Halloween 2011, in pictures:

This is a "before" shot of the pumpkins my friend M. and I carved. She was the only one able to come to my house for a carving party. One other friend had tickets to a football game in Charlotte and the other had to attend her little niece's birthday party. Still, M. and I had a great time Sunday afternoon even if it was just a party of two! We drank hot mulled cider with rum while we worked, and carved two pumpkins each.

The Tiki god pumpkin is mine. I drew a stencil with a picture from "7 Tiki" brand rum as my inspiration. The rum comes with a little booklet around the handle that has pictures and descriptons of seven gods from the South Pacific. I tried to recreate "Kalougata Atua", "The Spirit of Unknown Fates".  This god, according to South Pacific legend, is the master of all our fates.  He decides our fortunes, good or bad.  He is also believed to be a talisman of good luck, and the wisest of the gods.  Well, I hope he's not offended that he ended up looking like a cat thanks to my superfly mad carving skills! hahahah. I didn't quite mean for that to happen!

I originally intended to have some pumpkins carved like skulls around him, as well as a bowl of dried apple shrunken heads. As usual, my ambition was beyond what my free time allowed. Maybe next year. The rest of the pumpkins we carved from store bought stencils (and we used the really safe cheapo tools that came with them--no use taking any chances while drinking rum punch!).

These guys were just hanging out in my dining room. Boo!

This little dude made the mantle above our fireplace cheerful!!

My friend M.'s beautiful little girl!  They surprised us by stopping by. When I heard the doorbell ring and found this little fairy standing there I had to grab the camera and capture the moment! Isn't she adorable?  She was by far my favorite trick or treater of the night! Overall we had a poor turnout of kids--only about a dozen showed up--but it was pouring rain all afternoon up until 5:00, and was also very cold. I heard that the trick or treat event at the mall was a big success. I guess people were looking for a warm, dry place to take their kids! Still, the handful we did see were awesome, there were some really good costumes this year. And I had big treat bags stuffed full of Reese's cups, Nerds, Laffy Taffy, Twix bars, and puffy foam stickers of pumpkins and ghosts to reward the ones that braved the weather and came out.  It was lots of fun!  I have too much candy left over, though. I'm planning to take it to work today to get rid of it.  I know what will happen if I don't!


I had a great time on Halloween.  Earlier I worked at the information desk at the bookstore, and I wore my homemade witch hat all day!  M. helped me trim it Sunday night after we carved pumpkins.  It was a plain black hat from Target (the only hat that fit my big head!) so we added a ribbon of dangling bats and purple beads to the brim, and a filmy veil with purple sparkles in back.  I got several compliments on it, and it was fun to make!

The witch is in!

I hope everyone had a wonderful holiday, filled with magic and fun!  I can't wait to catch up on all the final countdown posts I have yet to read, and big thanks to Danni over at http://thewhimsicalcottage.blogspot.com/  for hosting the 2011 Countdown to Halloween blog party. It's been a blast!

Day 30--It's Halloween Eve!

It's 2am on Halloween Eve and I just finished decorating cupcakes and stuffing treat bags. Time for bed! I just wanted to jump in and say Happy Halloween Eve to you all!

I will be posting lots of pictures of the celebrations at my house over the next few days. And I am looking forward to reading about/seeing pictures of everyone else's fun!

For all the gothic crafters out there...

I still haven't gotten back on the ball with my Halloween Countdown posts.  I've had an incredibly stressful couple of weeks at work, and have been feeling generally demoralized and uninspired when at home.  I'm determined to pull myself out of this funk this week! There is no reason that work stress should spoil my time at home, and I am resolved to somehow learn to leave it behind when I leave work each day.

So getting back into the spirit of the season, I wanted to share a link to one of my favorite crafting websites. The archives will make great reading for anyone who loves gothic, unusual crafts...or just has an oddball sense of humor! I love these guys:

http://www.theanticraft.com/index.htm

Check out the archives. They have some really wonderful, fun projects for crafters of every skill level. My favorite issue is #13 Samhain: Broken Bones. I am dying (haha) to make a "Conmemoracion" and this might be the year I begin one. It will be a good deal of work, but the results are so lovely!

For a much easier, cheaper, less work intensive project (from the same issue) I like "Dollar Store Death".  I'm considering having some friends over for a little pre-Halloween craft party, and how much fun would this be?! Maybe we could even go on a dollar store excursion early in the day to gather supplies.  I think it would be a blast!

There are several other Samhain issues of The Anticraft. I suggest grabbing a cup of coffee, tea, cider (any cozy, autumn-y brew!) and spending some time wandering through the archives. There is lots of fun reading there even for the non-crafty sort!

That is my offering for today, the 17th of the Countdown.  More fun and goodies tomorrow!  Stay tuned!

Day 10 and falling behind!

It's day 10 of the Halloween Countdown blog party and I feel bad that I've missed a few days. I originally intended to try to blog every day during the month of October, but I realize now that was a bit ambitious. My job has been tiresome and stressful lately, and now GB is sick with some flu-like bug. I am crossing my (sanitized) fingers that I don't catch whatever he has. So I will still try to blog every day, but if I miss a few I'm not going to beat myself up about it.

That being said, here are some pictures I took yesterday and today to show some of my ongoing preparations for Halloween (and fall in general):

These are some little artificial flowers, leaves, and berries I stuck in the glass mosaic jars that live on my kitchen windowsill.

These are the pumpkins I bought on Friday afternoon. I love the tiny one with the long stem!

I tried and tried to get a picture of Ginger posing in front of the pumpkins. She refused to cooperate. She finally laid down beside them, looking irritated at me for trying to get her stay still and look at the camera. This was the best I could get!

I'm so over that camera thing.

Another way I am getting in the spirit of fall is by cooking big batches of chili and soup, and then freezing half. So far I have made pots of vegetarian black bean chili and vegetable beef soup, and I have several quarts of both stored in the freezer. Today I am making chicken soup for my sick sweetheart. So far a stock is simmering with local/organic/free range chicken pieces, garlic, bay leaves, rosemary, sea salt, and pepper. Here is a picture taken as I was starting:

I will continue to work on building a flavorful stock for a day or two, then strain it and add back some deboned chicken, carrots, peas, celery, shallots, more garlic, and egg noodles. It should be just the thing for my sick guy!

Those are my seasonal activities this week. Happy Day 10!

Getting ready

I finally got my pumpkins for this year! Three nice ones from a church sale in my neighborhood. I spent a ridiculously long time making up my mind which three to buy. I have a definite motif in mind this year for my jack o'lanterns, and the pumpkins I picked had to be just right.  I think I got good ones!

I also spent some time yesterday stringing orange lights outside our front door, and assembling various decorations for our house. I will post pictures of everything tomorrow. For now, here is a picture of last year's pumpkins:

The return of Dark Shadows

I have vague memories of watching reruns of the 1960's soap opera Dark Shadows as a kid.  It seemed so delightfully creepy when I was little!  Actually, it was probably a low budget campy kind of deal, but I was young (and it was in reruns then). Although it probably wasn't all that great, you have to admire the kind of creativity that makes a gothic vampire soap opera!  I love lots of shows from that era, especially the corny ones like Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie.  Nothing is more boring to me than the kind of shows that we have today: reality tv.

I read recently that Dark Shadow is being made into a movie now.  It is going to be directed by Tim Burton and stars Johnny Depp.  I am not a big JD fan (his characters are so over the top and overdone sometimes it puts me off--I feel the same way about Jim Carrey) but this looks good!  Apparently JD and TB both have fond memories of watching the show at young ages, just like me.  And when I saw this article (and it's just-released first cast photo) I got kind of excited!  Unfortunately, it won't be released until May.  I think it would make a better movie for autumn!

Here is a link to the article:

Dark Shadows press release

Favorite books for Halloween reading

I am a seriously avid reader, and I thought it might be fun to pull together a list of some of my favorite Halloween books. I am not a huge fan of horror as a genre (I got the whole Stephen King thing out of my system as a teenager) but there are lots of books that I enjoy reading this time of year that aren't necessarily "horror" novels. Or if they are, then they're classsic horror. Here is a short list of some of my seasonal favorites:

Fragile Things by Neil Gaiman

I love Neil Gaiman. He seems so very hip to me (being British helps, I love British writers) and I love the way his imagination works. I think Fragile Things is my favorite of his books. It is composed of short stories and poems, most of which could be considered appropriate with Halloween approaching. My favorite story is "October in the Chair" which is dedicated to Ray Bradbury. My first experience with the book was with the audio version (read by Gaiman!) played in my car during my work commute two years ago. It took me a week to finish listening to it, and it was early October. It was really enjoyable to have Halloween stories read to me again--something that I hadn't experienced since I was a kid in grade school! It really set the mood for the season, too. Best of all, I had checked the audio book out from the public library, so it didn't cost me anything! My favorite story was (and is) "October in the Chair" which is dedicated to Ray Bradbury. Other favorites were "Fifteen Painted Cards From a Vampire Tarot", "The Fairy Reel", and "The Monarch of the Glen". Dreamy, surreal, and sometimes grim, it's definitely a favorite of mine for Halloween.

I also like classic authors who wrote horror and suspense: Wilkie Collins, Daphne Du Maurier ("Rebecca" is my favorite story by her..it's creepy any time of year! Did anyone else want the narrator to just kill that awful Mrs. Danvers already?!) Washington Irving, Mary Shelley, Bram Stoker, and Edgar Allen Poe. I am just beginning to read HP Lovecraft...and so far I am not a fan. Though to be fair, I've only read a few tiny snippets of his work here and there one day on my lunch break at work. So I will have to give it a serious chance before I pass judgment. Lots of people that I consider to have good taste really like Lovecraft. We shall see.

One more book I thought of that seems appropriate for Halloween (you may have seen the movie) is Midnight In the Garden Of Good and Evil by John Berendt. It involves a murder in Savannah (it is based on a true story) and there are several scenes that involve an old black woman practicing voodoo in a graveyard and casting spells. Her character was based on a living person, that was married to a voodoo "doctor" from Beaufort, South Carolina. I grew up reading stories about them, so the book feels somewhat local to me. It is listed as a true crime novel, but it gets a bit spooky with the murder, the murder trial, and the voodoo lady. A fun read, too.

Those are all of the books I have come up with for now. I think Halloween reading/book suggestions will be a regular part of my Blog Party posts...maybe once a week? It seems like a fun topic to explore for the month of October!

What do you like to read this time of year?

Welcome October!

I am so happy that October is here! September was most decidedly not my month, and this last week has been especially bad. I am ready for a fresh new start!

Today is the beginning of the Countdown to Halloween blog party hosted by http://thewhimsicalcottage.blogspot.com/ Yesterday I attended the opening of our farmers' market annual fall festival. I planned to begin this party by posting pictures taken there, but alas, I forgot my camera. There were so many inspiring sights: heaps of pumpkins, gourds, late summer produce, bales of hay, crates of NC mountain apples, scarecrows, fair-food vendors, herb and perennial plants for sale, crafts, mums in all colors, jams, jellies, locally produced wines, piles of fragrant muscadine and scuppernong grapes, huge stalks of sugar cane as thick as my forearm...oh, all sorts of things! It was also a beautiful day outside. All that, and I forgot my camera. I was so mad! I did take pictures of the stuff I brought home. I only bought a few things, since money is tight at my house right now:

The first fall decorations to make an appearance in my den.

More fall decorations

The last of the heirloom tomatoes at the farmer's market.
These lovelies came from the NC mountains.

Tonight there is a chill in the air, and the sky is full of bright stars. It definitely feels like fall has arrived!

Countdown To Halloween Blog Party

Just a quick post today to say how excited I am that I will be participating this year in the Countdown to Halloween Blog Party hosted by The Whimsical Cottage!




I will be kicking off the month by visiting a fall festival at our local farmer's market on October 1st. There will be lots of pictures, of course! Then I will be posting on all kinds of Halloween related crafts, decorations, and fun for the rest of the month. Stay tuned!!!