Here comes the color!

We are finally beginning to get some autumn color here in my part of the world. Our peak will not occur for another couple of weeks, but it's definitely starting to look like fall:

These photos were actually taken last October in my neighborhood. I have had such a busy schedule that I have not gotten any new ones this year. Thursday I plan to change all that; I have the day off (Friday too) and I will take the camera when Ginger and I go for our morning walks. Not only are the trees beautiful this time of year, but lots of my neighbors have fall and Halloween decorations up. I will be posting a photo tour of my neighborhood to kick off the weekend!

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!

In search of a hat....

A witches hat, that is.

I have been looking all over the internet for either a nice ready-made hat that comes in specific sizes or else a tutorial for making my own. The problem I'm having is that all the hats for sale say "one size fits most" and well....I have a big head! And as far as making my own...I am really more interested in decorating a hat than attempting to make one totally from scratch.

Does anyone have any suggestions? Ideas? Websites or retailers to recommend? I'm running out of time here!

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?

Beverages for October

I couldn't resist this case of beer at the grocery store...the artwork lured me in!