halloween

Halloween House Tour

The Gingerbread Diaries

If you’ve been curious about what things look like in the Dollhouse, now, here’s your chance to take a peek!

(Direct link for the feed readers: Gingerbread Diaries 1.6: Halloween House Tour)

The upstairs still needs work–namely our bedroom and Todd’s office, and we need some better storage up on the landing/in the upstairs bath, but otherwise we’re more than just functionally unpacked in the house, we’re ready to party! And party we did with a couple dozen friends. The Dollhouse is perfect for entertaining, even in this “before” state–imagine what it’ll be like once we get it all fixed up. I joked to Todd that each room we finish will call for it’s own “unveiling” party.

I hope everyone has a Happy Halloween! We’re curious to see how many trick-or-treaters we get this evening. Hopefully enough to make a serious dent in the planter full of candy we have ready and waiting. Maybe we’ll get to meet some more of our neighbors, too!

UPDATE: I usually dress up for Halloween at work but this year I was sort of uninspired. But I didn’t want to skip it, so I figured I’d just grab the chef’s coat I use for conventions and go as a chef (and kinda kicked myself for not getting an appropriate wig sooner, because I could have gone as Red from OITNB). But then a funny thing happened. I was planning to just put my hair up in piggie-buns but teased them first so I wouldn’t look like I had giraffe nubs. Mid-tease I thought ‘heh, I sorta look like a Fraggle.’ Then my brain really kicked in and reminded me that said Fraggle was ALSO named Red!

So I present to you: Fraggle is the New Black

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UPDATE #2: Oh, hey, a story from last weekend’s Halloween party is over on Bye, Bye Pie today. Did you ever wonder if the Dollhouse is haunted?

 

 

Random Acts Radio Rewind: Songs that Go Bump in the Night

Podcast

Friday is Halloween and it’s my absolute favorite holiday, bar none. In honor of that, I want to take you back in time–4 years ago, to be exact–when the first incarnation of Random Acts Radio was still going strong and I put together a truly awesome holiday podcast. If I do say so myself (obviously I do). It’s my old (read as: talkative) format, and I thought about redoing it to get rid of all that but I think it really holds up, so we’re going to leave it as-is. I’m even leaving in the short story by yours truly just before the 1 hour mark.

And since this episode has fallen off the iTunes playlist, you could almost consider this re-cast a public service. Or something like that..

In this episode:

Happy Halloween–Ben Twisted
Costume Party–CAMIL
What Should I Be on Halloween–Eric Strom
PC Halloween–Devo Spice
Married a Magician–Dust Poets
A Rabbit for Halloween–Marc Gunn
Halloween (remix)–The Coffinshakers
Midnight Spookshow–Calabrese
Monsters–Common Ground
Vampire in My Town–Elsinore
Skeletons and Spirits–Allison Crowe
Madam Fright–The Hamsteaks
Zombie Werewolf Alien Vampire Monsters—The Volume Brothers
Vampires–The Wet Darlings
The Witching Hour–Robin Brock
The Howl–Thee Merry Widows
Warm–MixMasterMandy
Halloween Girl–Ghosts on the Radio
Howl at the Moon–Devi
Halloween–Fishing for Comets
Halloween Mistake–Cantrip
Gallows Hill–Josh Woodward
The Bottom of the Grave–Bryan Scary

Hope you have a fabulous Halloween and remember to play safe out there!

Faces of Phases

In The Studio

This month’s inspiration board from Gauche Alchemy? Pure lunacy!

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In the best possible sense, of course.

I never thought the window between our dining room and our hallway would come in so handy!

I never thought the window between our dining room and our hallway would come in so handy!

We’re all moony this month and I thought it was the perfect excuse to make another piece of Halloween holiday decor for the Dollhouse. You can see the full details of these moons over at the Gauche Alchemy blog, today, and here’s the way they look hanging in our upstairs windows.

3 of our 5 moons, the easiest ones to spot from the street.

3 of our 5 moons, the easiest ones to spot from the street.

Alas, the hope of the glow in the dark paint has been somewhat thwarted by one unrealized factor: the lack of dark. There’s a streetlight across from our home and it’s on–as you would expect–at night. Thus, our windows are seldom dark enough to really let the glow show. But the moons still look pretty awesome, even at night, so I’m counting it as a win.

Having the new space to decorate this year has really made getting ready for Halloween that much more fun. While some of my bigger ideas won’t happen this year, and we need a few more decorations to really round out the decorations, it’s a pretty cool “problem” to have.

I Made the Team! The Helmar Team!

In The Studio

Yes, the tiny hint I dropped a few weeks ago about some big new for me that I can finally share is that I made the Helmar Design Team. So, for the next 6 months (or maybe longer), you’ll be seeing more projects showcasing their fabulous adhesives around here.

I was first introduced to Helmar after getting involved with the girls over at Gauche Alchemy–some of my fellow Alchemists were on the team, then, and later we did a swap between the two teams. You may recall my decorated wine bottle using Helmar Liquid Scrap Dots and Quick Dry 450?

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The grape clusters and vines on this bottle are made of Helmar adhesives.

My first project is on the Design Team blog today, and it’s worth checking out if you want to see how I used Liquid Scrap Dots (seriously, one of my favorite adhesives) to create the Halloween ribbon wrapping around my banister.

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And here’s a behind-the-scenes look at the making of this project. Please excuse the messiness of the Abyss, I’m still working on getting it set up, but having the space to stretch out like this is one of the big pluses to moving into the Dollhouse!

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Gotta love the space!

Halloween Pin-spiration

64 Arts, Everyday Adventures

If I haven’t mentioned before, Halloween is our favorite holiday and, each year, we like to add to the decorations and props we keep around. Obviously other blogs are great for inspiration, but Pinterest has increased that exponentially!

Thankfully, I have a willing accomplice in Halloween crafting, and this year I sent Todd a couple of fun ideas, just as a ‘look, isn’t this cool?’ kind of thing, and he actually built them!

We’ve been talking about adding a coffin to our set-up for years, but just never got around to it (and often wondered how we’d store it, if we made one). But when I sent him this link to an Ground-Breaking Coffin craft, that seemed so much more doable and now it’s done!

And, hey, it even counts for our woodworking art!

While the coffin craft was 100% Todd, I actually got to help on this next one: PVC Candles.

Super simple, Todd still did all the cutting and filing, but I added the hot-glue drips on the sides and helped with the spray-painting. Lit up in a dark room (or outside, lining a walkway) they look super spooky.

At our party this weekend someone even mentioned they could work for Christmas decorations, too–hadn’t thought of that!

And on the edible front, let me share one last Pinterest-found Halloween treat, this time of the edible variety: Pumpkin Spice Fudge.

One of many desserts at this year’s pumpkin party, this super-rich fudge is super-simple to make and everyone really loved it.

Hope you have a Happy Halloween!