Halloween IV: Spooky Schooner

Each year, Mr. MC buys me a new piece for my Halloween village. This year I got my new piece on Ebay, used, for half the price of a new one. It's in perfect condition, all it needed was a new light bulb. This piece is discontinued and I've been wanting it for a while, so I was thrilled to get it. It's called the Spooky Schooner.



Isn't it great! I'll have to start working on a landscape for my village, now, so there's a little bit of ocean, maybe a haunted cove, to put the Schooner on. Maybe Santa will bring some of the village-scaping books on my Amazon wish list this year. :-)
 

Fall on Campus

This is what campus looks like right outside the building where most of my classes are:

Halloween Garden Lights

Last weekend, I was complaining to Mr. MC that I couldn't use my jack-o-lantern outdoor lights because we have no electrical outlets on the outside of our house. He replied that he'd recently found a great alternative on one of his favorite new websites, Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories. We took a look at these and immediately ordered some LEDs and coin batteries to make our own. Right now I'm soaking labels off old glass jars we have laying around. We have white LEDs and orange ones, so we'll see which we like best.


I can hardly wait to try them out. We may have to make a couple tonight and see how they look. I'm hoping that one of my friends can get a picture of them next weekend. The nice thing is, they last for several days, so we can just put them up on Friday and leave them until Sunday night. I hope they're cool!


Edited to add: OMG! They are so cool! The orange lights are perfect. I can't wait to put them all out on Friday night. I can't stop chortling to myself. :-)

Caturday: Brotherly Luv

Halloween is just ducky!

Earlier this week I received a fun little package from Laura. After the 20-ish minutes it took to unwrap the multiple layers of wrapping :-), I found the cutest little witch rubber ducky. Here's a picture of it sitting in our bathroom next to our regular ducky:



Isn't she adorable?! I was very cranky that day, too, so unwrapping her was a nice bright spot in my day.

In other news, I apologize for the picture being so blurry. I had to take it with my camera phone, because I broke my digital camera! A few days ago, I was taking pictures of Halloween decor at the top of our stairs, and I lost my balance and almost fell down the stairs. Luckily, I caught myself with a hand on the wall; unfortunately, that was the hand with the camera in it, which slammed against the wall.

So for the next while, my pictures will be substandard, until we can afford to replace our camera. :-( 

I'm so excited!

I submitted my Halloween posts to www.shelterrific.com for their Halloween giveaway. They said nice things about my decorations. Apparently the readers will vote for their favorites to win the giveaway, so please check it out and vote for me when voting begins. And check out the other participants' decorations, too, they are some clever people.

Halloween Party? Terrifying!

My dream of a radiant life includes a huge Halloween party every year. The kind that brings my friends from all over the country to visit. I envision the various rooms of my house (definitely not my current house!) holding different fun activities - a room for dancing, a fortune-telling room, a room for watching spooky movies, etc. It's a big dream with big plans.

The reality? I haven't had a Halloween party since I was 19 and I haven't had any parties for about 15 years. The last few didn't go so well and the very last one was a disaster. I can host a casual group of friends coming over for pizza and movies or even to stay for the weekend, but anything more formal than that terrifies me. You know, formal, as in, I send out invitations and people R.S.V.P.  If I just send out invites and I don't plan everything with everyone in advance, no one will come, right? Gulp! Not that I'm a control freak or anything. :-)

So, yeah, I decided maybe this year was the time to start taking steps in the direction of my dream. I combined the type of get-togethers I'm used to with the formal invitation thing. I invited all my out-of-town friends to come stay for the weekend. I actually mailed out invitations. I'm planning activities and food.

We're also inviting some in-town friends over on Halloween night as an open house kind of thing. Stop by, have some yummies, stay or don't according to your other plans. With actual invitations again, although these may be by email.

I'm terrified. I think no one will come. I'm determined to have fun doing the activities I've planned and make it a great Halloween, anyway. But this is way out on the limb for me. I hope it doesn't break.

Halloween: IV

Here are my living room decorations:

The back corner of the living room. You can see the "Boo" sign on the office door. The little lamp on the end table stands on a pile of Halloween-appropriate books. On the bookcases are 3 black cat tealight holders I got at a yard sale this summer. They have flameless tea lights in them. I used flameless tealights almost everywhere this year, so that I could put lights in places that I couldn't put candles, like the corner cabinet, and for fear the kittens would burn down the house.


The other side of the couch. I draped a fun scarf that my mother-in-law gave me over the lampshade, just like I did the little lamp on the other side. On the end table are a Halloween tin from Goodwill that holds the remotes, a great black ceramic tray I bought at a craft show last year, and a wonderful box which is covered in orange velvet and has a big spider on top. It was a gift from Laura and holds potpourri.


The top of the entertainment center. Please ignore the general dippiness of the entertainment center, it did not fare well in our last two moves. There are a couple of snow globes from HomeGoods last year, one given to me by my friend, Beth, two brass candelabras that I bought at a rummage sale for $1 and painted black (I still need to get tapers for them), two coffee table books that are great for Halloween - Nightmares in the Sky (gargoyles) and Disney Villains, a monster tin, an animated ghost and Scooby Doo, a haunted house candle, a wonderful WoodWick candle sitting in a cemetery fence enclosure that I bought at a yard sale, and a big jar filled with candy corn and pumpkins and holding my Halloween magic wand. Propped on the speaker above is a great metal sign my husband scored for me at a store in Jim Thorpe, PA this summer.



This is the front corner of the living room, to the right of the entertainment center, looking into the entry way and front door. The tall bookcase holds my collection of paranormal fiction, which soon will need another bookcase. On it also sits the Halloween drawing book Laura gave me, the Vampire Haiku book I bought in Florida this summer, and my vampire Angel puppet, who lives there all year. On the chair is a pillow with a beautiful Halloween pillow cover I bought on Etsy last month, from Shana at asmushomeinteriors. The DVD bookcase has an electric jack-o-lantern on top, along with an Amy Brown Halloween fairy print, a Happy Halloween sign I bought in Jim Thorpe, and a moon and stars Scentsy wax warmer that I got from my friend, Jeri. It makes my house smell great.


And one of my favorite Halloween things, my Department 56 Halloween Snow Village. I've only been collecting these pieces for the last few years, so it's still very small. I love my village, the buildings are gorgeously detailed. My husband buys me a new piece every year and my mom has started giving me pieces for Christmas, so my collection continues to grow. The village sits on my library table, which is draped with a piece of black fabric with glittery spiderwebs on it. The bottom shelf of the table holds some new Halloween boxes from my mother-in-law, plus a fabulous Halloween ribbon spool album I got from sarahsdesigns78 on Etsy. Underneath the table is a basket with a bunch of Halloween magazine issues in it. I particularly like "Country Living" Halloween issues, and I've bought quite a few at yard sales.



 So there's my living room. I tried to get some dark, candlelit pictures, but either my skill or my camera are not up to the task. I might have some friends visiting for Halloween (more on that later) and a couple of them are talented photographers, so I thought I'd see if they could do it.
 

Caturday: Halloween III

 In honor of Caturday, here are my very favorite Halloween decorations:



The black one is Treat and the orange one is Trick. :-)

The kittens (I still call them that, even though they're a year old now and ginormous) came to live with us September of last year, when they were just 5 weeks old. Their mom was a feral cat who lived in the fields near my son's school. Originally each of the guys in his class was going to adopt one of the kittens, but when the time came to take them, nobody did. My son brought these two home so that we could take them to the animal rescue at which we were volunteering. However, the rescue wouldn't take them until they were 8 weeks old, so we had to foster them for 3 weeks. Yeah, you know how that goes. We hoped to catch the mom and her other babies and take them to the rescue for neutering, but the next day she had taken the others away and my son couldn't find her.

I did some learning about how to care for kittens that young. They were able to eat dry food soaked in water, so no bottle feeding was necessary. I learned that we had to handle them a lot to get them used to people. It was a good thing we got them at 5 weeks, because from what I read, you have to start handling them before they are 6 weeks old, or they will be much more likely to stay feral. They lived in our dog crate for the first week or so, which had plenty of room for a small litter box, their food and water, and a bed for both of them. Of course we brought them out of the crate lots to play and cuddle. Then they graduated to staying in our office, plenty big enough for them to roam around a bit without getting into too much trouble. Except when they wanted to chew on the electrical cords, which fortunately wasn't too often.

Now they are huge monsters, obviously well nourished. And so cuddly and sweet. They look completely different from each other, not just markings, but the shape of their bodies and faces. And their personalities are different. But they are both very affectionate. They love each other very much and often cuddle together and clean each other. Sometimes they fight and chase each other around the house. They are good for hours of entertainment. They still pursue their kitteny mission of destroying the house, but they have begun to take on their adult cat mission of not allowing us to work too hard. About 10 minutes after I start studying, one or the other of them is on my book or in my face, demanding pets.

I do love my Halloween babies. :-)

Halloween II

Here are pictures of the Halloween decorations in my kitchen: (all pictures are clickable for larger views)


The window over the sink:

The cool spiderweb tray I got at a yard sale this summer, with napkins and an awesome rusty wire cloche from HomeGoods in it:

The corner bookcase:

Looking into the dining area:

The candles on the dining table:

The corner cabinet in the dining area, which has most of my lab glass collection and other fun things in it:

The open shelf in the corner cabinet, with my Halloween black cat bowl on it:

The sconces in the dining area:


I just realized I forgot to take one picture, which has one of my favorite Halloween decorations in it. I'll post that later, with the living room decorations. I'm going to work on learning how to take pictures without flash this weekend, too, so hopefully I can get some pictures of everything lit up.
 

Halloween

So here's just the tip of the iceberg. I'm still tweaking the main rooms of the house, hopefully I'll be ready to post those pictures this weekend. Assuming the kittens quit destroying my decorations. So far they've chewed apart the wiring on my Halloween village street lights and knocked over a lamp, thereby breaking the bulb and the lampshade. Doh!

First, the upstairs/main bathroom, which just has a couple of Halloween touches:

The sink area, with a Crabtree and Evelyn black cat soap I scored at a yard sale this summer, and two fun fingertip towels given to me by my friend, Laura:


My vanity has this Disney villains Kleenex box on it:


The downstairs bathroom, with a few more Halloween bits:

The sink area, with a haunted house soap dispenser Laura, gave me years ago, and a witch votive holder, and a holographic Halloween Kleenex box on the tank:


The wall rack, which Laura and I found on the "tree lawn" in Cleveland several years ago, with a black cauldron/jack o' lantern tealight holder, a witch's boot towel, and an old See's Candy black cat container, which now holds potpourri:


This cute little felt bag (a recent gift from aforementioned friend, Laura) hangs on the hook on the inside of the bathroom door:



I tried to get some pictures of the downstairs bathroom at night, with the candles lit, but that isn't going to work until I dig out my camera manual and figure out how to turn off the darn flash. So those will have to wait.