Wednesday, October 28, 2009

Swaptree is soooo cool!!

Okay I'm a book nut. I confess. I really really really like to read. Well my husband told me about an online book trading site this summer. After we moved I decided to join. After all, I had a ton of books that I was thinking of selling but the local used book store doesn't give you much. I figured it would be nice to swap a book for a book and it only cost shipping. That's cheaper than buying them at the used book store, though not as cheap as buying them at goodwill or a garage sale. Anyhoo, I've traded tons of books and I've gotten books for just about every member in the family. They trade more than books, they trade dvds, cds, books, etc. But I'm only interested in the books, LOL.

Books are my other hobby besides crafting. Recently I've started replacing all of my favorite books with hardcover versions where I can, so I have even more books to get rid of on swaptree. I get packages almost everyday. Colin looks forward to the mail too, since I get alot of books for him also.

My little bit of Halloween this year.

I didn't go all out this year for Halloween. I just haven't gotten into my groove in the new house. I did, however decorate the living room. Usually I do a little bit in all of the public rooms of the house but I just limited it this year. I'll make more of an effort next year. So without further ado, ROFL...

Here are the only new apothecary items I made this year. More unicorn horns. I made them out of crayola clay. Colin made the one on the right. I added the details for him.

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These are actually pretty easy to make. Take 2 pieces of clay that are about the same size, roll them out into a snake that has one end thicker than the other. Spiral them together and smush (a technical term) the thick ends together. For the texture, I used a blunt pencil and poked the thick end over and over to give a porous boney appearance. Then I used the side of a tapestry needle to give the horn some texture. I left any minor cracks in the clay for added texture.

We have built in bookcases on either side of our fireplace, so that is what I decorated this year with my apothecary/witch's kitchen stuff.

This is the left side of the fireplace:

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This is the fireplace or what I like to call The Alter and The Owlery

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This is the right side of the fireplace, my youngest son was watching Thomas the Tank engine, so ignore the nonHalloweeny tv show, LOL.

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Here is a picture of this year's Halloween tree:

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I decided to leave off the wizard's hat on the top of the tree/skull. I redid the garland yet again this year. The lights on the barb wire garland I made last year stopped working UGH!!! So I found this really cool faux chain at the dollar store and decided to use it for garland. I also added some rubber snakes to the tree this year. As for the garland from last year, I took it apart and used the barbed wire beneath the tree along with the tree skirt(a fleece halloween blanket), some black tulle, a strand of purple lights that did work and the gargoyles. On the other side of the tree I put all of the sewn pumkins but you can barely see them in the picture.

Here is a picture of one of the side tables in the living room:

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Here are the "window treatments":

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Here are some closeups of the bookcases:

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Monday, October 19, 2009

Best laid plans...

Well I had grand plans to make 2 giant paper mache pumpkins for the front yard for this year's Halloween. The weather had other plans unfortunately. I have to make the pumpkins outside (because of the mess) and its just been too rainy. Oh well. I have a whole year to make pumpkins now, LOL. I have the shapes started, I need to add more layers to the forms the do the delicate work. On a plus note, we finally found our camera this weekend Woo Hoo!!!

I'll try to get a picture of this year's inside Halloween display up in the next few days. I haven't made anything new this year but I'll still put up the pictures. I did get the inside decorated. I only had 2 props leak from beoing packed and moved, it only added to the character of the bottles. So I think using shampoo and liquid soaps as the liquid for the bottles was a roaring success.