A few late night Thursday things

I'm totally tickled PINK to have an item from my etsy shop, The Merry Magpie, included in this fun Chic Geek column by Delia Hauser! My item is #4 in the Wrapping section, a set of darling vintage Christmas gift boxes. I have those and a ton of other cute vintage Christmas items in my shop right now.

I'm still waiting for an email from the winner of the Mickey Mouse puzzle, Mabel. Please send your address to fraulein_h at hotmail and all that so I can get it in the mail! Today would have been a perfect puzzle day here. It started snowing at 7 am and left us with about 6" of powdery, fluffy snow. I shoveled the driveway so that The Mister could get in after work and it was like shoveling cotton batting! It looked exactly like the bag of fake snow I have for decorating and sparkled just like German glass glitter. It was COLD but absolutely beautiful! The gentle glow of Christmas lights reflected in snow has to be one of the most peaceful sights ever, don't you think?

Crafty links for a cold day

My lands, it is cold here today! The heater has been running just about nonstop and I've had cold hands since the minute I woke up. I had hot soup for lunch, planning to make more hot soup for dinner and I'm on my first cup of hot chocolate with more sure to come. Brr! It's the perfect day to stay in and decorate!

The tree is up and hung with my most precious of vintage ornaments. Oh, it's pretty! I say this every year, but when the afternoon sun comes in the window and hits the tree it's just like a big jewel box with all the sparkle and the colors. This is a photo from last year, but it looks pretty much the same this year too:It makes me so happy to walk in there and see the glitter! Now that's done, it's time for the rest of the house to get festive.

I don't know about you, but I'm totally in the mood to do some Christmas crafting! Last December I was in such a bad humor that I don't recall doing nearly as much crafting as I would have liked, even though I was filled to the brim with inspiration from Silver Bella. This year is different, and it seems that Blogland is just filled with no end of crafty ideas! Some of my favorites from this past week alone are:

• This fun white fur wreath from The Nester
• Barbara's darling glass bead and bell garland at Oodles and Oodles
• All of the tutorials on Joli Paquet have been top notch, but I'm especially in love with Sunday's tart tin ornaments and cookie cutter garland!
  

I am so in love with that cookie cutter project that I must have gone back and looked at it a hundred times already. I immediately dug through my big jar of vintage cookie cutters to see if I have enough to make a garland of my own. I do, but that didn't stop me from heading to Home Goods on Monday to see if I could find the vintage repros that Jeanne used in her tutorial. I did find them in the aisle where the cooking bowls in case any of you want to look for them as well. I was just tickled to see this garland idea because last December I tried to think of something decorative to do combining my cookie cutters and big silver jingle bells, but due to my aforementioned BAD MOOD and a lack of time, I never did anything. Now I have a plan!

By the way, here is the Chocolate Pie recipe that Blogger wouldn't let me post yesterday:

Creamy Chocolate Silk Pie

One 9" pie crust shell, baked and cooled
1/4 c. sugar
3 Tbsp cornstarch
1 1/2 c. milk
1 c. chocolate chips (I used semi-sweet)
1 tsp vanilla
2 c. heavy cream
2 tsp powdered sugar

In a medium saucepan combine sugar, cornstarch and milk. Whisk ingredients together until well-blended. Heat just until it starts to thicken, remove from heat and add chocolate chips and vanilla. Allow them to melt into the milk mixture a minute or so before stirring. Let cool about 10 minutes, cover with a lid and place in the fridge to cool for at least another 30 minutes.

Whip heavy cream and powdered sugar until soft peaks form. Combine half of cream with the cooled chocolate mixture, folding together gently to keep it light. Fill the pie crust. Use the remaining whipped cream for the topping, either piped from a bag or just spread over the top like icing on a cake. Sprinkle with shaved chocoalte or mini-chocolate chips. Refrigerate 2-3 hours before serving and serve cold.

I'm afraid I didn't write down the source of this recipe so if it's yours, thanks for sharing! :)

The Goblet speaks & yummy chocolate pie

Thank you all for commenting and entering to win the cute Mickey puzzle! I consulted the Goblet of Fire and it said...

Random Integer Generator

Here are your random numbers:

6 

Timestamp: 2008-12-02 21:20:09 UTC

Comment #6 was left by Mabel! Email me at fraulein_h at hotmail etc. etc. with your address and I'll get it in the mail post haste!

*************************************

A few more words about Thanksgiving...so many of you left me wonderful advice about how to cook a turkey, which I appreciate and will put to good use when I finally get around to cooking Birdzilla, which is still in my freezer. :) Once I got to Costco and saw the price of turkey breasts (as much as a whole turkey! Sheesh) I marched myself over to the meat case and bought some lovely filet mignon instead! Not traditional, but I didn't get any complaints from the menfolk who ate it so I think it was a fine substitution.

Everything else turned out pretty yummy with the exception of the rolls--but then yeast breads and I have never gotten along well, so I shouldn't have been surprised. That may have been the Lion House recipe but those weren't no Lion House rolls, let me tell you! Lion House hockey pucks was more like it. I know that I just need to practice more to get good at making yeast breads but really, who wants to "practice" making something that takes all day and leaves your kitchen a floury mess, without the promise of a yummy payoff for the work? Not me, and that's why my rolls were terrible!

My rolls might not have been great but at least the Chocolate Silk Pie was a winner! It was easy and SO yummy; very light but with a very rich chocolate flavor, and perfect for breakfast. ;) Here's the recipe in case you want to make it for dessert (or breakfast!):

Okay, nevermind. I've tried and tried to post this darn recipe but Blogger is having a temper tantrum so I'll try again later. Boo.

Mickey Mouse Christmas Puzzle giveaway!

Oh, this weekend has been just exactly what I've needed! I've spent the weekend hanging out with my little family. relaxing, cleaning up the house and getting around to all the things I've neglected during the past 2.5 weeks of stress and busyness. Last night it snowed so we woke up to all that white loveliness and a good excuse to stay in the house and get cozy! I've been getting the front room ready for the tree and dragging the Christmas boxes up the stairs a little at a time. Next step is to clear off my desk for a bit of Christmas crafting.
While going through some boxes I found this fun Mickey Mouse Christmas puzzle. I had originally bought it to sell on eBay but instead, I thought I'd offer it up to y'all as a giveaway! I've worked it already so I know it is complete. I was attracted to it because of the darling vintage Mickey Mouse memorabilia in the photo. It has 500 pieces but it wasn't difficult at all--just fun! I love sitting and doing puzzles with my family, and what better time than now when it is cold and blowy outside. If you'd like to win the puzzle, just leave a comment on this post--let's say between now (Saturday afternoon) and Monday at 5 pm MST. I'll pull out the Goblet of Fire on Monday night!

Hope you're all enjoying your long weekend!

This is it--my first year to make Thanksgiving dinner all on my own. Would you believe I've never cooked a turkey before? Really! The last two years we had T-day dinner here at my home but my mom took over the big bird duties. I'll admit I'm a bit nervous about getting it all figured out. I have a turkey in the freezer but I'm going to Costco this morning to see about getting a turkey breast instead. If they're all sold out, Plan B is to hit the fancy butcher for nice steaks and crab legs! LOL I'm only cooking for three adults and a picky three-year-old, so I'm not feeling the need to make an entire turkey. (this illustration always cracks me up--nice dead turkey neck dangling there.)
I've also pared down the rest of the menu as well, as I'm only one person and can't manage to cook a half dozen side dishes at the same time--and who will eat them anyway? I've prioritized the menu based on what I like the best--hey, if I'm doing all the work, I get to choose! The Mister has been getting all kinds of funny questions from me lately: "On a scale of 1 to 10, how important to you is cranberry sauce?" My being in charge of the menu also means NO PUMPKIN PIE! I hate the stuff, so we'll be having Chocolate Silk pie instead.

I didn't get the Halloween decorations taken down until well into November but I still put out my few little Thanksgiving things. This is an old silver trophy bowl that I love, filled with gourds and Indian corn and a few of my vintage beaded fruits. I love how the afternoon sun comes through the window and illuminates them each day.
And here is the top of my china cabinet. I'm loving the different white Haeger planters contrasted with the red walls and other deep colors. My little bro gave me the turkey dish a few years ago; I think it might be California Pottery. It looks perfect with the other colors!
Time to get going--I know I'm nutso to be braving Costco the day before a holiday but maybe if I get there when they open it won't be so bad. I hope!

The Purple Pansy Boutique

At this point, I think it's pretty much a given that November will stand out in my 2008 blog archives as the month with the fewest entries. I've been super-busy behind the scenes--crafting my little fingers to the bone to get ready for this, the thing that has consumed most of my life for the past two weeks.

A couple of friends and I organized a home craft boutique that we held last weekend. Not only did we put the whole thing together, but we were vendors too, leading us all to have "what did I get myself into?" moments. It all went well but it was a ton of work--and we're doing it again in a week and a half! Here are some photos of my displays (click on the photos to enlarge them):
I made two different types of items: rickrack dahlias with vintage buttons and vintage ribbon corsages, (both brooch and wrist style) made with gorgeous ribbons and vintage jewelry.

The rickrack dahlias were carded and hung on a fab vintage aluminum Christmas tree that I scored a few weeks ago for a mere $8!
The corsages were either wrapped and place in a large rustic bowl or pinned on my old dress form.I am happy how my items and my displays turned out, and the items that don't sell will go into my etsy shop. Speaking of which, I'm going to start working on getting some things listed tonight--I've got lots of fun vintage Christmas goodies just waiting!

Downtown Holiday Jacket and Pant GIVEAWAY!!!!

Oh, she's done it again! Kathleen from Grosgrain has created yet another DARLING outfit that she's generously giving away to one lucky little girl. I am so in love with the silhouette of the jacket--the wide collar, the gathering and the buttons on the side--not to mention the RED! And the cutie pie sailor-style pants are the perfect thing to complement the coat. Doesn't it look tres Parisian? Click on the link below to see it for yourself!


Downtown Holiday Jacket and Pant GIVEAWAY!!!!

I'm back! Phoenix weeked highlights

See, now this is why I didn't sign myself up for NaBloPoMo. Last week was rotten and I'm glad it's over. It featured such joys as waking up in the middle of the night sick, having a sick kid, kicking my own front door in, nearly murdering my dog, cleaning fingerpaint off the walls and ballpoint pen off the leather car upholstery, no naps, late bedtimes, snow, major stress-out panic attacks at 11:30 pm and a husband who is out of town so I get to deal with this all by myself. I think you can imagine why I didn't feel much like blogging! Now it's Monday morning and I'm determined to make this new week better. I still have lots of things to stress about and my husband is still gone but I'm hopeful that things will improve and I'm going to start off on the right foot by blogging!

Saturday Maren and I drove an hour south to the Air Force Academy to watch my alma mater BYU beat Air Force on their own turf! We purchased the tickets before we knew that Quin would be out of town and I'll admit that I was not excited at the prospect of going by myself. Luckily, the weather was nice (if a bit chilly) and it was much easier than I imagined to get down there and deal with Maren on my own. We sat with friends, which made the whole thing much more fun! Maren loved cheering and running around on the empty benches with the other kids.
She even fell asleep in my arms during halftime, if you can imagine! It was a long day (left the house at 10:00 am and didn't get home until well after 6:00 pm) but it ended up being really fun and I'm glad I didn't chicken out.

I still haven't talked about my girls' weekend to Phoenix--that was such fun! Some highlights:
*visiting Melrose Vintage. Oh my golly, what a store! I had somehow forgotten that it was also a scrapbook store and was absolutely overwhelmed by the gorgeous papers and crafting supplies they sold. They only carry items that fit their shabby, vintage, romantic aesthetic and they stocked a lot of really neat things that I've been unable to find in my local stores. Add Melrose Vintage to the list of My All-Time Favorite Places to Shop!*The divine crab cake salad at My Florist. The perfect lunch to refuel us after shopping at Melrose Vintage! There's a great story about how rather than tear down the gorgeous old sign that once advertised an actual flower store, the cafe took its name instead. The crab cakes were absolutely the best I've ever had.
*The classes we took at Blissful Living Studio. First was the beeswax collage class with the lovely and fun Tricia. I've never worked with beeswax before but it was so easy and so fun and I've already bought my supplies so that I can do more! We made the cutest vintage-style Christmas canvases.Next was the soldering class with the very talented Beth Quinn. Somehow I was hoping that between now and the last time I put down my soldering iron in July that I would have magically gotten better at it, but alas that wasn't the case. ;) It was still really hard for me, although I did learn a new technique from Beth that I think will make things easier once I get the hang of it. No pictures of me smiling with my final products from this class because I'm still not very happy with them, although I think with a little fiddling I can make them better. Still, it was a great class and I really enjoyed it. After our classes at Blissful Living we walked across the street to Mystic Paper, another amazing papercrafting store that I wish I could pick up and plop down in Denver so I could shop there and take classes all the time!*No girls' weekend would be complete without cupcakes! We went to the Scottsdale branch of the famous Sprinkles to see if they really lived up to the hype. My milk chocolate cuppycake was absolutely scrumptious--moist cake, rich chocolate flavor and yummy frosting! The lemon cupcake I bought for Maren was not nearly as good, but the only reason I chose it was because of the pink dot (like many 3-year-olds, Maren chooses food by color and not necessarily flavor). Sprinkles' website says that a Denver store is in the works so I anticipate more taste testing in our future!

*Undoubtedly the funniest thing from the weekend happened on our very first stop after we left the airport. We spotted a shopping plaza with both a Goodwill and an antique mall and decided to stop for a look. The antique mall was the usual booths full of tchotchkes and old china but in the back there was an entire room devoted to long sparkly gowns, wigs, and the biggest selection of size 13 stiletto heels I've ever seen...FOR DUDES! Once the realization dawned on us, we were overcome with the giggles! I'm sure those in "the community" know that is the place to go but for the average shopper or tourist, looking for vintage Christmas ornaments and finding drag queen paraphenalia was seriously unexpected!In all it was a great weekend! The weather was gorgeous, the shopping plentiful, the food delicious and the company was superb. Can't wait for the next one, Mom! :)

First Snow of the Season

A week ago I was in Phoenix enjoying sunshine, green grass and flowers, warm air and temps in the mid-70s.

Which made it all the more bitter when his morning I woke up to this:Bleh.

I'm going to go make a batch of my new favorite Pumpkin Butterscotch Muffins and I'll be back later to share details and pics from my trip!

My suitcase is packed and ready to go--I'm off for our third annual Girls' Weekend! I'm happy to be flying down to much warmer weather in Phoenix. What fun we will have! We're planning on doing a bit of soldering in the hotel room, but I've made sure to pack my heat-resistant mat so we aren't burning holes in the furniture.

I'm ashamed to report that the Halloween decorations are still up, every last one. All that time I should have been stowing away bats and pumpkins was spent stocking my etsy shop, The Merry Magpie, with goodies for you! There are some fun vintage Christmas things in there already, and when I return I have even more pretties waiting to be uploaded!

Last weekend I happened upon a great garage sale, held by a woman who was getting out of the antiques business. She had great stuff and it was priced to move--a winning combination for me! I think I was there for 45 minutes looking at things, although much of that was spent trying to herd Maren away from the breakables. I ended up with a few treasures, including this beautiful vintage magnolia print for just $7.00.
Living in Savannah gave me a soft spot for magnolias and I adore the soft pinks and greens of this print. I even have the perfect place to hang it!

See you on Monday--have a great weekend!

A Fairy P. and a Mary P.

Oh, Halloween was such fun! The weather was gorgeous--no parkas & moon boots messing up the costumes this year! It was so warm we didn't even need coats (a far cry from 2006 when it was about 20 degrees and snowy). We went to Trunk or Treat at our church, then came home and Maren did a little door-knocking in the neighborhood until her pumpkin bucket was too heavy for her to carry. Here's the prettiest little fairy princess on the block:
this is the look we got when we told her to "smile like a princess"
And mommy dressed up too! I knew last year that I wanted to be Mary Poppins so I've kept an eye out for costume pieces for months. The hat I bought early in the summer from this webshop. I did have to paint it black and add the daisies but I think the effect was good (although now that I see the photos I wish I'd painted the underside too, whoops). I already owned the blouse but the jacket, skirt, scarf and bag came from the thrift store. White gloves were from a costume shop (although forgotten in this photo) and I made my own parrot head umbrella. I used my vintage umbrella and found a photo of the parrot head handle on flickr. I enlarged it on the computer, printed, cut it out and taped it to the handle. Not too bad for homemade! The likeness was good enough that everyone at the church knew who I was supposed to be (even kids) and I got so many compliments! :) It was such fun and I'm already know who I want to be next year!

The Halloween decorations are all still up and I have a feeling they'll be staying that way for a while. The downside to elaborate holiday decorations is that at some point you have to figure out how to stuff them all back into the boxes in the basement, right? As much as I love Halloween, I'm definitely over it and my thoughts have turned squarely to these:Oh, my pretties. :) The thrift stores now have their Christmas items out and I have already found several great vintage goodies! Good thing, as the garage saling haul this year was meager and I was feeling a bit sad about not having more to add to my collection.

Speaking of vintage Christmas decorations, check out the gorgeous confections that the creative soul behind Magpie Ethel will be selling at craft shows this season! Don't I wish I could get my hands on some of those glittery lovelies!

Hurrah for Halloween!

Hurrah for Halloween...the best darn day of the year to be a kid, if you ask me!

Last Saturday we held our annual Halloween party. This year we had a superhero theme and asked our friends to come dressed as either a superhero or a supervillain--either an established character or one of their own design. Our friends were such good sports and so creative; I loved seeing their costumes! You can see two of them here and here. As for Quin and me, I knew what I was going to be the minute we started planning the party back in September, but we didn't come up with Quin's costume until a few days before the party. Here we are:

Quin is Michael Phelps, the closest thing we may have to a real-life superhero with the whole super-speed thing. I'm The Junker (not to be confused with The Joker). I wore a utility belt loaded down with a bag of quarters, a tape measure, my kitchen collectibles identification book, a bottle of hand sanitizer and a flashlight for looking in dark estate sale basements, and my 'cape' was a vintage apron!

We had fun decorating our house to be The Secret Lair. We constructed the ubiquitous superhero Giant Wall of Screens on one wall of the front room, had a Secret Disguise lab with funny glasses, hats and wigs, and my favorite--'autographed' photos of some of our favorite superheroes! (Click on the photos to enlarge so you can read the writing)
The party was such fun and we're already planning what to do next year!

We did a bit of pumpkin carving this year with Maren but kept it to the standard jack o' lantern face, unlike my brother Kristjan who whipped up this little piece of produce magic:

Isn't that awesome? He and my other brother made up the pattern in Adobe Illustrator. I actually suggested that my brother dress up as Prince this year--and as my bro is a 6'5" blond white guy, that has the potential to be pretty darn hilarious! Not sure where he'd find a purple velvet bullfighter suit with a 40" inseam, but maybe he'll come up with something.

And one last decoration from around my house:
When I bought this urn at the thrift a few months ago I knew I wanted to use it to display a pumpkin! I meant to put Spanish moss under the gourd and use a white pumpkin, but neither thing happened and it's too late now. Maybe next year!

Today I need to make a quick run to the thrift to hopefully find one final piece for tonight's costume (I'm dressing as something different from the Junker). Tonight we'll fairy princess-ify Maren and then head to Trunk or Treat at the church, followed by a bit of trick-or-treating in the neighborhood. The weather here should be gorgeous and we're looking forward to a FUN night. I wish you all the same!!!

The Eve of All Hallow's Eve

I'm getting to the end of my Halloween decorations, but I still have a few fun things to share. This darling banner was made for me by my sweet mom! She cut the pennants with a really cool Big Shot die from Stampin' Up! To get the great texture on the triangles, she covered them with black lacy fabric and made the little 'bells' to hang from the bottom points. Here's a close up of one of the letters:
The whole thing is glittery and has so much texture and I just love it! Stampin' Up! also sells a really great scallop punch that she used on the edges of the pennants. It's on my wish list for sure.I did this 'eyeballs on a platter' piece last year, and it still squicks me out just as much as it did then! The new addition is the 'ick' flash card that I purchased from Jen's shop, Rosey Little Things. The flash cards are meant to be word suffixes but when I saw that ick card I knew exactly what I wanted to do with it! I think it's oh-so-appropriate, because it's just what I said when I had to handle all those sticky, gooey eyeballs to pile them on the plate!


My Sweet & Sinister Swap partner Julie B. made me this really neat art piece but I didn't have a photo of it when I posted about the rest of my package. Julie made a really neat rosette for the middle of the hanging by using pages from an old Who's Who? book, and she even found entries for both my last name and "Poe"! I hung it over my beloved black feather wreath, which seemed perfectly appropriate.

Just one more sleep until the big day! Maren has been asking me for weeks if it is Halloween yet and she danced with delight this morning when I showed her the calendar. I can't fault her--I'm excited too!

I think my favorite part of the house to decorate for each holiday is the top of my china cabinet because it's well out of Maren's reach, meaning I can actually decorate with things I don't want molested or destroyed by curious three-year-old fingers! It also helps that it's a nice large surface. I try to do different things from year to year although I may re-use some elements. This is what I came up with for Halloween 2008:


I kept it a bit more spare than usual and stuck to a mostly black color scheme. Here's a closer view of the left side,

the center,

and the right side.I do love those funny vertebrae candles that I bought last year! I prefer Halloween decor that is a bit spooky and macabre but not too gory, and those fit the bill. The black feathery things in the champagne bucket are not actual feathers; they are black and glittery and plastic but oh so cool! They have wires in them so they can be shaped, and I love how they look with the dried Spanish moss spilling over the top of the bucket.

(Side note: I lived in Savannah for a couple of years, where Spanish moss grows naturally in the beautiful old oaks and adds to the charm of the landscape. What you may not know is that stuff is positively CRAWLING with chiggers! You are never supposed to touch it or pull it down. We heard tales of tourists who found that out the hard [read: itchy] way when they took some moss home as a souvenir!)

One of my favorite elements of my display is my crow. He is helpfully identified by the vintage flashcard stuck in an old flower frog. :)

Just a few more days until Halloween, yet I still have more decorations to share with you. I may go a bit overboard with the decorating, but it sure makes it easy to find blog topics in October! :)

Toadstools for every holiday

My love affair with red and white toadstools began sometime last year and hasn't show any sign of abating, so you can imagine what happened when I opened up my October issue of Family Fun magazine earlier this month and saw this spread:



Yup, I almost wet my pants with sheer glee! Although we'd already decided on Maren's costume I was sorely tempted to make her into the cutest little toadstool our neighborhood would ever see. Maybe next year! Don't you think a little boy baby would make the most darling chubby garden gnome? The patterns don't seem to be available on the FF website, so if you want to make a last-minute toadstool you'll have to find a copy of the magazine itself. Those pages go into my keeper file for sure!

Saturday morning Maren and I made a thrift store run. We were looking for some items for our party that night and for a few more pieces for my Halloween costume. We found neither, but did find that they've already begun putting out the Christmas items and they were all 50% off! I scored some great vintage stuff that I'll share later, and also bought a whole bag of other ugly wooden ornaments just to get these little sweeties:

I love them SO much, I can hardly stand it! I'm half considering keeping my silver tree & vintage glass ornaments in storage this year in favor of buying a green tree and doing it up in red & white, toadstools, and a general sort of German/Swiss/Austrian theme with lots of wooden ornaments and such. It would be a total departure from my usual sparkly tree, but it sounds so charming! I thought about it last Christmas too and had meant to look for an inexpensive green artificial tree while yard sale-ing this summer, but that never happened. Maybe I'll just keep collecting toadstools for another year and shoot for 2009 instead!

Phoneix-bound and more Halloween projects to share

Hi Blog friends! I need help from any of you who live in the Phoenix area (Linda T, I'm talking to you! :) My mom and I are going to the area in a few weeks for our third annual Girls' Weekend. We're taking a couple of art classes (soldering & beeswax collage) at this great place in Mesa called Blissful Living Studio, but we're looking for a few other fun things to do. We plan to hit Melrose Vintage and we have some family in the area we might like to see, but we're wondering if there's anything else we should put on our must-see list? We're flying in Friday morning, taking classes during the day on Saturday and then leaving Sunday afternoon so it won't be a long trip. We like antiques, crafts, funky stores like Anthropologie, and my mom knits so local yarn shops might be fun as well. We're open to all suggestions!

Now that the business is over, let's get back to Halloween! First, head over to my friend Angie's blog and see the darling wreath she made! She used a simple grapevine wreath form and a selection of ribbon from the $1 bins at Michael's. All she did was cut lengths of the ribbon and knot them around the grapevine branches. So simple, yet so cute--and it's even cuter in person, let me assure you! What I really love about it is the colors. For me, purple makes the whole thing just pop! What an easy decoration that could easily be adapted for any holiday or to match any decor.

And here's a little decoration I made:

I can't remember exactly how I stumbled upon this blog, but as a lover of Halloween it had me instantly hooked! My favorite thing are these very cool apothecary labels that the designer has very generously shared for public use here on Flickr. Just right click and save the images to your own computer and you can make your own potion cabinet!

For my bottle, I used the large poison label. I measured my bottle (a decanter I thrifted with just such a project in mind!) and sized the label accordingly in my Word program. I printed it out and added a bit of brown chalking to make it look appropriately aged, glued it on the bottle and filled it with colored water. Easy but fun! Wouldn't you love to have a whole shelf of old bottles and jars with scary labels?

Celebrity Crush Sighting & a cute Halloween jar

When autumn rolls around, one of the movies that I always get a jones to watch is the Anne of Green Gables series. Although the movies take place all through the year, the autumn scenes are so full of glorious color that they've made a Pavlovian-type connection in my brain. Those movies are definitely on my Top 10 Best of All Time list--if you count them as one, they might even make the Top 5.
So you can imagine my squeals of absolute giddiness when last night I got the opportunity to see GILBET BLYTHE live and in the flesh! I know! {squeal!} We had tickets to see the touring production of "The Drowsy Chaperone" last night. I was already excited for the show as it's one I had the good fortune to see in its original Broadway run and I loved it. When I got to the theater and saw the name Jonathan Crombie on the cast board in the lobby, I knew exactly who it was: GILBERT! I ran inside and confirmed with the Playbill that he was in the show--he actually played the main part (the narrator), then hurriedly told everyone I knew within earshot who might share my excitement. That just wasn't enough, so with 1 minute to curtain I called my mom to tell her the news, and she squealed just like I did!

The show was just as good as I remembered and getting to see one my favorite movie crushes was a treat. The show begins in the dark with only the narrator's voice and right away, I could tell it was him! Of course, he's 20+ years older but he was still cute. :) Seeing handsome Gilbert was just the icing on the cake of a really great night!

Another Halloween decoration to share:

The jar was thrifted a while ago with no purpose in mind, but it was perfect for this project! The creepy-but-cute spider is a vinyl Decor Element from Stampin' Up! (I'm trying to decide if he needs some red sparkly jeweled eyes--what do you think?) The jar is filled with various-sized glass ball ornaments in Halloween colors. The original was filled with candy which looked yummy and festive, but that is a seriously bad idea for a household where both Mommy & the 3-year-old have a dangerous sweet tooth.
Here's the original version of the jar that I copied. The spider vinyl also comes with the 'spooky' letters and extra lines so his hanging thread can be as long as you want it. I didn't have room for the letters on my jar so I'll save those for another project. I love doing projects with decorative vinyl because it's so easy to apply and so versatile!

Marie-Therese Gown GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!

Marie-Therese Gown GIVEAWAY !!!!!!!

So, you wanna see something that will make your jaw drop wide open like mine did? Click on the Marie-Therese Gown Giveaway link above to see what has to qualify as THE most spectaular little girl costume ever created! I actually gasped audibly when the first pictures opened on my computer, no kidding. And here's the kicker: Kathleen, the talented person who made this dress, is GIVING it away! No, really! Each week Kathleen makes a wonderful dress and then just gives it away, FOR FREE, to one of her commenters. Amazing, isn't it? I know. If you want a chance to win this amazing confection of a Halloween costume or any of the other lovely things that Kathleen makes, just head on over to her blog and follow her directions.

It is going to be one lucky little girl (and happy mama!) that wins that dress, and I sure hope it's MY little girl! I'll have every finger and toe crossed between now and Sunday, when Kathleen does the giveaway. Now, where did I put that lucky rabbit's foot?.....

I also wanted to show you all how I decorated my beloved muffin top table for Halloween. I removed all but the Halloween-ish colored jellybeans and filled it with dice, dominoes, spider rings, orange slices (which Maren will NOT quit asking me to give to her), candy corn, eyeball erasers, and my favorite--rubber rats! This table is still my favorite piece of furniture in the whole house. I was poking around eBay and found this large muffin pan. It doesn't have the large wells like mine does but it could still be made into a neat table.

The weather this weekend was lovely, and we took advantage of it by going to a local nursery on Friday afternoon to pick out pumpkins (Nick's, for anyone local). They have lots of fun things for the kids to do (a bounce house, a maze, wagon rides) and it's all FREE! The pumpkins are a bit on the pricy side so I'm sure that makes up for it, but it was still fun and still cheaper than our usual journey to the pumpkin patch across town that costs us $20+ just in tolls. Here's Maren with one of the giant pumpkins for sale:

One of the other reasons I love going to this nursery is that they sell all the unusal kinds of pumpkins that you see in magazines around this time--the varieties that are green and pale pink and shaped like giant wheels of cheese. I find that I gravitate much more to those than the perfect orange orbs that make good jack o' lanterns. The more unusual, warty and bumpy the better! I had to laugh because yesterday we had visitors who, upon seeing my crazy gourds, remarked, "Hey Maren, those are some pretty ugly pumpkins!" I guess beauty is in the eye of the beholder for those! :)