Halloween Around the House

I actually have 2 different sets of Halloween decorations.  I have all the crazy Halloween party decorations and they fill up a whole shed full of plastic storage bins.  And then, I have the regular house decorations that take up two small, black and orange storage bins.  These are all the fragile, sentimental and cutesy decorations that don't usually go up for the party.

And now, my Halloween putz village is part of those decorations.

We have 2 fireplaces in our new house!  I always told Michael that I want to have a mantel someday, so we have a place to hang stockings.  And we ended up with 2 of them!

The one in the family room has the tv directly over it, so I really can't put much on it.  But the one in the living room is what you see right when you walk in the front door, so I cluttered it all up!  I have my putz village on it, which now includes the two little ceramic houses I found at Walmart about 5 years ago.  Down on the hearth, I put the smashed witch feet and legs and our 3 pumpkins that we'll carve on trick-or-treat night.  Also the two jack-o-lantern stands that Michael got for us this year with electric, blow mold jack-o-lanterns.  I love them!

I almost forgot about our American Gothic candle holder!  The tops of their heads hold candles, but I like them just as a figurine.  They're ceramic and all the black parts are flocked with a velvet-like substance.

I got these goofy little guys at the 96 cent store.  I saw them last year, but couldn't bring myself to pay a whole 96 cents for them.  So, I got them for 48 cents this year!  Lol!  Isn't that ridiculous?  When I got home and was telling Michael the story, I realized how dumb it sounded.  And they came in a pack of 2.  Geez, I should go back and get the weird-looking ghosts too...

I love this trio.  They're on the mantel in the family room.  The skeleton nutcracker was sent to us last year from Michael's Mom.  The black cat is from when my Mom use to do piece work craft painting for a place called Robin's Nest back in the late 80's.  And the skeleton push puppet I found at Cost Plus about 11 years ago when I bought my condo.

It was so much fun to open up these storage bins and see these decorations!  They've been in storage for nearly 4 years, and I missed them all.  I'm very sentimental about holiday decorations and I can't wait to share them all with Korben.

He's already getting into it.  He loves the stuffed black kitty that I had in with everything else!

2010 Halloween Village with accessories!

The whole completed Halloween Putz village for 2010.

The How-to section over at Little Glitter Houses is amazing! I'm so grateful to Howard Lamey for sharing his creativity with everyone. I finally added all the silly little Halloween themed accessories I've been buying at Dollar Tree and the 99 Only store.

The Witch house is made with his beginner cottage tutorial. This really is the best place to start with making little houses. The house turns out adorable and has the perfect little glitter cottage shape. I painted it Halloween colors and added a rubber witch that is way too big and an over-sized foam cat. I love it though- anything ridiculous works for Halloween.

This house is by far my favorite! I used Howard's Vintage-Style house pattern and my own goofy, dollar-store accessories.

The Ghost house is the Twin Peaks Beach House from Howard's Sandy Shores Seaside structures. I glued all the trim on cock-eyed and made it a ghost house.

My Spider Church is the church conversion found at the end of the beginner cottage how-to. I added a 13-hour, spider clock, and put webs in all the windows.

Howard's picture window house was the first one that I made. I know I should have started with the beginner cottage, but I don't think it turned out too bad...

We call this Batman's house because my husband donated his Hot Wheels Batmobile and it fits right under the over-hang like it's a carport. This is the Spook Hill Station.

I plan to finish the Christmas village over Thanksgiving break and I'll post pics when I get it set-up.

Boo Boo Kitty

I just made Ellie the cutest little black Halloween kitty for the opening of her first pumpkin patch! I found the pattern and how-to at Sew Bold. The instructions were great and the whole kitty went together in about an hour. I made it with back and orange felt and I stitched on white, green, and black felt for the eyes.
The how-to clearly showed how the dart was for the front of the head, but I wasn't paying enough attention to what I was doing and I stupidly sewed it on as the back of the head. But I just went ahead and stitched the eyes and mouth on the piece without a dart and I think it looks just fine. :) But, I'll do it right for the next kitty I make. And it's so cute, I'm sure I'll be making more of them! Thanks Sew Bold!

Halloween Putz Village Done!

This Labor Day weekend has been great! We've been hanging out in the pool, watching movies and I've been able to get some projects finished! Saturday morning I woke up and completely took apart the dress for Eve and made all the alterations before Michael even woke up. It felt really good to get it done, UFO's drive me nuts! It looks great, and I can't wait for Ivana to come over and try it on!

Saturday evening and Sunday morning I was able to take some time and finish the Halloween village. I love it! For some houses I copied the paint colors directly from the Little Glitter Houses how-to's because I thought they were perfect just the way they were, but with the rest, I did my own thing.

I've only added the "trees" and a couple accessories for now. I'll continue to add more miniature Halloween items as I find them. Michael contributed the Batmobile and the orange Hearse, and I found the rubber witch at Dollar Tree. I'm hoping to find some mini bats and ghosts somewhere. Or I could probably just make them...

I found great battery-operated LED's from Eleknuts on eBay. They are in Hong Kong and the lights take slightly longer to ship than if you were buying from a US seller. But for the price and the quality, I highly recommend them! I used one strand of white and one strand of red. I think I'll get some more for the Christmas village.

I'm sure I'll post more pictures of the Halloween village when it gets set-up for real next month.

Just Putzing Around

I've been making little glitter houses (also known as Putz houses) all week! Thanks to the AMAZING how-to's from Howard Lamey and his adorable and educational Little Glitter Houses website. They're only about 4 inches tall and you put lights in the back so that the windows and doors glow.

I remember every Christmas my Aunt Grace would put out her nativity village and I was so in love with it! Gail also has a set of the originals that are so special and nostalgic. I think Putz villages are so beautiful and really capture the spirit of Christmas, so I wanted a Putz village of my own. I'm making a set for Christmas and a set for Halloween. I finished the first house in each set tonight, and I have four more houses under construction.

When I get the other houses finished, I'll post about the completed villages.

The 8th Annual

What a great weekend! The party never looked better thanks to my wonderful husband and his kick-ass decorating skills in the living room. Plus, we had Lindsey and Cornbread stay with us all weekend. They worked their booties off setting up and I can't thank them enough!

Check out Michael's photos on his blog. I'm such a lucky girl!

My mom brought a super cute arrangement in a pumpkin. It had funny plastic faces all around! How cute! She's the best mom ever!

This was the first year I made creature egg shots. They were really good and I had way too many of them. I felt great after a few of them, but I paid for it in the morning. I guess I just can't party like I used to. :)

The white is cool whip and the yolk is an apricot half that was marinated in triple sec. Yum!

HHHSD is online!

The Halloween website is up and running! My poor little brain is very overworked. But I've learned a lot and most of the Halloween party information is up and working. I still need to do a little tweaking with the photos. (be careful with the 2008 photos, they're HUGE) But, for the most part, it's all up there.

 

www.hhhsd.org

 

It's a work in progress.

 

Getting Ready for the Holidays

I'm really looking forward to the Labor Day Holiday weekend. 3 days off work means lots of time to sew and work on some holiday-related projects. My main project this weekend will be starting some Halloween sewing. But that information is top secret until a later date...

Also, Michael got me set-up for maintaining the Halloween website all by myself. He set-up all my info with Joomla and I've been learning so much my brain is a little tired. I'm very, very slow at it, and I can only work on it a little bit at a time, but I'll get the site up and running soon. As soon as I get it presentable, I'll put a link up for all the party people to go check out the site. But in the process, I got Photoshop on my computer and my wonderful hubby found a really cool fashion design program for me called Virtual Fashion Pro. And I can't wait to play around with it.

Last Christmas, my mom gave me her old nativity set because she got a cool new fancy one. Her old nativity set was the one we had for most of my childhood. It's a ceamic set from Pic N Save, and I love it! I know it seems strange that someone like me who isn't the biggest fan of religion is into the nativity. But for me it's like a fairy tale. At christmas my mom read me the story of the baby jesus just like she read to me about Cinderella and The Princess and the Pea. For me it was just a story. And I had no problem with jesus and santa claus sharing a holiday just like Easter is all about bunnies and eggs. The two don't naturally go hand in hand except at those holidays. Anyway, I used to spend hours when I was a little girl playing with the nativity figures. I would rearrange them and set them up for jesus' birthday as if they were on a stage. Her nativity set didn't come with any kind of a stable so I made one over the summer.

While I was looking around online for stable ideas I learned a lot. I always thought that the manger was the building that they slept in. You know, like the song "Away in a Manger". But the manger is the wooden trough that cows and livestock eat out of. The manger is the little wooden bed that jesus slept in. The building is usually either a stable or barn. Sometimes you'll see the term creche. And I thought maybe creche was another way of saying stable or barn, but I found out that it refers to the whole scene. The figures all arranged in display is called a nativity creche.

Well for our nativity creche, the stable is made out of manila file folders cover in strip paper mache and then textured with paper mache pulp. I used hot glue to add some Sheet Moss (sphagnum moss) to the roof and Spanish Moss (which is not a moss at all) to the inside floor. It's not lit in the picture, but the inside of the stable has a battery-operated light in the ceiling. I did this by putting a battery-operated tea light in the space between the roof and the ceiling with it's little plastic "flame" hanging down through a hole in the celing.

I also found an amazing set of Mars Attacks! string lights on eBay that I can't wait to put on our Christmas tree! I got two sets of them, and I think our Christmas tree will look beautiful with little plastic light up Ack Acks and flying saucers.

(Cup)Cake Topper and Monster Cereals

My mom gave me these super cute salt and pepper shakers for my birthday this year. I love them! They have magnets where their lips should be, so they have to kiss. They're only about 3 inches tall and I thought they would be really cute as the "topper" for our cupcake table. The gorgeous designer topper that we found online just seemed too expensive, and salt and pepper shakers are reusable.

But, my wonderful Michael surprised me one day and ordered the designer topper for us! He went online and found it bought it for us without me ever knowing! I was so happy and surprised when it arrived I cried happy tears. I'm such a lucky girl! I love when he surprises me with thoughtful, sentimental gifts like my Snow White Christmas ornament!

It's really beautiful. It comes in a nice keepsake box with an authenticity card. She has a pretty tulle veil and there's a Shakespeare quote written on the back of her dress.

It says: Now join your hands, and with your hands your hearts.

Oh, and don't worry, Halloween is never far from my mind. For Christmas this year, I got Michael all 3 monster cereals. Each box had a little poster that you could cut out and hang on your door to scare off intruders. I cut them all out and I've been waiting to find just the right frames. (free ones) The frames used to be an antique gold. I spray-painted them black and mounted the posters on some cut-up gold gift bags. I think they look great. Now I just need to figure out where to hang them...

 

Pumpkin Science and Dead People

I finally bought one of those beautiful Fairytale Pumpkins for Halloween this year. I just couldn't bring myself to carve it into a Jack-O-Lantern, so it's been sitting on the counter with other decorative squashes waiting to become pie for thankgiving. I cut into it Monday afternoon and look what I found!

No, those are not tapeworms! They're pumpkin seedlings! I let the pumpkin sit on my counter for so long the seeds sprouted right inside! How cool! They all had big healthy roots and a couple even had fully developed leaves. None of them had any color, though, because they've never seen sunlight. This is called etiolation. Science rocks!

I was very excited about my Fairytale pumpkin seedlings, and I thought for a second about trying to grow them, but I decided to just wait to grow pumpkins until Michael and I have some dirt of our own. At least I have pictures of them. They won't be forgotten.

After roasting my Fairytale pumpkin, I finally put my Dia De Los Muertos fabric to good use. Kimbra gave me the perfect apron-sized piece of some GORGEOUS fabric called "Los Novios" (The Lovers). I used my favorite apron pattern . And, as usual, I made it even simpler.

I bound all the edges in bias tape, and I also used it to make the neck strap and ties. I rounded the bottom corners, so the bias tape would go on easier and I added a pocket for my cell phone. Although the pocket is not too easy to find because of my ninja skills in matching the print! :)

The 7th Annual

The 7th Annual Halloween Party was great! The night before, which was actually Halloween, Lindsey and Cornbread and Justin and Kelly came over for some pizza and Jack-O-Lantern carving. I was hoping we'd get more trick-or-treaters than last year, but we only got one. :(

This year's party set-up went really smooth and stress-free for me. Thanks to Michael for making me take a nap so he could play garland elf, and Kelly for getting all the decor up to Esco in one turbo trip, and of course Lindsey's magical spiderweb skills. It was so nice to have the party all set-up and ready to go with plenty of time to get our costumes on. Thanks to everyone who made it happen!

We didn't have a huge turn out of party people, but what really matters is that the RIGHT people showed up. We got to be treated to a quick little appearance by Elliot in his monkey costume from his beautiful and talented Fairy Godmother. Alex and Kimbra won their second Pussy Award and brought the most delightfully awful-looking meatheads! And we had lots of new-comers to the party; even Aunt Gina Lola Zappa and her fortune-telling cards.

The pictures will be added to website soon!

Have A Happy Halloween San Diego!

Just A Sweet Transvestite

 

"I'm not much of a man by the light of day,

But by night I'm one hell of a lover."

Would You Buy This?

 

It's a Gothic Spider Bride costume made by me! I started this costume last year with intent to start up Boo Couture, my costume design business. But with being evacuated during the Witch Fire and then whole craziness of the holiday season, it ended up in the UFO pile. I finally put all the finishing touches on it last night, and I plan to try and sell it once I get some better pictures of it.

It's a size 16/18 gown (I need to take some more accurate measurements) with with a headband based veil. The whole gown is constructed from a polyester satin and trimmed with metallic rick-rack, tulle bows and plastic spiders. It'll look great with some goth makeup and fishnet stockings. I'm really, really happy with how it turned out. It's going to be hard to part with it. I hope whoever gets to be the Gothic Spider Bride for Halloween takes really good care of it.

 

 

Friday night Lindsey and Cornbread came up to our house for dinner. Lindsey made some wonderful pasta for dinner and I've been enjoying the leftovers all weekend! I wanted to put out some seasonal appetizers since it is now officially Halloween season, so I tried out my new eyeball mold. The green zombie eye dip is kinda like french onion dip and the blue zombie eye dip is garlic and chives. I just dumped some dip type ingredients in blender then added a packet of Knox dissolved in hot water. After the eyeballs set-up over night I painted the veins and iris with gel food color. The blue zombie eye dip was definitely the yummiest. Onion flavored eye ball dip is just a little too creepy for me. But the garlic and chives eyeball dip is a keeper and is fabulous on buttery Keebler Club crackers.

Happy October Everybody!

YIPPEE! It's October 1st! That means Halloween season!

For our engagement Gail got Michael and I this really cool Halloween Bat-globe. It's a very affectionate skeleton couple going for a ride in their dead mobile with bats flying all around. Plus, it's a music box that plays "Ding Dong the Witch is Dead"! Momma Gail always finds the coolest stuff!

We also were very privileged to receive a donation to the Halloween party from Alex and Kimbra. The newlyweds found a really cool skeleton candle holder while they were on their honeymoon cruise and immediately thought of the Halloween party. Thanks Mr. and Mrs. Castillo!

Michael brought home two "Wee Bee" pumpkins for me yesterday and I think they look fabulous on our table. I can't wait to get carving on some squash this year. I've decided that I'm not limiting myself to just pumpkins. I want to try some other produce. Any ideas?

I've been making progress on costume construction and the party invites were mailed out today. If you don't get one in a few days send me a quick email and I'll make sure you get one.

shannie@hhhsd.org

What's A Princess?

It doesn't matter how many new and different sewing projects I delve into, I learn something new every time, and I love that about sewing. Kelly and I are finally going to be Disney Princesses for Halloween. I say finally because I've had my fabric to make a Snow White costume since probably some time in the late 90's! And I've been holding on to an awesome out-of-print (OOP) Cinderella pattern that I've been dying to make for Kelly for almost as long. Our costumes aren't a secret this year. At least I don't think... (sorry Smelly!)

Anyway, in the process of starting my Snow White costume I have learned SO MUCH about fitting a formal dress to make an ordinary chick look like a princess. I've taken our Halloween costume construction as an opportunity to practice some new techniques I've been reading about for making formal dresses, specifically bridal couture. Now, in now way can I call myself a couturier, but I love reading about couture techniques and trying to learn some of them. It's amazing what a difference a little extra hand stitching and careful planning can do for a garment.

For a couple months I've been kinda thinking about my game plan for the construction of my wedding dress. I've read through lots of blogs, and looked through some wedding gown forums on pattern review. It seems that everyone is using Susan Khalje's book "Bridal Couture", so I had to buy it. I also bought a book by Susan Andriks about making the wedding dress of your dreams (I don't remember the actual title). This pair of books is all anyone needs to make beautiful formal gowns. They're both full of information, and each fills in any gaps the other may have left open.

I was able to use some techniques I learned from each book already in fitting my Snow White dress. I also learned a new interlining/corsellette method, and it all went together flawlessly!

I've heard style and fashion gurus make statements about how a well fitting garment makes any woman look beautiful, but I always thought "yeah, everyone but me". Yes, it's true, Stacy and Clinton do know what they're talking about. As soon as I got the bodice all boned up and lined I was able to just hold it up to myself and see the princess shape! AMAZING!

Now I can't wait to get started on Kelly's, and I feel totally confident that I'll be able to put together a gorgeous wedding dress for myself (even though I don't have a pattern).

Also, I found this blog that I thought was really interesting: Drawing Women

Costume Patterns

Every single one of my costume patterns are now in a slide show. Just go to my Costume Patterns page.

Halloween At BigLots

I love BigLots this time of year. It's a wonderland of creepy low-priced Halloween props and decorations. I think this bride and groom are especially cool. It's so nice to see the undead settle down and tie the knot. There are also some maniacal clowns and witches that are similar to the bride and groom which are also pretty cool. I noticed stacks of boxes with the magical orange Jack-O-Lantern stamp blocking some of the aisles in the store, so I'm sure as the actual holiday gets closer, there will be even more terrible treasures for me to drool over. But I was so excited about the two aisles of goodies that have been put on display, I had to snap a couple crappy cell phone pictures.

The aisle where the bride and groom are, is really the one that catches your attention, but the other aisle of outdoor lights and other electronic-type gadgets shouldn't be ignored. This year they have a motion activated thunder and lightning strobe light set. Basically when it's activated it makes pretty high quality thunder sound effects and a series of pretty good little strobe lights make the lightning effect. I think it would be perfect for lighting up your front door for the trick-or-treaters (TOTs). I might consider buying them, but for today I just pressed the "try-me" button a couple times. There are the stupid el cheapo lighted lawn stakes, that aren't cool-looking or creepy in any way, and the pre-carved lighted foam pumpkins that you can never have too many of. But another new decoration I was kinda interested in was the creepy signs. There is one that says "The Witch is In", and the "Bats Motel" which just looks like you forgot the "e", and then there are quite a few motion activated signs. My favorite is "The Blood Cafe", it looks all bloody and dirty.

I really could just spend my entire paycheck on Halloween stuff, but today I only bought the old standby 5 foot Glow-In-The-Dark blowmold skeleton. I'll pop of his skull and use the rest of him for the talking tree face/skull project I started a couple months ago. The anatomically correct skull model in no way matches the cheap blowmold plastic skeleton, but I figure I should be able to make them match each other a little better with some paint.

Is It Halloween Yet?

My wonderful lovely and talented Michael Bacon has been staying up all hours of the night to get our new kick-ass Halloween Party Website up and running. There's even some original MB artwork on the site!

All the pictures from the parties past have been uploaded including 2007, and he added a really cool new guest-list feature. Party people can just click on the "get on the guest-list" link from the home page and send me an email requesting a place on the guest-list! Pretty cool, huh? Keep checking back as more fun stuff is added to the website as we get closer to the party.

Thank You Michael Bacon!!

 

 

Halloween party planning has begun. I've been working on my collection of bottles for my Witch's Kitchen. I got the idea from AranaMuerta. I can only hope my Witch's Kitchen will look as cool. I'm planning to transform our everyday white tile kitchen into a creepy witch's lair. Also the skull/christmas tree face merger has begun. But, It's being held up while I try to locate a suitable skeleton. I don't want to continue with the talking head until it has a body.

Tree Hacker

 

Yes, the Halloween Party plans are already beginning. I've always wanted to take the Halloween Party decor "to the next level". Luckily, Michael feels the same way. We already have lots of creepy ideas brewing, but I'm most excited about our tree hacking venture.

 

There are plans all over the web for hacking a little talking fake Christmas tree (Douglas Fir), and putting his moving parts into a life size skull. The problem is that the Douglas Fir trees were discontinued years ago, and there are so many Halloween freaks out there that when they do show up on eBay, they go for a pretty penny. But, Michael and I found something that I think will work even better.

 

It's the Wacky Animated Tree Face.

 

This guy gets twist-tied onto your Christmas tree for the holiday season, and makes for a truly "Wacky" Christmas with his songs and jokes. If that isn't weird enough for you, he also comes with a microphone. That's right you can talk through your Christmas tree and make your children never want to get close to an evergreen again.

 

Or, you can buy one super cheap on eBay, hack into it, and fuse its moving parts into a life-size skull!

 

The tree face arrived a couple days ago. It came with working batteries, so it started talking before I even got it out of the box and scared the crap out of me! Now we're just waiting for the skull so our creation can be completed!!!

MWAH, HA, HA !