Our Halloween Tree

If you've been reading my blog you saw that we put up our white Christmas tree for Jordann's birthday party.  Jo wants to keep it up 'til Christmas & just decorate it for Halloween & Thanksgiving in between. So here's what it looks like right now.  I crocheted a long garland from sparkly black eyelash yarn & Jo made the big circles from chenille sticks.  I think it looks like giant polka dots.  :-)  Our sad looking crow is sitting on top of the tree.

 The crow was sitting on the typewriter... maybe he's a Raven!

 We don't decorate much for Halloween but we do add a few little things to our fall decorations that are already up.

Sneak Peek for Next Weekend at Room With a Past

 Margie, Jordy, & I went over to the shop on this rainy afternoon to set up for next weekend.  Room With a Past will be open Thursday, October 21 - Sunday, October 24.  Check their website for times & location.  This month the theme is "Halloween"!  My goal was to make everything black & white.  And as you can see from the photo below I'm standing out again... everyone around me has orange and/or green or another color.  (SE, there's my crow on top of the birdhouse.  You can't read the note in his beak but it says, "Nevermore.")  And that head in a crystal ball right next to me is creepy... but I can't change what's beside me.

 There is a little color on the bottom shelf.  Lots of crafting packs full of papers & colored ribbons.

 I think I made this banner when I joined the Bellaween group a couple of years ago.  Sorry, it's not for sale.  Someone else in the shop sells paper tags & banners so I can't... this is just for decoration.

 But the jar of skulls is for sale.  :-)  And all the jewelry.  These are all vintage beads.

 And these are some of my designs.  These bracelets can be seen better when they're laying flat.

 And I love this old, rusty calendar.  I think it's stuck on Halloween though.

 Jordy came up with this fun way to display my fabric rosette pins. I bought this tree from another Roomie at the sale last month.  I thought it would be a nice way to display something.

 And here's one of my favorites... a glittery skull under glass.  lol...

 Hope it's not too "S-P-O-O-K-Y" for you!

The Most Creative Birthday Party.... EVER!

My Facebook statuses seems to have been causing confusion this week.  We really did start the week with Thanksgiving.  Now that we have a Canadian son-in-law my daughter decided to cook Thanksgiving dinner for the Texas part of the family on Monday.  We wished them all a happy Thanksgiving.  Then we moved on to Jordy's birthday party.  She came up with the theme herself -- to celebrate every holiday in one night!  First was Halloween.  Everyone came in costume.  Kristen made a deviled egg to bring to the party.  :-)

 I came  dressed as a Saints fan and Glenn was a Giants fan.  We took the kids to the Clayton Pumpkin Farm.  Don't worry, Jordy didn't really drive:

What's coming out of the pumpkin's nose?  It's an elf!

Then we came back to the house & the kids hunted the Easter eggs that Glenn hid earlier.  That didn't take them long so they made Valentines while I finished up Thanksgiving dinner.  Sorry, I didn't get pictures of the Easter egg hunt or Thanksgiving dinner -- I was a little busy.  :-)

Then we gathered around the Christmas Birthday tree and opened gifts.  Jo said, "It's just like Christmas, but all the presents are for me."

Jordy made her own birthday cupcakes.  They were a little confused -- Halloween & Independence Day combined.

Here's a few more photos of the kids...

 Had to take this one for SE.  She was with us when we bought these shirts & I don't think she believed anyone would really wear them.  They wrote a song for Jordy's birthday too, but my video won't upload.

Happy Birthday, Jordy!!!

For Grace, Mark, Jordy, Jackie & anyone else who doesn't like spiders!

I can't remember where I saw this for the first time but I thought it was very appropriate for the conversations I've been having this week.  I know Grace has been having spider problems.  It must be the season.  Last year Jordy tried to convince me that the cobwebs in our house were Halloween decorations.  (She's the 'duster' at our house... I just bought her a new Swiffer with an extension handle so she can get into all the corners now.)

Monday night as I was sitting on the couch Glenn reached over, thought for a minute he was going to hit me, but he knocked a spider off the back of the couch cushion where I was sitting instead.  Tuesday I found a spider crawling on my cart in the middle of the grocery store.  And yesterday I felt something on my arm at work and a tiny spider was crawling on me!  ewwwwwwwww!!!!

Maybe if I make more Halloween spiders like I did last year & set them around the house they'll scare off the real thing?  Here's the tutorial if you want to make some.

Halloween Cabinet Cards

More of the altered photos inspired by Somerset Digital Studio. I printed these off, put them in black frames from the $1 store & gave them to some friends at work. Halloween is a big holiday in our office. Our original doctor loved Halloween & told everyone they had to dress up every year. This will be the first Halloween since he retired & we just got an email today saying that costumes were optional. I think most people are still doing something. The patients love it!

Don't forget to grab my 30 Days of Thanksgiving button for your own blog! We start Sunday!

Beware!

I've shown you photos of my Halloween candy jar already. We've never really decorated much for Halloween but I got some skulls & skeleton hands in a fall swap I did last year so I thought I'd add them to my candy jar. Then someone at work gave me some yummy chocolate eyeballs. :-) So This has turned out more like a Halloween display this year than my typical candy corn display. Last week I added my decoupage pumpkin. I've been doing these for the last few years. They're a lot of fun. Glenn wants me to take close ups of all our faces & decoupage them on pumpkins. lol....

I do have a few more Halloween-y type photos to share with you this week before we start the 30 Days of Thanksgiving. Gotta do the holidays in order, remember?

Molasses Cookie & Our Guests Are Here!

Mmmmmmmmm....... our house smells good right now. Jordann had a friend over & finished baking the cookie dough.


Grandma & Grandpa made it here this afternoon -- after a non-stop flight from Dallas to SF. They did a little site-seeing before getting to our house a little after Jo & I made it home. I think G'pa is eating one of the cookies here while sitting behind our little Halloween candy vignette.
I think my candy display is disturbing Jo...
Our door has also been decorated. Jo drew this frame a few weeks ago & it has held several famous paintings so far -- Mona Lisa, George Washington (sorry I didn't get pictures of these.) Jo wanted to make a picture for Halloween but Glenn said we should celebrate Reformation Day instead. So he drew a picture of Martin Luther. I wonder who came by & added the horns? Hmmmmmm......

Jo's Halloween Tags

Look what Jo designed! I just listed them in my Etsy shop.

LOTS of Halloween Pictures

Our office is really fun on Halloween.  Our original doctor loves Halloween -- it's his favorite holiday so he likes for us to dress up.  Some of the employees spend months planning their costumes!  I did mine the week before.  :-)  Maybe next year I'll work a little harder at it.  We have about 30 employees so these pictures just show a few of us.  It's an oncology office and our patients really enjoy this, too.  Here's Little Red Riding Hood & the Big Bad Wolf:
I think the best costume of the day was our pregnant NP who came as a man with a beer belly.  (Don't worry, she didn't drink the beer & the cigarette is fake.  lol...)  You wouldn't recognize her if you saw her today... she's really a beautiful woman!
Our day was really busy.  Oh, we FINALLY got our new shelf at work so I spent about 4 hours moving charts.  I was exhausted.  Came home, laid down for a little while, then got up & went to Fall Fest at our church.  Glenn & I were in charge of the Pumpkin Toss booth.  I think Glenn was sad that we didn't get to actually throw pumpkins.  Instead, we had a fake pumpkin with the top cut off.  The kids had 3 chances to throw candy at it & they got to keep whatever made it inside.  It was fun... did that for 2 hours.

Jo & her friends helped out at the fall fest, too.  They were candy runners.
Had to take this pic for Lauren.  Graces first Halloween!  Isn't she cute?  She gets to take her first plane ride this month -- all the way to Australia!
Then Glenn & I went over & crashed the Rock party.  Met Sarah Palin & a voter:

Then Glenn & I went down to Jade Garden to get some real food while Jo & her friends finished up at the fall fest.  Their party didn't start 'til 9 so we had some time to waste.  They wanted to go trick or treating but Glenn wasn't going to let 3 15yo girls wander around in the dark... even if there were still a lot of families out walking around in the neighborhoods.  (I haven't seen so many people trick or treating in a LONG time.)  So we dropped them off at the end of a street & followed them in the car.  Glenn liked this kind of trick or treating.  :-)  Oh, yeah, we made them give us some candy, too.

On another note...  here's a pic of the hat I made this week.  See, Lauren, it doesn't look that big!