

I found some tea light holders at Ocean State Job Lot for $1 each. They used to have stained glass decorations on the back, but most of them had been stolen. It was a perfect holder for the pictures, especially since I knew I would be using battery-operated tea lights, so there would be no fear of fire.

(Ahh, look at that crafting mess all over my dining room. That only means one thing: It was a successful craft weekend.)

At Least I Didn't Put It On a Box of Wine...

I saved this empty jug for a few months, not knowing why I didn't have the heart to throw it away. There's something about empty bottles that makes them difficult to part with.

Finally, I found a way to add it to my Halloween decor.

Found the stickers at the dollar store, which was much better than the $7 A.C. Moore wanted to Martha Stewart wine stickers.

After cleaning the label off (found out eye make-up remover works well for that), I stuck it on and added it to my Sideboard O' Halloween.

Mod Podged Pumpkin

Absolutely not my idea at all, I will say that. I've seen it on a few blogs this season. But I did want to show the process here because, damn was it simple!

I found the small pumpkin at Joann's for about $3. All of their Halloween stuff is 50-percent off! Woo!

I have a confession: I hate the color orange. I don't know why, but I've never gotten a feel for it. It just always looks tacky. Oh, I don't mind the little bit here and there, but the color itself just turns me off completely. So I was glad to have a way to cover it, but still make it holiday appropriate.

I spray painted the stem with some light blue, but it didn't really want to take, so I gave up.

Using one piece of scrapbook paper cut into strips of varying lengths and widths, the Mod Podging commenced!

Tip: I found it easier to wet the strips with water before Mod Podging the backs. Also, I spread a layer of Mod Podge on the pumpkin for extra hold.

(And, that would be Miss Beth investigating.)

After covering all the (evil) orange with the paper, I added a few more coats of Mod Podge.

The nice thing is, I've used the same paper in my dining room as a mat for pictures, so I was very happy to have some dining room decor.

(See previous post to see the finished product.)

UPDATE: I used some silver ribbon and hot glue to finish off the badly-painted stem.

Weeknight Craft

OK, I have a HUGE crafting post coming up, but the project I did was for my cousin's wife's baby shower this coming weekend, so I have to hold off on posting it on the off chance my cousin or his wife reads it and finds out early what it is. (Oh, it's so good, though! So good!)

But, until I post that, I had to get my craft on tonight.

After looking at all my craft blogs for a few days, I've noticed a trend of decorating for autumn. Well, being that it's officially the first day, I went to the dollar store and spent a heaping $4 to give my home some fall flair.

With the help of a glue gun (only one burn to report), I decorated a wine glass and two candle holders with some festive foliage. (Can you tell I have a thing for alliteration?)

And the finished glass and candle holders look like this!

And, yes, we now have TWO kitties to worry about burning themselves, so I spent another $2 and bought battery operated candles.

I know, I know...it's a little minimalistic, but I'm still in that hesitant novice crafter mindset of "I'll add more, I swear, but for now, I need to take a step back and appreciate what I have."

Conversation with the husband, following crafting:

"What do you think?"

"Um, they're leafy."

"Well, yeah, that's the point. Do you like them?"

"They're leafy."

I have yet to figure out what that means, but in the meantime, here's a picture of our new little kitten, Buster (crawling on my husband's butt, haha).

Our first cat, Beth, is not responding well to being a big sister. She is currently annoyed at her humans, as well as the little terror they brought into the house. But, as a way of making amends, I am including her picture in this post, as well.

Cheap to Chic

    I stocked up on those cheap picture frames from Ikea, but they weren't getting much use. I finally decided to use them in my dining room. I never understood the rule about pictures in dining rooms , and I figured if the frames were nice enough, I could do whatever  I wanted.

I took the frames downstairs and used leftover metallic spray paint on them. I did a nice heavy coat, so I only needed to go over them once.

 

While I waited for the frames to dry, I used scrapbooking paper and traced around the back of the frame to make a background for the pictures.

 

When the frames were dry (about an hour), I put the pictures and background into the frames and hung them in a stripe between the two windows in my dining room.