I LOVE Halloween. October 30, 2006

OK, so really, I get carried away with Halloween.  I just love it.  I can’t tell you why..I mean I suppose I am a tad morbid…I love morbid books, and morbid things….but there is just something more about Halloween.  I think it is like a gateway holiday…..like alcohol is a gateway drug 🙂

Halloween just seems to open up so many fabulous doors…It is Halloween that marks the full arrival of winter weather here…especially since the weather is always particularly nasty on Halloween night….Halloween is still the great barrier for Christmas ads….so while there are definitive signs of Christmas in all the stores no one is screaming CHRISTMAS at me yet…..Halloween is the laid back holiday, no big meals to cook, just buy a little candy…..Halloween is the most creative…you aren’t just decorating a tree…you are decorating your kids….and giving them permission to roam the forbidden extended realms of the neighbor begging for candy….then to top it all off, you get the spooky stuff too 🙂 Sigh.  It is all over for another year tomorrow night.  The kids will come home cold and have sniffles and snotty costume sleeves….they will revel in huge piles of candy which must be sorted and resorted into piles by likes and dislikes. 

I have actually been crafting my little head off lately.  I made crocheted skull pot holders, a dishcloth and a matching skull apron for my sister for her birthday..but totally forgot to take pictures (duh) The apron was my favorite, it was bright yellow with turqouise patches on the pockets that had yellow skulls embroidered on them….(same skulls as on the shirt below).  I think my construction left a little something to be desired, but I also know my next apron will be better than the last.

I made a skull shirt for my daughter…again a Sublime Stitching pattern…

And last but not least, we carved pumpkins.  You have no idea how much I love pumpkin carving.  Really.  I have no idea why, I just do.  My mom and dad have a nice warm garage that is perfect for sloppy pumpkin carving in the cold, so traditionally we kind of take advantage of that and go to town.  SO you get the full results of this years pumpkin adventures in more pictures than you want to see….

First….The pumpkin patch, where my children and I got so muddy we had to de shoe to get back in the car. I really should have taken some mud pictures….

 

Next up, the carved supersquash…..(see, I told you…we even carved the green ones 🙂

 

And the punkins at rest in my kitchen 🙂

And last, but not least….Sunset pictures from the other night when my son wanted me to look at the pretty clouds with him…

Skull shirt and testing MSN Writer October 25, 2006

OK, it probably is a secret, but I hate it that I have not figured out how to put pictures in line yet, so I saved this for this post.  I am testing a new blogging tool which will hopefully make all of my blogging dreams come true.

As it turns out, I have a fantastic project to test with too….my son wanted a skull shirt, so it was time to break out the freezer paper and stencil away……

my gosh, could it be….an inline photo????????  Woo hoo how about another… this time a close up…..

 And I can control the size….

I do believe I am in love.  You may now expect to see tutorials in the near future 🙂

(oh and it has a spell checker…which should help my poor typo prone fingers )

Halloween….Oh my.

Well, I have done what I thought was going to be harder than it was. 

Or something like that.  It is quite easy to transform pre teens into dead souls for Halloween, costuming  for amatuers.  What is more difficult is to costume up a three year old.  Because dead does not cut it. My experience with costumes is at this point I think good.  Great?? No, but good. 

 

I have transformed the daughter into Cinderella (by making my first anything that qualified as wearable when she was younger, which is why when she was older we simply purchased the deluxe Cinderella kit), a variety of misc. glittery princesses, and really the topper of them all…Jessie the cowgirl (she was the BEST Jessie ever…I will have to see if I can find some old pics)

 

But the boy…he wants to be a spider.  Not the round spider that there is a pattern for, but a "real" spider.  Not a dinosaur (which we have, mom made them for my brother when he was smaller than he is now 🙂

 

As it is at least I know opportunity when I see it, and this my friends was opportunity.  Now I get the wander and browse the fabric department looking for the perfect spider material, and since I do not know what spider material is, I will just have to peruse everything!! And peruse I did for an entire lunch hour.  As it turns out spiders are made of furry fleece that is on clearance for no apparent purpose, and they have sparkly silver things in them, also for no apparent purpose.  Two yards, 5 bucks….woohoo 🙂

 

After some debate with myself in terms of "totally wing it" or "base it off a pattern" (I lead myself astray often and create things with no basis in reality when left without some sort of a pattern) so I went with a pattern.  The only pattern I have in my library for boys included a long sleeve t-shirt…stitched a bit big to accomodate spider appendages, it was perfect. Hence the spider below…since I am lazy and he is fleece, I did not feel the need to finish any edges.  What you see is entirely serger created, with the exception of the furry strings holding the arms together.  Those I stitched by hand. (lol) Really ignore the hat.  It was not done yet.

 

It turns out the hardest part of this whole adventure was taking a picture of it.   It turns out my boy has amazing spider powers and moves very quickly.  (wishing I had though earlier to make DD little miss muffett….she would have hated it but I would have LOVED it )

 

 

 

 

Costumes and Quilt Squares October 17, 2006

So It has been a while.  You could call it craft lethargy.  Or pants hemming sessions.  Really. I just keep getting pants to hem.

 

Any way, all hope is not lost…we have Halloween costumes to make!!  So far we have a good start on DD. A couple years ago I bought her a deluxe Cinderella costume. Which was great and princessy and she wore the heck out of it.  But now she is older and FAR too mature to be Cinderella, even though the dress still fits.  Dead Cinderella however is another story.  SO we have been doing some quick work to modify the cinderella dress.  Some tatters and some black fabric spray paint and we are a whole lot closer to dead 🙂 The next step will be to glue/sew on some of that spider web stuff and some spiders. 

 

Among all the other misc. pouring out of my craft room are these two quilt squares that are going to a memorial quilt (or two) for the Irwin family.  The one with the alligator I owe special credit to, the alligator (crocodile?) is an illustration/linedrawing by Ken Batelman.  He graciously (After a totally random email) allowed me to use his image for this square.  Anyway, his other work is just delightful, so much of it blends grown up stuff and themes with childlike ideas and imagination.  Franky, I am smitten 🙂 His website can be found at http://www.batelman.com/.

 

More Halloween swap goodness…. October 9, 2006

Well, someone did get shafted in the Halloween swap I was in. SO I decided to angel for her and provide some swap yumminess (I hope)

 

I hit the post office today, so I hope she likes it all…..

 

There is a Cordicella purse (pattern from http://www.studiokatdesigns.com/index.htm )

A fleece pillow with a reverse applique, a broken bone stuffie/pillow,

Felt sugar skulls, more vintage Halloween card magnets and a cute paint it yourself suncatcher. 

 

I really hope she likes it all, it rather stinks to be flaked on.

 

Anyway…the most elaborate think here is the purse….I have one and I LOVE it… it is my absolute favorite and the pockets on the outside are wonderful.  It is easy to make until you get to the bottom, at which point in time it takes on some…difficulty…but the results are so worth it. 

As for the sugar skulls, if I can ever find a way to host a proper tutorial on this blog (say a nice PDF) I will put directions up, but they are pretty easy to do based on just looking. 

 

hmm.  Enough jibber-jabber. 

 

Pics Below 🙂

 

Sigh. Work, traffic…rain…sigh. October 4, 2006

Really.  Work. Like EVERY day??

sigh. I am having work rebellion.  Even though I am working, I keep thinking in my head how I don’t want to be working. 

Yet work I must and work I will….if they ever stop the coffee pots I will go berserk. 

 

Anyway, I think it is not just work, but the commute.  On a weekend, I can find myself at work in about 20 minutes, and it only takes about 15 minutes to get home (better highway access)  But on a weekday?  Seriously.  Where do these people come from. 

 

1. MUST HAVE LEFT LANERS:  Not the ones who just stay there an go, these do not bother me too much, as long as they go. But the ones who get on the highway, going slower than traffic, and IMMEDIETLY cut over to the left lane.  Can I give a great big WTF to you people?  Seriously.

 

2. Highway engineers. Who really thinks stopping people at the end of an on ramp helps the flow of traffic.  Nothing better than cruising at a happy 40 during a good rush hour and coming to a complete stop at every on ramp becuase there is no time for incoming traffic to get up to speed.  And now they want to fix this by putting toll lanes in. Nice, except for the fact I STILL HAVE TO GO THROUGH ALL THE WORST PARTS TO GET ACCESS TO A TOLL LANE!!!!!! (buttheads)

 

3. SLLLOOOWWW trucks.  I leave early sometimes just to avoid traffic.  Nothing is more fun than getting on the highway, up a hill when traffic is cruising at like 70 and the two semis in front of you can’t go faster than 30. Sigh.  I LOVE it.  Especially when there is another truck behind me so I can’t see, or some fancy sportscar that merges from behins ans speeds up real quick so then I can’t get over.  

 

4. Rush hour lane changers.  Man, y’all just need to give up.  Changing lanes 800 time to get 5 cars ahead in rush hour traffic is just pathetic.

 

5. Inclement weather of any kind.  People apparantly have issues with weather.  In any kind of weather you can increase my commute time to upwards of 45 minutes.  Thank goodness for boredom busters.  Yesterdays was taking rush hour pictures.  Really.  I spent half the commute at a dead stop why not take pictures?

 

SO no crafty goodness today.  Just silly commuting pictures 🙂

 

 

Curtains October 1, 2006

OK, this weekend was filled with CURTAINS, I only succeeded in getting one window done, but done it is. 

 

It all began with what should have been an uneventful shopping trip.  Prior to shopping I had figured yardage needed and hoped to get a deco fabric as it would be wide enough to do two panels otherwise if I got 45" wide I would need twice as much yardage. 

Anyway at the store my daughter proved to be more difficult than I ever could have imagined.  If there was a cute affordable fabric, she hated it. If it was gaudy or impossible to make curtains with she loved it!!

 

Finally we found a beautiful duck cloth/canvas material, it would have been gorgeous.  Really…but I couldn’t help looking at it and thinking how in two years she was going to hate these and want something else…and because of the width of the fabric I was going to need some serious yardage.  Fortuneately we found the fleece.  I am pretty sure the designer of these curtains never intended them to be made of fleece, But I can’t help but be happy with the results.  Cute, super thick, I am sure they will help keep out the cold in the winter, and you can’t see a thing from the outside when they are closed.  I have one more window to go, but they go fairly fast once all the shopping is done.

 

Anyway at least if she decides she hates these in a year I won’t feel too badly 🙂