Halloween Night

                                                                 

Today we are busy with cross country meets and dog parks and baking and cooking Halloween treats.....so I offer up a little poem I wrote when I was a kid, just for this night!

Halloween Night

The cold wind blows on Halloween Night
Witches take to their brooms in flight
They soar through the air and across the moon
Faithful black cats, perched on their brooms.
Ghosts and goblins float all around
Shaking their chains, they make horrid sounds
Bats fill the air, with a flutter of wings
To join the others and do scary things!
They all come together, to give you a fright
Each cold and windy Halloween Night!

Here is hoping the rain holds off but that the wind does not.  Afterall, what would Halloween be without a little wind blowing through the trees to make things interesting!

Busy hands....

Last weekend my BEST friend from forever came over.  I'm talking 5th grade on up.  I practically lived at her house.  Seriously.  
We reconnected via FB and have stayed in touch.  We recently realized both of us are crafty, canning wine drinkers...so decided to craft and can and drink and rinse and repeat....

Then we decided canning and sewing was something we could do and swap so we could concentrate on crafting and catching up.

She brought me 24 quarts of canned tomatoes and I made her 11 aprons.   (Some were duplicates)  I made all but one as my favorite canning apron style.  The LSU one is a butcher style.

Here they are...as usual, this style doesn't really look cute on Ms. April, but they are precious once they hit girly curves!

and a few jars of the yummy tomatoes!

Before arriving, she had asked me to help her make some painted wine glasses and santa ornaments.....but when she got to my house, plans changed and we made several other things.

Not to worry, she brought a supply of her uncle's homemade strawberry wine, AMAZING.  And no, not even a hint of "Strawberry Hill" in it.  See how pretty the wine is...it is close to a Pinot Grigio, dry and just a tad sweet.

Here is a sampling of our craftappalooza.

Sweater pumpkins and 24 more candy corn glittery bottles as party favors for her daughter...

dotty wine glasses, Santa Starfish and a fabulous Snowman for the door....

Overall, we tore the town up buying crafting supplies and then craft and ate and drank for 2 solid days.  Oh my gosh, we had the BEST time.....

Halloween Tea Party and a Halloween giveaway (CLOSED)

A party you say, is it tea for two?  Only for witches or can zombies come too?  

So many to visit, to sit and to chat....let's just see who is in the pumpkin patch!

"Sweet" Bloody Mary, so cute to behold

but look at all the heads she made roll...

Little Estelle has a smile on her face

While Wednesday stands tall and eyeballs her space...

Miss Muffet ain't scared of no spiders y'all, she eats them all up, brains and all!

While new love is spreading throughout the land

Raggedy has HER man's head in her hand.

And this sweet bride has no man at all....

Will this guy do?  He's not very tall....

Pumpkin Head and Estella are happy at home

While Little Red seems to be alone...

Not to worry, she has this mummy

While Dorothy's dog, Toto fills her tummy!

             Thank you for coming and spending some time, now I must ask....Who needs tea when you can have wine?

In your comments, let me know!  Is it tea or wine...or a little of both!    

I'm giving away a zombie virus handbag, a Halloween hand towel, owl salt & pepper shakers, a cute pumpkin plug in with fragrance.....

Make sure to leave me your contact info, one lucky winner gets this fun little package.   The drawing will be October 31st!

The winner by random drawing is DESIGNING FAIRY!  I will leave a comment on your blog notifying you!

Thank you to Vanessa for hosting this year's party!

Spookify me! Amaretto drippy bottle

Several years ago, I did this same craft with another bottle.  ( Here is the post.) 
The bottle looked great but I either accidentally threw it out or stored it so well that I can't find it.  Either way, I needed a new one!
 I cleaned an Amaretto bottle a friend gave me and added a spooky sticker.  

Then I used some taper candles I bought last year after Halloween.  I used them to build up the wax around the neck.  It would be SO much easier just to light a candle and let it just drip like crazy.  But finding drippy candles is next to impossible.  Throw in that you want them to drip actual COLOR is even worse.  Most candles nowadays have a coating that burns away and leave a whitish wax behind, no color at all...including this black candle in the photo.

 That being said, once I built up the wax, I melted crayons over it for the color.  If you do it, be careful, I held them with tongs and then just cleaned them up afterwards.

Here the bottle is in a lighted area (sorry, I did this at night)
Just a note: when the candles burn down and need replacing, a lot of wax gets broken off.  Just put in a new candle and then fill the gaps up with new crayons.  Easy.

Right now, "Werewolf Drool" sits on my bar....awaiting Halloween night......

Years of "wax build up" took me about 2 hours to achieve, while watching a couple reruns of Boston Legal.   *Denny Crane, Alan Shore, Shirley Schmidt-ho*...the BEST!

Spookify me: repurposed Starbuck's Frappuccino bottles!

All summer long, Kaela drank those Starbucks fraps that come in bottles.  She LOVES them!   The bottles are so cute that I just couldn't bring myself to pitch them (this area doesn't recycle...boo!)

So, I washed them and stashed them in the hall closet to "play" with later.  

Now, is later!

Here is what I made!  So cute, if I do say so myself.  This is one of those projects that looks exactly how I envisioned it.

These are super easy to make and look adorable when filled.

Here is what you need:

Frap bottles.  Cleaned and dried.  (Just a note, the stickers come off but if there is any residue it is easily removed with rubbing alcohol.)
candy, scissors, glue, stickers (optional), cupcake liners, glitter and ribbon!

Start by putting a cute Halloween sticker over the Starbuck's logo (not that we don't LOVE her)

You could paint it or cover it with paper too...I just had these and they fit perfectly.

Now, take your glue and run a fairly thick line around the edge of the neck of the bottle, right above the body of the bottle.

do this around the bottle, then set upright and let the dripping begin.  If it isn't drippy enough, add a little, but start small.  It is easier to add glue than to clean up excess.

Once the drips have run a good way down the bottle, sprinkle LIBERALLY with glitter.  Make sure to have something to catch all that glitter to save it.  I used fine black glitter and a chunkier silver glitter for mine:

Now, set your bottle UPSIDE DOWN for about 10 minutes.  This sort of sets the glue to keep it from running off the bottle.
After 10 minutes, flip it back rightside up to finish drying.  When you flip it back, you can add the other color glitter if you'd like.  I did a mix.

Once dried, you can blow or lightly brush the excess glitter off  easily.

Now, fill the jar with candy and put on the lid.  It is cute just like this....but not cute enough!

Now take your cupcake liner and place it on top to cover it.  

Then take about a foot of ribbon and criss cross it once and then tie it.

Now you are done!  

These are so easy to mass produce and the best thing is that you can do this with SO many holidays!  I've already got Christmas ideas swirling....

Annual Ornament Swap

It is time for my annual Christmas ornament swap!  As always, this swap is for handcrafted ornaments.  Any medium is allowed!  You don't have to be an artist to join in I'm certainly not one.  

This year the theme is "Traditional"  
Think red, green and white.  Candy Canes, Santas, Snowmen, Little Trees, Jingle Bells....

We are doing a "5 for 5"  swap.
What this means is that you will be sending me 5 handmade ornaments and receiving a variety of 5 ornaments back. 
Once you join, I will send you the flickr info so you can upload photos of your finished ornaments.  You can also post on the swap blog.
You do not have to have a blog or webpage to join.
The deadline to sign up is Nov. 1st and I am restricting it to only 10 participants this year as I have several family obligations this holiday season. 

To sign up, send me an email at valpowery(at)yahoo(dot)com with your name and blog or flickr link/info.  

This will be a USA only swap due to shipping.

Please create something you would love to receive and be sure to package your ornaments in a nice, 

re-usable box so I can mail your new ornaments back to you in it. 
Try to keep your ornaments light in weight and please take care when wrapping to make sure they are cushioned, etc.  We want all our ornaments to arrive in pristine condition!

Shipping: Please send in $10.00 to cover the cost of sending ornaments back to you.  This will also cover tracking.   Please include a return address label already filled out.

Ship in time for me to receive them by Thanksgiving.  That way, I can get them in time to mail them out by the first week of December.  Sadly, I can't guarantee you getting an exchange box if your ornaments do not reach me in time.  (If that happens, I'll gladly return your own ornaments to you using the money you sent for shipping.)  
Shipping funds are important!  If you forget to include shipping, your ornaments can't be sent/returned until you have sent me the funds to send/return them to you.

If you finish your ornaments early, feel free to send them to me early so I can start organizing them.

If time gets away from you and you need to back out, no big deal, just drop me an email and I'll remove you from the list.  

Also, don't forget to grab the badge to put on your own blog to spread the word!