Runaway October

I’ve been pretty busy lately. There’s only 61 days ’til Haloween, which means about 54 until our party.

So far I’ve:

• Stained our garage util­ity sink tea-staining cheesecloth.
• Made about half a skele­ton worth of paper mache bones.
• Redid a giant plas­tic pump­kin I picked up at a yard­sale. It needed paint and sand­ing and such.
• Made PVC flicker candles
• And destroyed a lamp and chan­de­lier and put it all back together as a, what I like to call, Lampalier!

Ta da!

Not bad, eh? I had an old shiny brass light fix­ture we took down out of the house and an aged brass lamp base I picked up at Good­Will for like $3. I took them apart, stuck them back together, had my dad cut some metal disks for the can­dle­holder parts and painted. Of course, I don’t have any big can­dles handy at the moment, but you get the idea. And it’s very big and heavy. Very dra­matic. Also, no “before” pic­tures. I’m lazy like that.

And this is where I admit where I was wrong. Was that a col­lec­tive gasp I just heard?! I know, I know. I was bab­bling about what color to paint it one evening and my hus­band sug­gests Matte Black. I prob­a­bly gave him the stu­pid­est look ever. Matte Black? Seri­ously? Men have no sense. Seri­ously. So I pick out this ham­mered black color and grab some dark grey auto­mo­tive primer and start prim­ing away. Prob­lem is I really like the primer color, so Matte Black it shall stay. I love you honey!

It’s gonna show fin­ger­prints like crazy, but what doesn’t in my house?

Don’t ask about the chair on the table. I was gonna drape a back­ground cloth but my fam­ily was giv­ing me too many crazy looks.

See those can­dles? Made ‘em. Yep. I’m not entirely sure open flames will be a good idea, so these “can­dles” will be used with flick­er­ing LED tealights in strate­gic loca­tions where I really appre­ci­ate things NOT catch­ing on fire. Here’s a tuto­r­ial, if you are so inclined. I would like to add though, to skip the expend­ing foam step. The stuff is expen­sive and a pain. Just turn your tea light on, put it in, and stuff some news­pa­per or gro­cery bags under­neath it. You don’t need to worry about heat or melt­ing or any­thing like that.

So have you started on your Hal­loween stuff yet? Is it too early to start decorating?

Today is the longest day of the year in the North­ern Hemi­sphere. Do some­thing fun and sum­mery tonight. We mainly plan on kiss­ing the ground and thank­ing the sun, in advance, for not bak­ing us to death this year.

“This image was taken at the Stone­henge sum­mer sol­stice 2005 as the first rays of dawn touched the ancient mon­u­ment. 21,000 peo­ple came to dance around the stones, on this once a year occurence. On no other day can you come within 10m of the stones!! ” {Link}

Some Sol­stice Ideas for you:

• Black­out Sab­bath — Shut off every­thing from noon to mid­night and bask in the nat­ural light pro­vided by nature.
• Dance around the May­pole — Cloth­ing optional… but I’m not bail­ing you out.
• Can­dle Night — Turn off all lights and use can­dles instead

{Via Google Images}