Halloween and Fall decorations

It has taken me forever to actually write this post. October has been a busy month. I decorated for Fall as soon as September came around, then switched to Halloween the beginning of October. Here are my Fall vs Halloween decorations:

This is a bench/table by the back door. For fall, we have a couple pumpkins and some corn for harvest.

To change for Halloween, I added a Jack-o-lantern light.

Here's the powder room. Not very exciting.

For Halloween, I added another Jack-o-lantern light and some candles.

 Powder room toilet. Just some pumpkins for fall.

Added a candy corn for Halloween.

 Dining room table year-round centerpiece. This is my go-to standby for the center piece. It only changes for Halloween and Christmas. The flowers match the vines that go along the drapes in this room.

For Halloween, I switched it up. I used a runner Rach made for me with some Halloween figurines. My mom got my husband and I the skeleton couple when we were engaged. I still need to add a candle to the top.

 Here's the fall buffet cabinet. There is a scarecrow on the left and a simple pumpkin on the right.

For Halloween, I added the Boo ghost tea-light holder to the top of the buffet cabinet, as well as more figurines.

 Here's one of the trunks next to our kegerator. (Speaking of, we kicked our Yuengling keg tonight so I think we are getting Jack's Pumpkin Ale for the Halloween party!)

I switched the oil lamps for tea-light Jack-o-lanterns for Halloween.

 This is the trunk on the other side of the kegerator. These are regular year-round decorations again.

Added the candy corn and witch hat for Halloween.

 Here's our piano. No before (Fall) shot, just Halloween. Added a few decorations for people walking into the Halloween party to see.

 Added the witches broom next to the piano.

 And some more tea-light holders on top of the desk.

 Back to the hearth room. Here's the arrangement between our chairs in front of the tv.

 For Halloween all I had to do was turn the pumpkin placemat over to the Jack-o-lantern side!

Our fall fireplace. The garland is on the mantel year round. I added the pumpkins for fall. 

 For Halloween I added the tall skeleton, witch and pumpkin figurines as well as sparkly spiders to the garland. I turned the pumpkins around to become Jack-o-lanterns. Looks like we got a Daisy tail in this shot.

 I moved the pumpkin from the center of the fireplace and placed the skull and pumpkins inside.

This is a trunk next to the fireplace. Simple pumpkin for fall.

 Added a Jack-o-lantern for Halloween.

That's it for my Halloween decorations! Next week we will be packing those back up to move back to fall decor only. Then it will almost be time for Christmas!

Halloween costumes!

Halloween is definitely my favorite holiday of the year. I LOVE dressing up and making/putting together costumes. Last year, I wore a blonde pixie wig and Kellen and I were Captain Hook and Tinkerbell. 

I made my dress and Kellen's coat and shirt. I bought the wings and Kellen's hat at a Halloween store. Last year I was pretty cold and Kellen was hot, so I attempted to make us better temperature wise this year.

Since I am now a blonde, Kellen and I are going to be Mario and Peach for Halloween! 

Luckily, Kellen lets me pick our costumes every year. I try not to make his too bad. This year I was thinking Mario and Peach or Prince Charming and Cinderella, so I would say he lucked out. I'm going to buy Kellen a red t-shirt and find me some white gloves. Last night (and all of yesterday) I made my dress! I used this pattern:

I thought by mixing Snow White's sleeves with Cinderella's hip poofs all in shades of pink, I could make a perfect Princess Peach dress. 

Buying the fabric was a task all of its own. Hancock fabrics was having their 53rd anniversary sale so a lot of fabrics were 53% off. Success! It took me forever to find the right shades of pink in the right material. I ended up using Satin in Bright and Light Pink. I put the fabric in my cart and headed for the cutting table. Of course, the fabrics I end up picking are in pieces. I needed ~4 yards of the light pink and ~2 of the bright pink. All that was left was two ~2 yard pieces and one 1 yard piece of light pink and two ~1 yard pieces of bright pink. I bought it all, and convinced the girl to give me remnant prices on most of the cuts. All I could do was hope I had bought enough. 

I started Friday night, Kellen was out of town for work, so I had all night just to relax and sew. I cut all the pieces and had PLENTY of fabric. (Any ideas of what to make out of extra pink satin?) Friday night I got the bodice made and put it on the mannequin until Sunday. While watching football all day, I worked on the dress. After it was fitted and complete, I appliquéd the turquoise gem (outlined in gold) into the center of the bodice. Here's a quick appliqué tutorial. Take the fabric you want and cut 2 of the shape. I just had circles, so I traced a couple of different sized glasses we had to get a perfect circle.  Sew the shapes together. Cut through one layer on the backside of the fabric. Turn the whole thing inside out and iron flat. Here's the yellow circle about to be sewed on the dress.

Then you just sew it on. I used a straight stitch, but you could use any fancy stitch you want.

So here's the final product. My hair looks a little crazy and I need a petticoat, but not bad. 

What do you think?

Now I just need to find some gloves and a crown. Any ideas to make a crown?

My Dried Stuff

Finally I got the camera and the computer to work together. Here are the completed arrangements from all my dried herbs and flowers. This year I grew what I wanted to try and dry for arrangements. I pretty much left everything get way out of hand in my cottage garden. I went on vacation for two weeks just when I should have been harvesting everything. So my harvest sort of, kind of dried on the vine. Then after vacation I cut them and tied them together in groups and hung them in my husbands garage. (Sorry I don't have any pictures of that). It was crazy. People who came to visit loved to comment and ask what I was doing with all the trees hanging upside down. Here are the results of what I did with them.

Next year if I'm home during the perfect harvest time, I want to try black eyed susans and cone flowers. If I still live in my little perennial garden.

New hair color!

So up until about a month ago my hair was this color:

Red. My mom and I went down to move my sister to Orlando and we colored my hair blonde! My mom and sister are both blonde and we don't look alike at all, so I thought if I had the same hair color we would look a little more like family. Here I am blonde:

So my first blonde experience was about a month ago. It took awhile for my hair to take the blonde. First we tried to just dye it the same color as my mom and sister's. Well my hair didn't like that so much and ended up just a little lighter red. The next day we bleached a bunch of highlights. Then I had to go back to Memphis with whatever that turned out like because my hair couldn't take much more coloring after that. It was pretty, but very stripey. The next week my mom came to Memphis and did all over Framesi color: half 8RN and half 9N. That's what is in the picture above. 

I'm definitely showing some roots. (Haven't seen my natural hair color in probably close to 10 years!!!)

My mom and I thought my hair was looking a little too beigey blonde. So she picked out new hair color at State Beauty supply and I tried it out last night. This was also Framesi color: half 8ER and half 8NP. 

I'm really liking it! It's more strawberry blonde and definitely a good step between red and blonde! I think it goes better with my skintone than the straight up blonde. What do you think?

first weekend of fall

This weekend I luckily stumbled on the local library book sale. I stopped by on my way home from work thinking I would just have a quick look and head home. It turned into an affair that lasted the rest of the day!

I bought a few books for myself seen below. I got:

"A Field Guide to the Birds" printed in 1962 that is covered in plastic and someone took the time to place labels on every bird type.

"The Home Garden Book of Herbs & Spices" printed in 1952

"Principles of Botany" printed in 1906

"North of 36" printed in 1923

"Field Book of the Stars" printed in 1954

"The Complete SHerlock Holmes" printed in 1930

ANDDD

"People's Common Sense Medical Adviser" printed in 1895! with pictures of the doctors that can help you with certain problems, pictures of certain plants that can help you and sketches of the different floors of the hospital and what happens on them! It's one of the neatest books I have ever seen!!!

I tried to call Abby while I was at the book store but she didn't answer and called me back when I get back to my apartment and said that she was still looking for old books too! It was a nice day out so I walked back to the Library and bought her some books for the library. I bought her:

A 6 box set of Charles Dickens books printed in with no date but they look old and cool

A 17 book set of "Little Master Pieces" printed in 1909

"Moby Dick" from 1950

"Soldiers Three ect." printed in 1924

"Youth" printed in 1905 with papers from a woman with her opinion of the book

"The simple Life" printed in 1904

"Birds and Poets" printed in 1895

"The Tragedy of Hamlet" printed in 1909

"High Acres" printed in 1920

AND

"Engineering Drawing" printed in 1935 for the Engineers!

This weekend I also went to the local Maitland Art Show under the stars at the park by my house. It was a very pretty set up at night in the park.

I only bought one piece of art. A little hand blown glass pumpkin. Here it is:

That was all the eventful things in my weekend. Hope everyone else had a good weekend!

Fore!

Yesterday I participated in a golf scramble with a bunch of guys from work. This was my intro into golf and I was super nervous. Last Sunday I had my first (and only) golf lesson and it went pretty well but I was still nervous. I went to the driving range on Thursday and then hit a few balls before my tee time on Saturday morning.

So Saturday morning started VERY early. My husband woke up at 3AM to start the smoker. He cooked a brisket for 15 hours, our freezer was getting a little full. It didn't turn out that great but we think that was because it has been in his parents freezer for almost 2 years! It needed to be cooked. So we will be making brisket sandwiches this week.

Anyway, back to golfing. I got up at 6:45 to get ready and eat breakfast before my ride came to pick me up at 7:30. It was way colder in the morning than I expected, so I had to improvise and wear an Underarmour half zip instead of the sleeveless golf sweater I bought on sale. The golf course was an hour and a half away from my house! Ridiculous. So we got there a half hour before our tee time, just like we were supposed to, and hit some balls at the driving range. I have had a huge blister on my left point finger from golfing without my glove but I found my glove on Friday night and practiced with it on Saturday morning. I was WAY worse than I had been. Luckily I had put a new bandaid on Saturday morning so I was good to go without my glove.

We left for the tee #1 at 9:30, we were the 2nd group to leave. I was doing okay, nothing great on the first 9 holes. In a golf scramble you are on a team of 4 and all hit off the tee. Then whoever's ball in closest to the hole, everyone gets to hit from that spot. The same thing on and on until anyone gets the ball in the hole. The guys had said that we would be drinking all day and at the half way point there had been no booze around. Supposedly there are girls that come around with the beer cart and you buy beer from them. Well I guess they didn't go to work on Saturday, because there was no beer to be found. After the 9th hole we went back to the clubhouse. The course makes two big circles so you get a little break in the middle. We bought beer and food at the clubhouse and we were off for the back nine. I drank my first beer while I was waiting for the guys to buy food and then tee off at the 9th hole. (Girls get to hit from a closer tee, so I just had to wait for awhile while the guys hit off the tee) No one had a great hit off the tee, so we had to use the only ball near the course. It was in the woods right by the cart path. The guys all hit and didn't do very well at all again, so it was up to me. I hadn't been doing very well so far, but ended up having a great hit! If you look in the picture, the guy taking it is on the cart path in the woods. I circled the hole and my ball in pink.

Here, let me zoom in:

How fun is that!!!! In the end we ended up using my ball twice. Which I think it pretty good for a first time golfer!

So we golf the rest of the day and end at the 18th hole, right by the clubhouse. Now I am very thankful that we were the 2nd team to tee off. The clubhouse has an outdoor deck that looks out over the 18th hole. When we were putting at the end, no one was up there. But by the time we finished and got up there, the 1st group was up there also hackling the other teams. Ugh that would have been awful. The guys probably wouldn't have said anything to me but still.

Everyone finished and made their way to the upper deck. My team ended up winning! The whole time my team was saying that the team that wins usually has 10 or more under par, crazy! We had five under and I was pretty confident in our team since putting was really hard for both us and the team behind us. A lot of the holes overlapped a little so while the guys on my team were teeing off the next hole I could watch the guys behind us and they weren't doing very well either. So we won $50, a sleeve of golf balls and a free game of golf at the course we were at. For being a girl and trying out golf for the first time the guy who organized the scramble got me pink practice balls that are like wiffle balls. I had a minor incident with our wood fence trying to practice earlier this summer. All and all, ended up being a good day. I only got a little sunburnt and won money back!