Great Days...

Well, the kids and I had a wonderful Halloween and my birthday yesterday was great. As you can tell, my kiddos were the Bat Kids!

I did have to do one final tweak to my daughter's costume. I picked up some cheap black masks at Michael's but when she tried it on, it just did not work. So I found one I liked online and used a silver Sharpie to draw off the parts I wanted to remove. Here's the before and after of what I did.

I thought it turned out pretty good!

My neighbor and I took our kids to Publix where they had a few games set up. Then we traveled over to Wendy's where it just so happened to be $.99 meals for the kids that night. They also had a clown doing face painting. One of my neighbor's kids had dressed as the Cheshire Cat so she asked if he could enhance it with some face painting. He did an amazing job!

How cute is that? After Wendy's we visited the home of a theater friend who was having a little get together. She and her hubby had made up lots of little "Harry Potter-like" party foods and even had a drink my son loved. They took rubber gloves and froze cranberry juice in them. Then they pored cranberry Sprite in the bowl over dry ice. It looked like hands were floating in the punch which my boy thought was so cool! Plus the 'smoke' from the dry ice added to the affect.

After all this they finally got to do some trick or treating and still came away with quite a haul.
Then yesterday was my birthday. It's also my neighbor's birthday so we usually end up giving each other gifts, but this time we decided to go on a birthday tour. We took my daughter and two of hers, then drove to Warm Springs. First stop?

We had a little home cooked southern food at The Bulloch House. Yum! Then we walked around the square and did some shopping. I came home with several scarves, some soaps, and a few Christmas gifts. When we got home, hubby had cooked a pot of minestrone soup and had flowers on the table. I got a gift card to a local spa so I'll have to figure out what kind of treatment I want to try. Plus I need to figure out what to get him cause his birthday is next Saturday and I have no ideas! Plus my daughter's birthday is Wednesday and I have no ideas for her either. Yuck!!!

Happy Halloween

Over the past several years I have noticed an increase in groups of people who choose not to celebrate Halloween. I find this interesting since I would venture to guess that most of them participated in it as children, and would not be surprised at all if these groups DID participate in Easter egg hunts (eggs were originally decorated with wishes written on them and placed in windowsills for the sun god Ra) and Christmas trees (in many countries evergreens were thought to keep away ghosts and witches, and were still seen as pagan symbols as late as the 1840's).  The child centered dress up and treat giving activities of today's Halloween is a time of celebration and fun... and as with most holidays, it IS what you make of it. In honor of the holiday, I wanted to share a post someone put on Facebook today. I think it expresses the sentiments I have on how I view Halloween very well...

On Halloween, don't be a Grinch. It's not a religious holiday, but still a fine excuse to extend fun, kindness, hospitality and generosity. Odds are that it may be the only day all year that you open your door to many of your neighbors. Odds are that this may be the only day of the year that at least one of your trick or treaters is greeted with kindness and a smile. Odds are that at least one family on your doorstep can't afford extracurriculars, movie tickets, roller skating, etc... For them, this night of free fun is anticipated for months. Odds are that the kid ringing your doorbell so late isn't actually being greedy, but got a late start with a single parent who had to work late. Odds are that many of those teens who show up at your doorstep aren't actually up to mischief. They may be simply clinging to a childhood that slipped away way too quickly in all the busyness of life. Just something to think about. On no other holiday does opportunity to be giving and compassionate come knocking on our doors.

Some Progress...

I got a bit done on my Halloween Chinese Lantern quilt. The embroidered hooks are done at the top, the spider webs are done at the bottom and the spider has even been added. I'm currently working on stitching down the appliqued balls atop the 'tassel' webs.

I just attached the spider and embroidered the legs. Now, two questions...

Are the hooks and spider webs thick enough? And do I need to enlarge the spider webs on the first, third, and last columns since there's more white underneath, or do I leave it as is? I have to admit, I love how this is coming together! It's going to be so stinkin' cute when I get it all done. I'm working on ideas for the back right now as well.

Wicked Webbing...

Well, the Halloween top is put together and I have appliqued the balls for the tassels. The hooks and the actual tassels will be hand embroidered on, but I had a thought. The shape of the tassels made me think, "Why not make them spider webs?" So, I did!

I'm even adding a spider to this one. That's why there's one 'thread' going downward. I love it! Here's how the actual top came together.

That's my daughter's lovely feet at the bottom. Very helpful!! I am so excited about this quilt!!!

Halloween... and UFO's

I'm making some slow steady progress over here with my Halloween quilt. So far, so good! I did go back and replace the repeated fabrics with different ones so now there are 25 different fabrics in it now. Here it is now.

The first three columns were sewn together in a a vertical strip, but the strips couldn't be sewn together until the the border pieces were done. I'm actually farther along than this right now but I didn't want to give too much away.
Are you curious where I found this pattern? Check it out here at Monica Solario-Snow's Happy Zombie blog. She did hers up in her own line of fabric, Holiday Happy. I decided to go with a different holiday for my version!!! I have some sneaky little fun things planned for this quilt that I can't WAIT to show you!!!
I also decided that I really needed to discipline myself to finish some things. My sewing room is currently overrun with UFO's so I decided to take a cue from Quilter in the Gap and do a whiteboard list of everything I need to get done. Here's the problem. I've already taken a picture of the list 3 times. Why 3 times? Cause I keep finding more to add to the list...and it's not a short list in the first place!

I didn't get really specific because most are tops that need to be finished before I can even get to the quilting part. The Skill Builder Sampler is the only one that is ready to quilt at this time, and the mini flag quilt just needs to have binding sewn on. Whew! I hope I don't find anything else hiding out in there that I haven't finished!

Opinions Needed...

So if you saw my post the other day you probably figured out that I am working on a Chinese Lantern Halloween quilt. I won a fat quarter bundle of Halloween fabrics from Allegory over at Sew Allegorical last year (she now has a new blog called a thousand needles). I never could figure out what I wanted to do with it until our LQS started this 'going out of business' stuff. I knew I needed to pick up some things to go with existing bundles I already had while everything was cheap so I picked up a few more Halloween fabrics so I could come up with a quilt. So far, so good...but I do need an opinion. Here are my blocks thus far.

The setup will be different but I was keeping up with all the colors. I kind of wish I'd run one of those stripes horizontally, but... So here they are all mixed up.

Why am I missing one? Well, The original pattern called for 25 different prints. I didn't have that many so some had to repeat. I'm not sure I always picked the right one to repeat but I tried to pick ones that had actual Halloween things depicted. Okay, back to the missing one. I had originally cut two of the off white star fabric as a double, but once I put it on my board, I wasn't sure there was enough difference between the fabric color and my background color for it to stand out. I'm thinking I need to pick up another yellow...what do you think?

Close up you can see a bit of difference between the fabrics but not a lot.  Also, if I decide to look for more prints so I don't have to double, I thought about taking the seconds and making a couple of lantern rows on the back of the quilt. What do you think? Does it look okay as is or do I need to add some other fabrics? Keep in mind this is not the exact set up of the quilt, but it will be columns of five...there will just be space between the columns.

A Little Something Wicked

So am I working on finishing some of my many UFO's? Nope. I got a wild hair and a very specific idea. Want a hint? Check it out...

I'm so excited!!!

Hope You Had a Happy Halloween!

We decided to do something a little different this year and trick or treat downtown. The number of houses in our neighborhood who participate has dwindled and most churches sponsor trunk or treat events or fall festivals so most kids don't trick or treat around our area. So I stuck a basket of candy on the front porch with a note and we went to check it out. Let's just say, it was an experience. Undoubtedly it is quite a yearly event and draws hundreds of families. My neighbor (whose family we trick or treated with) told me that there weren't nearly as many houses participating downtown as there usually have been, but it was still a sight to see. The picture above was one of my favorites...the full Adams family (with the exception of Pugsley).

My kids were Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games and Diddy Kong...with a jetpack. Thank goodness for Pinterest.

I think I should have shredded the tulle and made it a little shorter, but at least now I can pull it out and use it again for something else!

There was another house with the Queen of Hearts giving out candy and a executioner standing guard outside. People would come up and get their picture taken with him.

Most of these houses were decorated to the hilt. It must have taken forever.  This one had a Pirates of the Caribbean theme, with their own version of Captain Jack Sparrow. It got cooler (and spookier) as it got darker.

I even had found Waldo!

Hope you and yours had a great Halloween!