Halloween Inspiration - Mad Scientist Lab

Click on over to Brooklyn Limestone for GREAT Halloween inspiration.

BOO! - Pay It Forward

Here is a fun Halloween prank to play on your friends and neighbors. I found this idea over at Anders Ruff and just HAD to do it!

This little treat didn't even cost me that much. I purchased three Chinese takeout containers (.99 cents each) in orange and a bag of black Shredz ($1.99) at the Paper Zone and a bag of mixed candy from my local grocery store ($3.00).

Total cost was $8.00 but I have half the bag of candy and shredz left over. I didn't use all the print outs from Anders Ruff. Just the instructions, door tag and little circular label. The label I cut out and ran through my Xyron machine to make in to a sticker.

The instructions are really simple. You make two (I chose to make three) and deliver them in secret to a neighbors or friends house. The recipient has two days to make copies of the instructions, door tag & labels and deliver them in scret to a friend or neighbor. If there is a door tag on the door, they have already been Boo'ed and you have to deliver to someone else.

Since I took a few days off work between my jobs I snuck up to their doors and hung them on the knobs. The neighbors I left these for sometimes read my blog. So hopefully they discover them on their front door before that happens. :)

This is as fun as pulling up to your local Starbucks and having them tell you the person in the car paid for your drink!

Halloween Art & Inspirtion

First of all, did you check out the CSI Project yesterday for amazing Halloween ideas? This is how I got three items for my Halloween art project below.

So far the only decor in my living room is my mantle. I felt like I needed a little more. I have a blank wall that was just begging for something to be hung on it. The best part? It was totally free!

I already had the three picture frames and burlap. All I needed to do was print out the free wall art, place it in the frame, back with burlap, close it all up and hang it.

I found BOO at Anders Ruff and the Subway Art and Eat, Drink and be Scary at Craftily Ever After.

Thanks to these two lovely ladies, I have great Halloween wall art for the cost of ink. There are soome GREAT inpirations out there in blog land too.

• Creepy Lighted Halloween Portraits at Heart Tree Home
• Witches Spellbook at Through My Looking Glass
• Dr. Jekyll's Laboratory at Three Pixie Lane
• Bat-iful Party Invitations at My Insanity
• Ghostly Mirror at Flamingo Toes
• Apothecary Jars at The Autocrat
• Black & White Decor at Madigan Made

And so much more. I urge you to go to the CSI Project, there are over 200 entires/ideas just waiting to be discovered!

Pumpkins & Feathers

Reposting this today to link up with the CSI project.



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Over the weekend we got our dining table sanded and painted with a few coats of glossy black paint. Once I get the final coats on I will show you how it turned out. I am loving it!

In my travels to Micahels for craft supplies for my black and white pumpkins, I spied this great wreath with peacock feathers. Peacock blue is one of my accent colors. I even had a 50% off coupon and I love it against my grey walls. It's hanging over the bar.

I did one more black and white pumpkin in preparation for Halloween. A small white pumpkin with a black fleur di lis.

Here is my black and white pumpkin trio sitting on the sideboard. The first two listed below were inspired by a magazine. All of the craft (fake) pumpkins were orange to begin with and I simply added about three coats of white craft paint and the stems got a coat of my grey wall color.

• Off With Your Head - Black velvet ribbon held in place with pearl topped push pins. The lettering are glitter stickers.
• Paisley - Most of the design is puffy paint as I could just not afford little sticky crystals to do the entire design. Grey and black sticky crystals do add a little sparkle though.
• Fleur di Lis - I just took black craft paint on a Fleur di Lis stamp and stamped it on and then filled in with paint. I think this might need a little bling and I have some sticky crystals left over to may place a few on here.

I would like to add some color in the form of ribbon on the stems. We shall see...

I also bought a bolt of burlap at the fabric store. Several projects to come from that. Today after work I plan to hunt for some twigs to put it in a vase on my bar. I have a few clip on ravens and some sparkly bits I want to tuck in to them.

How are you preparing your house for the fall?

Halloween Decorating

We actually got most of our Halloween decorations up the last weekend of September. I finished my last minute stuff yesterday before my girly candle party. Not all of our decorations were brought out as we decided on a slightly new direction to go this year. Our goal? Slightly tattered and some what Victorian. We didn't even buy too much new stuff this year which was nice. We have a few ideas in mind for year to build on our theme.

Remember how we used to have a lot more bookshelves in the hallway? In our decluttering efforts we are down to just the books on this shelf. The only thing here that is new is the skull with the brain peeking out. C and a friend were out looking for a skull he could use for this and happened upon this one already cracked. Perfect!

Here is some detail of the some of the items sitting on the shelf. C made me a casket case filled with potion bottles and some very scary looking wine selections. Like Vampire wine. Truly a good red!

I found the label for the Graveyard Spirits here. I just printed it out on paper and used my Xyron to make it in to a sticker. And hey, that brain isn't going to get any fresher!

The pictures hanging over the shelf change as you walk by them. Who knew Great Uncle George had a Beastly side?

Moanin Lisa

The mantle this year has all the same stuff from last year. Don't you think that one bust on the left looks like Vincent Price?

In the dining room you can see my new grey walls too. LOVE! Just ignore the printer in this photo. It's going to live in the credenza below, I just need to get a hole drilled in the back to accomodate the cord. These are the pumpkins I slaved over last month. The photo is actually my grandmother when she was around 3 circa 1920. The lampshade I covered in burlap and added a black gross grain ribbon.

This gentleman visitor just doesn't like my cooking apparently.

The shelf over the garden window in the dining room. A combination of critters, books and other items. I didn't get around to writing up creepy book titles for my books so just took the dust jackets off of books I had that were black. I have seen a trend recently to take book covers off and just have the yellowed pages of several books stacked on each other. Could be a fun way to add to the look. I have more of the flame lights like over the mantle here too. Because of the light it's hard to see they are on.

There used to be this great shop called the Salvage Studio in Edmonds. That is where I bought the Scrabble letters that spell out Halloween. Two of the previous owners have their own blogs, check out Beth and Lisa.

The top shelf of the bar houses the Dan Aykroyd Crystal Head vodka.

Wich apparently this creepy crawley is interestded in tasting.

Knock and enter...if you dare.

We weren't too savvy when we shopped for our condo. Who knew it would be located IN a graveyard?

Conveniently located near a Morgue.


Vampire bats are known to inhabit graveyards. So far we have only found one - but it's BIG!

An inspiration of mine in blog land. If I could only channel Mrs. Limestone. Her blog started out telling the story of their renovation on their early 1900's Brooklyn Limestone. I highly recommend ready the entire thing. She's hugs in to Halloween so check her out. Her decorations for the last couple years have been great and I can't wait to see what she comes up with this year!

If you like the effects on my photos. Check out a free site called Picnik.

Crystal Skulls and Celebrities

OK - let's play catch up shall we? What have I been up to?

C and I are getting ready for one of our favorite holidays - Halloween. The new grey dining room walls are a really great backdrop for our spooky, slightly aged and tattered holiday decorations.

We took a break from decorating a few weeks ago to go in to the city and meet Dan Aykroyd. The reason? To purchase some of his Crystal Head Vodka. Vodka is my distilled spirit of choice. When we found out he was going to be here to sign them we just had to go!





The vodka is quadrupple distilled through Herkimer diamonds and yes it really is sold in a skull shaped bottle. Talk about smooth! Normally I don't do vodka shooters but wanted to taste it in its pure form. Nice!

The next night we headed to the Chateau St. Michelle for the Harry Conick Jr. concert. A birthday gift from my husband. Like last year we sat as close as possible in the cheap seats (pie shaped grass sections on either side of the regular seats). We like the that section better. You can spread out more. They allow you to bring in food and low slug chairs just not alcohol.


We had a picnic of grapes, cheese, chocolate, bread and of course red wine purchased at the winery. Sorry I don't have photos. It rained on us (actually pretty hard at one point) but once Harry was on stage we had a pretty clear evening. The show was amazing and Harry was pretty darn funny!

Halloween Pumpkins

I am getting a jump start on Halloween projects in preparation for one of my favorite holidays. To go along with my grey and white dining room I have painted up some black and white pumpkins. I saw the idea for these in the Better Homes and Gardens 2009 Halloween issue.



I already had the larger pumpkin (it was orange) and purchased the smaller pumpkin (also orange). I painted both of them with some white craft paint and used some of the grey wall color to paint the stems. The larger pumpkin has black velvet ribbon attached with pearly stick pins. The smaller pumpkin has swirls painted on ith black puffy paint and black and grey stickey backed "gems".

I have a small collection of silver and glass items I keep around to use for display and when I have parties. The larger pumpkin is sitting on a cake plate and the smaller pumpkin is sitting on a small glass plate which is resting on top of a small glass bowl. Both the plate and the bowl have a silver base.

I have a few more tricks up my sleeve to get prepared for the Holiday. I am having a candle party in mid October so I want to be ready.

How are you getting ready for the holiday?

Can You Smell That?.......It's Fall!

Seems like summer was way too short here in the Pacific Northwest. August is almost over and we are "turning the year" so to speak. Kids are getting ready to go back to school, football season is starting and fall (my favorite time of year) is in the air.

I am starting to think about Halloween and how I am going to decorate my house. Over the years I have collected and made many decorations. I am not a fan of "kitchy" decor. The way I decorate my house would be best described as "Tattered Conservative Gothic" with a little bit of Steampunk thrown in. Distant relatives of the Adams family.

There are several sites out there that have great tastefull Halloween decorations such as Pottery Barn and Grandin Road. Some favorites of mine from Grandin Road...

Some of my favorites from Pottery Barn........

For more inspiration, there's Martha Stewart's haunted house party.

Some of the decorations I saw I think I can make on my own. These photos inspire me to make as many as I can to add to what I already have.

How are you decorating for Halloween?

Happy Friday!

The hubs and I are taking the day off.

It's really nice to just take a day to do whatever we feel like. We are planning to go to a pumpkin patch and maybe carve pumpkins tonight. I want to hit some thrift stores and a few antique shops up north and my favorite tea shop as I am out of my chocolate tea.

If you still need some Halloween decorating ideas click on over to Eddie Ross. He brings sophistication to holiday decorating which is what I try to do. That is why I drag all my silver, crystal and glass out every year.

Here is a teaser.

Have a great day!

Guest Blogging at Mrs. B's!

Just a quick post today. I am a guest blogger today over at Mrs. B's Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom. So if you have not checked her out yet there are still a bunch of days left in the month and plenty of chances to win some great stuff! She's also got a haunted blog tour and other fun stuff!

Thanks Ellie and Wendy for stopping on by!

More Halloween blogging to continue tonight adfet the work week is behind me!

Computer Update and Other News

So after unplugging the modem for 24 hours we were able to get back online last night. Still no Roku action which is very frustrating. A friend who works in IT is going to come over tomorrow night and look at it. We are hopeful this will be a relatively inexpensive fix and our Roku issues will be resolved by the weekend.

Cross fingers for me!

In other news, this is day 6 of no Starbucks for the month. Just 21 days to go to meet this goal. This is amazing for me and I am pretty darn proud of myself.

It goes to show that when you put your mind to something you can do it. A few years ago I would pay for lunch nearly every day. It's been a couple years now and I rarely eat lunch out. Just something I put my mind to.


If you have not checked her out yet, Mrs. B is having a month long Halloween celebration over at her blog Confessions of a Pagan Soccer Mom. She has giveaways every day and guest bloggers. Click on over and check her out!

Halloween Inspirations

A few images that are inspiring me for Halloween. Could be a fun costume but I don't think I would want to put green makeup all over my body.


These curtains are actually outside the front door of this home. I love the noose and skeleton arm as tie backs. The rug on the porch is so great. I love to do and see things that are out of their element so to speak. We have a regular fogger but would need a ground fogger for this effect so it could be hidden behind the curtain for added spookiness.

Archie McFees is a great store to find all kinds of stuff. Fake bugs galore for really reasonable prices. An easy way to create this centipede and rotten egg centerpiece.

I'm keeping my eye out for apothecary type glass jars. I love the way they look. So old fashioned and you can store so many lovely treats in them!

I love candles. During the colder fall and winter months I often have then burning along with my fireplace. This is surrounded by figs and blackberries. I don't think they should be eaten though as the roaches have made a meal of them.

More ideas can be seen here from a post I did last year at this time.