Belated Halloween post

I know this year has been  a little behind in terms of holiday stuff. School keeps me busy and I’m feeling foggy lately due to my meds that I had to take for my tooth (which is doing better btw yay!) But I wanted to put up a few pictures from our party including the reveal of my costume for this year. My inspiration came from the Starz show Spartacus and I made myself a Roman style dress.

This is Richi and her best friend who also happens to be one of my new awesome friends. We’ve put together our own three muskateers group. Its fun.

J12 with his zombie baby- even zombies are good parents lol

J14 trying to eat the brains of J13’s girlfriend.

J14 in all her zombie glory.

Zombie Jesus… yeah I promise it wasn’t my idea….

My mother in law the pool shark lol

Me in all my barefoot costumed glory.  (don’t ask where my shoes were because at that point, I have no idea but I swear I wasn’t drinking so …. well actually I’m not sure if that’s better or worse)

And then I got into the fake blood I made because it was corn syrup and cherry koolaid mix and really pretty yummy.

And then… then I decided, I may as well really get into it and added a bunch of gore.

Here’s all the zombie crew and our heroes as well. Jarell in full commando gear with his SPAS.

My nephew in his post Halloween sale 90% off Luigi costume.

The rest of these were taken by my sister in law. It was a nice treat knowing that I would have pictures of the party without having to stress over everything else I had to do.

Jen (one of the muskateer’s) and her date

A friend of the family and J12 pre zombie makeup

One of my favorite decorations that I made the year before last

J14 eating brains again lol

Well folks, that’s about all for my post Halloween…. post

Thankfuls? well….

I’m way behind so I’ll do a few.

1. I’m thankful that for now at least I don’t have to have another root canal
2. I’m thankful that I’m almost done with the antibiotics because they make me sick to my stomach and make me dizzy *sigh*
3. I’m thankful to have propane because the weather just decided to get cold on us.
4. I’m thankful for Jarell. Yeah I know that’s a repeat, but we stayed up into the wee hours last night just talking about our lives and how we got where we are, sharing memories from when we first met, and it just makes me all warm and fuzzy.
5. I’m thankful for my dad who is an awesome mechanic and is fixing a car up for me. Is that another repeat? I can’t remember lol
6. I’m thankful that I know how to knit because I’m working on Christmas presents and its awesome knowing that I can make beautiful presents for a small amount of money which, with our budget this year, it very helpful.
7. I’m thankful for awesome new friends and all the old ones who are in my life as well.

That should about catch me up, right?

 

 

Tutorial…. sorta… Thanksgiving banner

So remember how I was going to post every day with something I was thankful about? Yeah that failed miserably,  but I will have some thankfuls on another post soon, so don’t think I’ve completely forgotten.

Today I have a tutorial of sorts for you. Its silly simple so I don’t know how much it should count. I even have a free printable for you to go with it- simple decorated letters that took me way too long to make due to computer crashes.

Supplies:

• Book paper (I used an old dictionary)
• printed letters from this post
• scissors
• glue (I used the hot glue gun on this one)
• ribbon
• extra paper for backing
• ink pads if desired

I started out by printing and cutting out the letters. As a side note to anyone  familiar with Illustrator, they retain their edit-ability (is that even a word? well it is now so pbbbthththt) if you’d like to change up the colors. Anywho, the next step is to cut your pages from your book in half.

Then glue the ends of the halves together to make a longer strip. This is going to vary a bit from book to book, but I needed 3 half sheets to get the right length for the rosettes. Start folding accordion style.

You can line up the definitions to look really cool if you use a dictionary. Just remember about the road to hell and good intentions and such because sometimes you end up with this instead.

Yeah that was a bit unplanned… oh well.

Once you’ve got your sheets of paper accordion folded, overlap the two free ends and glue them together.

This makes a nice tube which you’ll be folding down flat to make the rosettes by bringing the edges of one side together.

please ignore the chipping nail polish

camera happy? who me?? couldn’t be!

Glue a piece of random paper or cardboard in the middle to hold the edges of the page together.

Flip it over, ink the edges of the paper and attach your letter of choice.

Repeat with the rest of the letters.

To attach them to the ribbon, line them up carefully with the letters straight up and down or else you’ll end up with a bit of frustration when you have to repeatedly reposition them after gluing them down only to find out they were crooked. Of course I would never make that mistake, but some people might……

Glue a nice piece of paper over the ribbon (I actually covered these with neat circles after the pic) that overlaps onto the pleats to hold the ribbon in place.

How you attach the letters is up to you. This was a spur of the moment project for me so I used two pieces of ribbon and made a tiered banner, but you could attach them all to a single length to make a longer piece, that part is entirely up to you. Now all you have to do is hang it and I’m sure you can do that on your own so no pictures for that step.

Have fun with this and if you make one, I’d love to see it!

 

 

 

Day 2

Today I’m having some difficulty figuring out what to be thankful for. I learned this morning that I might need a second root canal and knowing that will bring us to a total of 3000 dollars worth of dentistry that I need to have done before the year ends makes my head hurt. I guess I’m thankful for my nephew who has kept me laughing all evening while he performs his various 5 year old antics. That’s all I’ve got tonight- I’ve got an assignment to get done tonight so I don’t have to work on it tomorrow when I’m super busy with the Halloween party. I’ve also got an entire costume to sew and one to finish up. Night all!

November

Holy cow I’ve been busy! So busy/lazy that I haven’t even completed my Halloween costume yet (our party is two days away so I need to get going on that one!!) In my defense, I’m doing school work, making decorations, cleaning (sometimes…..), cooking, running errands, and all the other little things that make up life and blogs and costumes fall very far down on that list of things to do. Class keeps me busy a lot of the time- the one I’m in right now (which thankfully ends Wednesday- just when its finally getting interesting) is Color Theory for Web and Media- basically I’m learning about using colors on the computer. Unfortunately, I’m not a design student and I’m also very left-brained which makes being creative in random fashions quite a challenge. That said, I’m still keeping my 4.0 average (go me, right?) but I feel pretty relieved to make it through every week.

I’m actually here today because I am going to try (notice I say try) to post most days this month. It’s November, and here in the states that means the holiday season is upon us starting with Thanksgiving. I thought it would be nice to post something that I’m thankful for every day here on the blog. (only thought of it today so there goes NaBloPoMo)

In that line of thinking, and since I missed three days already, here are  four things I’m thankful for. (don’t get used to it- I’ll only be posting multiples when I’ve missed a few days…. on second thought, maybe you should get used to it…)

1. Jarell- My husband, partner in crime, best friend, house cleaning aficionado, handy man, favorite comedian, and all around wonderful guy. He makes me smile, he takes care of me when I’m feeling yucky like I have been this last month thanks to bronchitis, works his butt off at a very tough job and tells me he’s glad to because it means I don’t have to work at a job I hate. I don’t deserve this man, but I try every day to live up to the standards he sets by being as wonderful as he is.
2. Speaking of the job Jarell does, I’m thankful that he has been well employed all summer even if that meant him being gone all week and us only talking for a few minutes each day. Our bills are caught up, we have a car being fixed as I speak that will be mine when its done, propane for the furnace, food in the fridge, and lots of little things that make me happy around the house.
3. I am incredibly thankful to be in school. Despite the fact that some of the classes get me (they’re short- 5 1/2 weeks long) I love being in school and learning again. The knowledge that I am moving forward with my photography makes me incredibly happy.
4. Finally as a random one, I am thankful for Fall. I love Spring with its greening grasses and possibilities of a garden ahead, but I was born in January and I love all the changes that lead up to my birthday- the crisping nights, the warm fires, the first time it snows. All these things are magical to me and I love love love this time of year!