Halloween Fun!

It had been years and years since I dressed up for Halloween.  I finally did this year and it was so much fun!  I dressesd up as a witch.  Of course, I had to get pictures.  I seem to take pictures of everything.  But, before I got a picture of my whole costume I had an idea I wanted to try first.  And, it worked!  I'm so excited about this picture...I'm flying!

Here's my whole costume.  It was hard to get it all in one picture with that tall hat.  So, I leaned over to try to get it all.  I made the broom recently.  It's made with a dried rose branch with the thorns removed, some faux flower/grass bouquets from the craft store, jute, a little left over leather for the handle, and a stone glued to the top.  Oh, and a glue gun!  My daughter had this vintage dress that worked and looked so cute for my costume.  However, clothes from those days had such tiny waists that the zipper only went part way even though the top closed.  So, we wrapped me up in black tulle to cover the open area.  It created a bit of a bustle in the back.  That was a fun little bonus.  The hat and socks are from Michael's.  And, those little witchy boots I've had for about 30 years.  I've worn them so much over the years that they've even had repairs and parts replaced.  It's fun when you can create a costume with things you have.  I love how my costume turned out!  

My daughter created hers entirely with things we had...the clothes, boots, and even the crazy wig.  She even painted the t-shirt the night before.  It was a never worn logo shirt hubby had gotten from work and thrown into the rag bin.  I'm amazed at how great she did at painting it!  She's a heavy metal rocker from the 80's.  And, of course, she had to get a pic with her harp.  She's a harpist that does amazing and surprising things with her harp.  Yes, rock, blues, Latin...all kinds of cool music.

We wanted to go somewhere wearing our costumes and decided to share the fun with my mom who is in assisted living with Alzheimer's.  She loved it!  We even brought her a sparkly witch hat.  She laughed so hard that she had tears in her eyes.

I found some Halloween craft kits at Michael's and we brought those for some crafty fun.  She struggled with tthem a bit but had a lot of fun!  She's always been a very crafty and talented person but hadn't crafted in a long time.  We weren't sure how she'd do.  This was a bit of a struggle but it worked.  We'll be doing more crafts with her around Christmas.

We each made two bats.

 

She thought they'd be fun as earrings.

 

After that we took them up to her apartment to decorate with them.  Then, we took her to the Halloween party they were having for the residents.  She had a good time and so did we.

It's been a tough year.  In a nutshell, my father had become increasingly ill and weak.  He fell in March, went on Hospice in April, and passed away in May.  Since then I've worked hard to get all of my mom's surivor benefits, and everything else straightened out for her.  It was so much more work and stress than I ever would have imagined.  I've just recently started feeling like me again.  That's due to finally finishing up on a lot of stuff, finally having some time to grieve the loss of my dad, watching some grief videos to figure it all out, and, finally, joining an Alzheimer's support group on Facebook.  I was surprised to find that was even a thing but it has helped me so much!  I don't feel alone in dealing with my mom's Alzheimer's and the things she does.  The support is amazing!  And, it feels so good to support others dealing with the same things.  And, I've gone from dealing with the mom I've been hurt by all these years and the anger of the time she robbed from me and my dad, to taking care of her with love and trying to bring joy into her life as long as we can.  It's a horrible disease!  It's nice to bring her happiness!

I composed a post several months ago about what all had happened with my dad and what we were all going through but it was tough to compose and I just couldn't bring myself to post it.  I'm not sure if I ever will. It feels good to be getting to the other side and feeling better.  It feels good to breathe deeply again and finally feel the stress start to melt away.

I hope you all had a happy Halloween!

FO Friday - Halloween Decorations

It's FO Friday and I don't any crochet or knit projects finished to share but I do have some smaller, crafty projects that I've made this week.  Halloween Decorations!  I love Fall and I've gotten more excited about Halloween over the past few years than ever before.  There are so many fun things you can do to decorate and have fun with this holiday!

My daughter and I made some paper bat cutouts last weekend.  She found a template online and printed it out.  We used black card stock and had a lot of fun making them.  We even drew and cut out little baby bats and some larger ones.

Then, we used poster putty to hang them.  I think that's what it's called.  It's a putty like stuff from 3M that you can use to hang posters, pictures and other things on the wall.  It's removable and reusable.  She's been using it for years.  I even found some in an off-white color (instead of the bright blue we'd always seen before) that would work better with our wall colors and be less likely to show.  My daughter hung her bats at the condo she rents near college.  Her roommates loved them!  I created my very own colony over our fireplace.  I love how they turned out!...

I hung the larger ones in another area...

When we went to Michaels for some black cardstock, I found a set of card stock strips with Halloween prints on them to make a paper chain.  I remember doing this at Christmas time when I was a young child.  It was a lot of fun!  It's fun now too!

We also found a set of rat cutouts while we were Michaels.  I'd seen them years ago on the Martha Stewart Show.  And, my daughter had seen them on Pinterest.  How fun to find them at the store and have some of our very own.  I used putty to place them around the house.  Fun!

I think Penelope likes Halloween too!  She "helped" me add a ribbon to my new, vintage-like Halloween wreath.  I was so excited about this find.  I'd seen some like it at a specialty store last year but they were around $40.  I got mine at TJ Max for under $20.  It's hanging inside on my front door.

I still have some decorations to put out but I've got a good start and had so much fun making some new ones.  I'm finding that it's fun to put a few more out each day.

I also made a fresh, new, "No Soliciting" sign to put in the window by our front door.  I painted a frame black, made a sign on my computer, printed it on brown paper and voila!  However, it may be cute and stylish but it doesn't show up in the window quite as well as my bright yellow one did.  Oh well.  I'll wait a while and see how well it works.  Although, most people tend to not see it or ignore it anyway.  But, it's worth a try.  I'm amazed at how many people come knocking on the door to sell this or that and of all the fliers that are left on our door.

Happy Autumn, everyone!  Have a wonderful weekend!

Happy Halloween

My daughter and I finally visited Roger's Gardens last spring after hearing about it for years.

It was amazing!  HERE's a post about that visit.  Since then, I've "liked" them on Facebook.

In September I noticed that they started posting photos of what they were up to for Halloween.

It looked like they had some fun stuff and we had to go see.  What we found was far 

beyond our expectations!  Here's a little glimpse, via my cell phone camera...

They used a photo of this on their sign/poster of the event.  Pretty cool!

We entered the Halloween area through a hallway that had these really tall chairs.

I think the one on the left must have been at least eight feet tall!

These interesting characters were also in the hallway...

They had a lot of eery photos.  They looked like old portraits from one angle but 

as we moved they became scary and looked three dimensional (like the one on the top right).  

The quality was so good it reminded me of Disneyland.

They had glass beaded spider webs for sale...

And, heads in jars!...

Pretty, blingy pumpkins, owls and other Halloweeny stuff...

I liked the vintage Halloween area...

 I really wanted this wreath with vintage graphics.  

It was cute but much more than I was willing to pay.

I think my daughter's favorite things were the hats...

And, the masks...

Another room had some Dia de los Muertos inspired decorations...

And, fun signs...

And, yet another room, had lots of things to decorate like a mad scientist.

Bones, "potions", bugs, frogs and lots of other creepy things...

There was even a mad scientist lab.  It was dark with glowy lights and lots of white things...like bones!  And, decorations that would make for a great Halloween martini party...

They even used an old pump organ to decorate...

One side of the building had a "Scream" type painting...

Of course, they had LOTS of pumpkins...orange, white, green, bumpy, small, medium and large.

The only pumpkin area I took a photo of was one of the orange ones...

I bought a few decorations while we were there.

I got a couple of blingy spiders.  They're hanging out on some lampshades...

And, this glass, vintage style ornament...

It's hanging from a branch in our living room that I mounted on a mirror.

It's the newest addition to a collection of glass ornaments that I already had...

I already posted these a while back but they're cute enough to post again.  

I found them at Pier One...

We acquired some old cardboard decorations this year...

Here are some fun little Halloween "potion" bottles we've had for a while...

This one is my favorite...

We had so much fun visiting Roger's Gardens Halloween display.

And, it's been fun adding some new decorations to our collection.

Each year our house gets a little more festive.

Happy Halloween!