Daddy is a Monkey!

I finished PJ's Flying Monkey costume just in time for Trunk-or Treat at Church. Lydia has never seen The Wizard of Oz, so she doesn't really get the costumes, but she LOVES that everyone is getting dressed up. She says things like "Aunti is a princess (Glinda), mommy is Halloween, Liddy is Halloween, Daddy is a monkey!"

PJ seemed to have fun with his outfit. I made it out of 2 sweaters from Goodwill. The 4 sleeves became hand and foot coverings. The hood from one sweater became the headpiece, mostly to cover his human ears. One sweater was worn on his chest and the rest was cut up to become ears, a tail, and extra furry bits. I was able to reuse the circus jacket from several years ago. I am reasonably happy with the costume, but the makeup and pillbox hat may get some tweeking before we go out tonight. I tried to make our car look like the yellow brick road with the emerald city in the distance and Dorthy's house landing on a witch in the foreground. It looked good, but by the time the festivities began it was too dark to see what it was. Next year, lights will have to be involved!

So here we are. Mommy is Halloween, and Daddy is a monkey! Happy Halloween!

Witches Brew 2

This year's Witches Brew (Witches Brew 2), our annual ladies only witch themed Halloween party happened last night.

It is my only excuse to decorate for Halloween, seeing as we will never have any trick-or-treaters at our house in the woods.

This year I realized I have more Halloween decorations than Christmas decorations and that doesn't really bother me.

There were several ideas that we recycled from last year, like the witch name/human name tags.

I also had plenty of new fun things to share, like the thrift store paper mache cat or the scary wood mask brought back from my sister's recent travels.

As always, I had a lot of fun with the food. I wanted to do some things different from last year, but brought back some old favorites, like the melon brain.I made a 7 layer taco dip and dressed it up to look like a graveyard. I decided to make it vegetarian, so that I could form the taco meat into a disgusting, burned looking face. I used onions for the teeth and hard boiled eggs for the eyes. After an hour in the oven, he looked good and gross.

The rat infested cheese tray returned again this year.

These eyeball concoctions made from cream cheese and jello were new.

Is it wrong how much I love this?

Last year we had old (clean) prescription bottles holding candy. This year I wanted more of a specimen jar feeling.

I didn't have my camera out to get pictures of all the witches, but Sara arrived first and had on such a great outfit, I couldn't resist snapping a pic. Thanks Sara and all my witchy friends for sharing my favorite holiday with me!

Pumpkin Patch

We took Lydia to the Pumpkin Patch a few weeks ago. This was our third trip with Miss Nancy's daycare group.

Lydia seemed so big this year. She was into chasing all of the other kids around, so it was hard to get her to pose for many pictures.

This was the first year that PJ was able to join us.

Lydia also spent a lot of time running around with her friend Sophie.

We picked out 3 good pumpkins. They were all a little small this year so it took a while to find biggish ones..........

Or, maybe it was just that the pumpkins looked small this year because Lydia looks SO big!

Fall Leaves

When you have a lot of land, you also get a lot of leaves to pile up. At our house, those piles end up at the bottom of the slide.

Lydia spent most of the weekend enjoying the good weather and the leaves.

Ready, set, GO!

Big fun for a big girl!

Happy Weekend!

So, these pictures aren't from THIS weekend, but seeing as we spent most of today outside weeding and playing and raking I thought I would post them.

I think PJ and I will both be sore tomorrow, but our property is getting spruced up and Lydia is loving all the fresh air. Wishing you a weekend that is worthy of a rain boots and sundresses kind of happy!

Skelly-Dolly

So this fun Halloween doll was made a month ago for my friend's 50th birthday party. She was pretty simple to make, only a sharpie marker, a few hours, and a basic knowledge of human anatomy required.

Unfortunately, I got so excited about getting started that I didn't take any "before" pictures. She started life as a thrift store porcelain doll, with a cloth body. Here you can see her original, untouched, leg next to her new skeleton leg. She had on high heels, so I just drew the foot bones as if they went into the shoes.

The pictures of the hands came out terrible, but I think you can see that I drew in the bones on both sides. Well, actually, I didn't draw in ANY of the bones. I drew the negative space AROUND the bones and filled it in with the black marker.

Drawing on the porcelain was pretty easy because it was so smooth. I just had to be careful not to smear the ink before it dried. The hardest part was drawing on the fabric body. The fabric was soft and moved when you drew on It. But ALSO the torso, with all of it's ribs and vertebrae, was way too complicated to draw in as little time as I had to finish this. If I had started earlier I could have made an outfit or something and ignored the rib cage entirely. Oh well, it got finished, but the neat little accessories I wanted her to hold, like a camera in homage to my photography teaching friend, had to be scrapped.

So here is the finished skelly-dolly sitting in her spot in my friend's the birthday shrine to long gone youth. She was a gift to the birthday girl, so now I am keeping my eyes open for a similar candidate for my own skelly dolly to play with!

Zombie Cherubs!

Oh, how nice!

Oh, how cute!

Oh, how unfortunate! Well, no actually..... I LIKE it! This broken cherub is the only reason I bought those others at the thrift store. I'm making Zombie Cherubs and this one has lost his head! But they are all way to clean and shiny for zombies.

First, they all got a nice coat of gesso to make them uniformly white and to help later coats of paint stick.

I threw on a coating of watered down black paint so that it would sink down into the crevices but wash off the surface. Unfortunately, the gesso wasn't sticking well to the porcelain, so it started clumping and cracking and flaking off. Did I say unfortunately? I take it back, the weird paint clumping made the perfect zombie texture.

I worked a little extra black into the eye sockets, but it still seemed to be missing something.

I don't know. Is the blood drenched cherub mouth too much? Too late. This zombie is finished and ready to sit with his angelic friends and guard my Halloween candy. Good thing zombies only eat brains!

Musical Chairs

We have been playing musical chairs...... and tables..... and desks..... and art supplies...etc., etc., etc. We were already in process with moving all of my craft supplies out of the house and into my new above garage studio (pictures coming). Then I decided this week it was time to start thinking about putting the crib away for a while and trying to get some type of extra sleeping space. Lydia moved out of her crib and right into our guest bedroom, so for now guests either share her bed with her or take over her bed and she moves in with us, either way someone is not sleeping well. We had looked closely at daybeds a few months ago for Lydia and never found the right one for the right price. We fell in love with this be at Rooms to Go, but it was priced way too high, AND that price did not include even basics like the mattress support, much less extras like the trundle or the mattress.
So last night, I thought I would start another daybed search and saw a great bed for a great price. 12 hours later it was ours! We are actually having both the Arnold girls spending the night TOMORROW, so the idea of getting a bed tonight made sleeping arrangements a little easier, but also made a TON of work for PJ and I tonight. The crib had to be taken down, storage items had to be moved around, art materials had to go to the studio, in addition to the normal cleaning that needs to be done before having company. PJ and I are both very happy with the new bed, but very tired from a lot of moving furniture tonight.

Sunday, SUNDAY, Sunday!

We went to the circus on Sunday. Well first we went to church. It was warmish out and I couldn't resist snapping a few pictures of Lydia in the garden outside church.

This is one of those really cute dresses that somehow she just never got a chance to wear and now it is almost too cold to wear it. hate it when that happens. I thought this dress screamed "circus". Which Lydia actually did scream. Several times. During church.

We met up with some friends and their two kids and Lydia enjoyed playing with her new light up toy (Thanks, Carol!) She enjoyed the first act, the acrobats on their swings, but got bored with the tigers. It was her nap time and as exciting as everything was, she soon got cranky and eventually fell asleep.