Halloween and Other Fun Stuff

Did you all have a fun Halloween? If you haven't read my blog for long, then perhaps you don't know I work as a legal secretary. In keeping with our specialty, this year our office's Halloween theme was "Haunted Hospital." I thought I'd share a little bit of the festivities with you.

This is one of our senior partners. Every good law firm needs some dead guy's name on the letterhead, right?

Here's our bookkeeper. We like to keep her happy. We like money. She writes checks.

And one of our attorneys. Apparently he's a big fan of the TV show Scrubs and wanted to be The Todd. Okay, whatever.

So let me back up a second here. When I got to work this morning, I found a Halloween bag on my desk with these goodies inside. Yum!

Here's the Autopsy Room. Uh, I mean the kitchen. More yummy stuff was served here throughout the day. See the brain in the jar on the table? There were eyeballs floating in another jar on another table. Oh, yeah, and we invited that dead senior partner to lunch too! He was taking a little nap on the table.

I left work early and met my hubby at home, so we could change clothes and head out to dinner. Do you see some kind of eating trend here? We tried to keep dinner fairly light--we shared an appetizer of shrimp in a marinara sauce and then I had a spinach salad and he had some pasta. No photos--sorry!

After dinner, we headed over to Borders and I found a few books that needed to come home with me while hubby wandered over to the music section and listened to some tunes. I found a kind of cool magazine and will try to remember to get a photo tomorrow because I had some questions and wondered whether any of my bloggy friends might know the answers.

Halloween would not be complete without a stop at Starbucks for an iced latte. No photos of that either, but I'm pretty sure you've seen it before. Right? I think they're pretty much on every street corner now.

Finally, we came home and hubby sat in the dark (so as not to be bothered by trick or treaters) and watched TV while I headed into the Sweat Shop to finish section 4 of the Hometown Christmas quilt. Did I meet the deadline? Yep, sure did, thank you very much! I finished and had it up on the wall to take photos at 11:45! That's it there on the bottom.

Halloween's over now for another year, so I'm heading to bed before I turn into a pumpkin! Happy November!

Bottoms Up!

Oh, dear, it's just past midnight, so it's officially Halloween, and I've just realized that my husband never did carve that huge pumpkin he forced me to buy for him. Where did the time go?

Well, he spent part of the evening out shopping for khaki slacks because they have a new dress code at his work that goes into effect on Thursday. I should tell you that he drove right past the mall and Mervyn's (a department store) on Saturday when he went to visit his aunt. Why didn't he shop then? Well, he wanted to check the Sunday advertisements in the newspaper. Ah, yes, that makes perfect sense--not!

We really aren't planning to be home on Halloween night for the trick or treaters anyway. My husband used to love to hand out candy and see all the costumes, but getting up and down has gotten to be too hard for him. Me? I'd just as soon turn out all the lights except those in the Sweat Shop and keep on quiltin'. Instead we'll go out to dinner and maybe stop at Borders bookstore. And I'm pretty sure a visit to Starbucks will be on the agenda--that's my version of a Halloween treat!

Since I can't show you the pumpkin my husband carved, I thought I'd show you what I think he WOULD have carved if he had the time and thought of the idea:

He's such a huge soccer fan!

But here, my friends, is the pumpkin I'd carve and share with you.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Halloween's Coming!

Do you like to play games? Hangman maybe? Have you seen this one?

If you have your Halloween costume ready, candy bought, and decorations up, and if you have a little free time on your hands, check out this game HERE. I believe you need a Flash Player to run it.

Halloween Idea

The other day I promised you a cute decorating idea--remember? So, here's that post. Unfortunately, since I'm talking today about decorating stuff, I won't have time to tell you about this week's personal beauty treatment. I hope you'll forgive me once you see my idea--I know you SO-O-O-O-O look forward to my Day of Beauty posts.

A couple years ago, my friend Kairle told me about this thing she does with pumpkins and I took part of her idea and modified it to better fit my decorating scheme. First of all, you'll need pumpkins (I like the mini ones), clear acrylic gesso, a paint brush, and glitter. I'm not a really glitzy, glittery type of gal, so I prefer an opalescent glitter--it makes the pumpkins look kind of frosty. Like a margarita with salt on the rim. Or something like that. So, assemble your things and lay down a sheet of newspaper or paper towels or whatever you want to use to protect your work surface and toss out later.

First of all, paint a layer of gesso on the bottom halves of the pumpkins. The gesso will dry clear as long as you don't put it on too thick--just paint it on as you would paint. (I actually got mine on a little too thick, but they still look pretty.)

While the gesso is still wet, sprinkle with glitter. Let dry for about 45 minutes.

Turn over and repeat. It will likely take a couple hours for the gesso to dry completely, but the pumpkins can be handled within an hour or so.

Here's what I did with mine:

All you need is a tray, a candle, a glass container for the candle, Candy Corn, some really cute pumpkins, and something colorful and festive to line the tray.

My girl boss told me about the idea of using Candy Corn as a base for the candle--cute, isn't it? I've since talked to a couple other ladies who use the same thing, but I hadn't heard of it before. For optimum attractiveness, it's important that you examine all of the Candy Corn and remove any flawed pieces--this is a little known secret that I thought I'd share with you. Shhhhh!

Now since this is our little secret, it's very important that you hide the evidence of the flawed Corn. The best way I've found to do that is to simply eat it. After all, you surely wouldn't want to keep them around for fear they might accidently get mixed up with the "good," Corn, right? Oh, and just in case you were wondering, this kind of corn digests much better than the variety that comes on a cob. Did I just hear you ask about my diet? Check this out: 140 calories for 22 pieces. And since I'm only eating FLAWED pieces, I think there's probably only half the calories anyway. Heck, it's really not that much worse than eating an apple, right? By the way, do you think a serving of Candy Corn counts as a serving of vegetables? I'm pretty sure it does.

Happy decorating!

Less Than Six Months to Halloween!

I love Halloween and the fall. Of course, we have a long, hot summer to get through before it arrives. I was reading Carole's blog yesterday and she mentioned a witch pattern, which got me to thinking--well that, and maybe the fact that spring Quilt Market is in Salt Lake City this year and begins any day now.

You see, back LAST October, my friend Kairle organized a quilting retreat just south of Salt Lake City for some of us, and we had a wonderful time sewing, shopping, and gabbing. While there in Utah, one of the shops, Quilt, Etc., hosted our group for lunch in their classroom space, and on the wall was the cutest Halloween quilt I had seen. One of the things that greatly appealed to me was the fact that it was cute and funny without being a "kid's" quilt. I just had to get the pattern! The rest of the shopping I did on that retreat was geared primarily toward collecting FQs for the project. Here's what I put together for the fabrics and another photo of the pattern--sorry about the glare:

Since that trip, I found a great yellow with red polka dot fabric, and I may use that as the background and then readjust my thinking on which of these FQs to use in the rest of the quilt.

The pattern is by Mountain Valley Stitches and this gal is a Utah designer. I haven't seen the pattern anywhere else, although I did just find it this a.m. online at a shop in Utah that we actually visited. Pine Needles carries it and although I'm not sure you can order online, you can probably contact them and arrange to order it if it's something you're interested in.

Well, now that I have this out, I guess I'll need to get started on it soon. After all, Halloween is less than six months away!