Thanks for all the birthday wishes on my Facebook and in my e-mail last week!!! I felt very loved.
I've had company here for the past week, so not a lot of time to get online and catch up with people. My in-laws came and we got so much accomplished--that is, my mother-in-law and I did! (Todd and his dad got a lot of fishing accomplished.) She helped me put up curtains in the living room, dining room and downstairs bath--talk about a difference. We've lived here almost three years without any downstairs curtains, so it really looks much more soft and finished. When the sun comes back out, I'll get some pictures of everything.
I do have a couple of pictures on my camera right now, though...here are the Halloween cards I made for my nephews and nieces:
I got the paper piecing patterns from the Better Homes and Gardens Scrapbooks Etc website. You're supposed to hand stitch the details, but who has time for that? And I don't think the originals had googly eyes, but I love googly eyes, so I used those. Most of the papers are from Imaginisce, with a few scraps from other Halloween lines.
There was a stamping/scrapbooking show in town this weekend, and I went on Saturday morning...took a few pictures of Tim Holtz projects at the Stampers Anonymous booth:
Stampers Anonymous also carries a line of stamps called Studio 490...here are a couple of things that caught my eye:
Here's Studio 490's blog...looks like lots of inspiration and ideas!
I would have taken more, but of course I always forget to check my camera battery before I go out, and then of course, it's always down to the last drop and I only get a handful of pictures. These were the most impressive project booths, though. There weren't a lot of vendors there this year, but I managed to get some Tim Holtz stamps and a bunch of Adirondack inks, plus a few other odds and ends. Spent my birthday money.
Hope everybody has a great week. I can't believe it's the end of October already!
I just waved Todd and his co-worker R. J. off to a big poker game, so I have the evening all to myself.
It has finally, finally gotten chilly-ish here, and now I'm ready for fall. Unfortunately, now that Halloween has passed, the rest of the world has moved right along to Christmas, which I am assuredly NOT ready for.
We had a fun little Halloween evening here. Todd pulled on his suit of armor and stood on the driveway waving at the trick-or-treaters and pointing them up to the front porch where I waited with the candy bucket. Some of the kids thought he was a robot or Robo-Cop. And the toddlers were mostly scared of him. However, he did get challenged to a couple of duels, so there are obviously a few kids out there who recognize a knight when they see one.
We had about 60-65 kids come by. I just love seeing their costumes and ogling their full bags of candy. We didn't live in a neighborhood when I was a kid, and my mom had a niggling feeling that Halloween was of the devil, I think, so we didn't do much trick-or-treating when I was little. The result is that every Halloween I just want to grab a pillowcase and make a costume and go out and hit the streets with the rest of the kids. Of course I can't really do that, so I have to just console myself with the leftover Halloween candy (Tootsie Roll pops.)
Todd's parents were here for a week in mid-October, and we had a great time with them, as we always do. They are such low-maintenance houseguests--they can take care of and entertain themselves if necessary, and they just fit into the flow of life here really well. Todd and his dad got to do some fishing, and we all just hung out, puttered around, hit a few sights and shops, and otherwise relaxed. Very nice. And they were here for my birthday, so that was nice, too.
Yes, I had another birthday...I haven't figured out how to avoid it yet. It was pretty painless this year. My mom sent along some great presents with my in-laws, so I had those to open first thing in the morning. My mother-in-law and I went to Smithfield with my friend Cheryl, and we did a little walking, a little antique shopping, and had a fabulous lunch at the bakery there. And I was inundated with phone calls from my loved ones all day, plus some great handmade cards and pictures from a few of the nieces and nephews. I also had a couple very interesting renditions of "Happy Birthday" sung to me over the phone by my nieces Natalie and Marissa. So it was a good birthday. Sometimes it's easy for me to forget how blessed I am, and how often the biggest blessings are the ones that seem the smallest.
This week we ordered some new bedroom furniture, which I still can't quite believe. We have a whole bedroom full of hand-me-down furniture, and not one piece goes with any other piece to the tiniest degree. I've been okay with it for fifteen years, but suddenly a couple weeks ago, I was not okay with it any more! So we shopped around and ended up with this set from Bassett: Eastbrook. We got the bed, two nightstands, the tall chest, and the "door dresser," without the mirror. It will be very interesting to cram it all into our bedroom. It will all fit, except the bed. We currently sleep in a double, so I think the bed frame will go into the attic until we're ready to splash out on a queen mattress/box spring set. Anyway, it'll be exciting to put all our stuff into new dressers!
Now I think I'll read for the rest of the evening. I have an enormous stack of to-be-read books, courtesy of Paperback Swap, and it's great to just go grab a new book whenever I'm ready for it.
I am so ready for fall!
There's a chat about fall crafts at Two Peas this afternoon...I'm putting up my Halloween sampler here so I can link it there. I stitched this about ten years ago, and I just love it...wish I could have it up more than six-eight weeks out of the year!
I think this sampler is my favorite thing I ever cross-stitched...and I cross-stitched a TON of stuff back in the days before scrapbooking took over my life!
Porch is cleaned off, ceramic jack o'lanterns are in place, pumpkins and pretty chrysanthemums are bought, glowsticks are ready to glow, pumpkin bowl is filled with yucky Smarties so I won't be tempted to indulge, wind is rustling the leaves, and it's a crisp and chilly...80 degrees. Oh well, you can't have everything!
If I get motivated in what remains of the afternoon, I might make a Halloween banner. This site is awesome...she also has a little doll you can play Halloween dress-up with: 13 Nights of Halloween. Enjoy!
Here's an awesome little time-waster of a site: carve your own virtual jack o' lantern!
I love Halloween. I ordered 100 glow-stick bracelets last night, in the hopes that I can avoid buying a ton of candy that will end up in my mouth rather than the trick-or-treaters' bags. I hear there are some little Halloween Play-doh packages out now, too, and I might try to track some down in case we have a ton of kids or I want to offer a choice.
I know it's all about the candy, but I would have been thrilled with a glow-stick bracelet as a kid so I'm hoping the little ones will be, too.
One of my favorite things about Halloween is all the classic horror movies that they show on Turner Classic Movies. This year they seem to be planning a Vincent Price marathon on the evening of the 31st, with some generic scaries playing all day long.
One blissful Halloween 6 or 7 years ago, American Movie Classics had a terrific four-day Monsterfest, with all the oldies (Dracula, Frankenstein, Wolfman) as well as some great sci-fi monster movies and a few spoofs like Abbott and Costello Meet Frankenstein. It was fantastic!
Then the next year AMC changed formats to all commercials, all the time, and the definition of "classics" became "any cheap 1970s-80s crap we can scrape up from our library." Not that I'm still bitter or anything. But oh, that was the best Monsterfest ever that year. Sigh.
I checked AMC's schedule this year, and while they are playing a few of the oldies (stacked full of commercials) they're mingled with stuff like Halloween, The Exorcist and Child's Play. No, thanks. See, I like scary movies from the era before they became truly scary!
