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?

Which house­hold chore do you dis­like the most?

I dis­like them all, but the ones that really get me are laun­dry and dishes. It’s a never end­ing bat­tle. As soon as the kitchen is spot­less it’s time to cook a meal. As soon as every scrap of laun­dry is washed and folded it’s time to change into paja­mas or what­not. It’s not like wash­ing win­dows or scrub­bing a toi­let. With those, you’re good for at least a week.

What’s the best museum you’ve ever visited?

I haven’t seen many I guess. I really like all kids muse­ums. Hands on activ­i­ties rock!

It’s Star Wars Day today. I’ve never seen any of the Star Wars movies. What “com­mon” movies haven’t you seen?

I think I’ve got most oldies cov­ered. I don’t see many new ones, so I haven’t seen that Twi­light movie yet. {col­lec­tive gasp from the aduience} Yes, I know.

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