Retroactive Halloween Post - Halloween 2011

As I was looking back through some old photos today while working on year end projects, I realized that I never blogged about last year's HALLOWEEN! Oh my goodness, it was the funnest Halloween ever. My little sister brought her fiance Charlie clear from Missouri to have some bridal portraits taken and they happened to be here over Halloween.
Since they weren't married yet, and since Charlie is a REALLY good sport, he agreed to let Sharon dress him in any way she wanted to. If our mom had been here, she never would have let Charlie debase himself in this way, but since she wasn't......



Yup. He was the bride and Sharon was the groom. And even though Charlie is quite a handsome man, he really made a hideous woman. SOOOO funny.

We went around town and let Sharon and Charlie knock on all the doors. Watching the reactions on everyone's faces, just never got old. They'd do a happy "greet the trick-or-treaters" face, which immediately turned to a shocked, "what in the world!" when they saw Charlie face, which then turned into a "oh yeah, it's Halloween and that's just a man dressed up as a really ugly bride" face. Too rich.

We also had Molly - our oldest, adopted, child - who has been with us for Halloween for several years. She's always a character from Avatar: The Last Airbender. This year was Zuko? I think?

The younger kids were a Captain Jack Sparrow, a Japanese lady, and Wolverine - respectively.

Except when Luke spent a few minutes as a Wolverine-Bride. Bride of Wolverine? Hmmm.

We had a little pumpkin carvin', some trampoline jumpin', and a whole lot of fun.

I'm getting to where I'm liking Halloween more every year. Especially this one!

Halloween Decor - A First For Me

Wow, it's been a loooooong time since I've blogged. I'm having a major urge right now to list all my excuses, but the short version is, I'm just real busy all the time. In fact, I'm too busy to list all the reasons why I'm too busy to blog. So I'm just going to jump in.

My two younger kids - mainly Brynn - were complaining the other day that I don't don't decorate for Halloween. And it's true, I've never really gotten into it. My own mom was very anti-Haloween. She allowed us to participate, but she had a lot of trouble with the creepy, scary, evil, death themes - not to mention all the candy - and I really do get that. But I also realize that kids love Halloween and I don't want to be a total bah humbug about it.
So I was at the craft store the other day and  found some cute bottle labels by Martha Stewart that were on clearance sale. I knew Marty had been collecting glass wine, whiskey and beer bottles from the dump and/or the side of the road. So I bought a cheap can of black spray paint and went to work - with help from a lovely assistant.

And then, after they'd dried, I found that the labels I'd bought were too big for most of the bottles, so I Googled "printable Halloween bottle labes" (SERIOUSLY, the internet is such an incredible and useful tool)
and found these great labels all ready to be printed:
http://karencookiejar.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/halloween-bottle-labels.pdf

I copied a couple of them into PS to resize them to the right sizes and printed them onto shipping labels, which stuck to the bottles better than Martha's labels - I had to glue the edges down on hers.

And they turned out really, really cool. I'm disproportionally impressed with myself over them. I'm awaiting an order of old corks I found on Etsy for $2.00 including shipping - apparently corks are very light - to finish the look.

 

And I'm kinda getting into the spirit now. Hmmmm, what next?  I'm realizing that it's possible to decorate for Halloween without too many icky things - cool without being all about tacky plastic pumpkins.

Oh yeah, now I have to come up with a Gandalf cloak and hat and an Indiana Jones leather jacket. Boy's size 9. Anyone have either of those things they'd like to lend me? Sigh....