Home Haunt

My apologies as I have once again fallen behind in the world of getting these blogs up. In addition to being slammed with a strange and busy schedule my mother passed away on the 15^th so it has been an adventure when it comes to dealing with all the family phone calls and such. She was an odd lady, my mother though she did enjoy my strangeness( most of the time) and wouldn’t have wanted me to mope around being depressed so I’ve tried to continue on in my crafting and being busy though I never realized how many times I thought things along the lines of “ oh mom would like that shirt” or something of the short until she was gone. Or am I doing it more now because she’s gone and I wish she wasn’t? Either way she is and there is no way of changing it but gone is not forgotten and I’m willing to bet that I will think about her from now on every fall.

 

So with all that said I thought I would share my yards photos with you.The thing to remember with this is lighting.Lighting,lighting,lighting! This year we used actual fire in tiki torch form to light the place and I must say I love it.

 

My most recent pumpkin.I've been wanting to do a gizmo for forever and so I thought this year was as good as any.I'm really Happy with how he came out but you would never know what it is when its not lit!

 

 

To Do's

I have been very busy around here making holiday gifts,costumes,corsets and crafts and while going over the many many things that I've done I realized there are some very specific things that I ALWAYS do EVERY year and it brought me to the conclusion that every one should have an October check list if they are a super fall enthusiast. Mine has a fairly good number of things on it and I hope to add more but I do believe it's a fairly good start.

 

October to do list

Carve a pumpkin

Watch nightmare before Christmas

Put up Halloween Decorations

Watch German expressionist horror movie

Watch Vincent Price movie

Watch Universal Classic Monster movie

Watch an Alfred Hitchcock movie

Drink Cider or Hot chocolate

Drink a Pumpkin Spice Latte

Eat a Halloween Oreo

Eat a Reese’s or Snickers pumpkin

Eat Frankenberry, Boo Berry or Count Chocula cereal

Drink spicy tea

Bake a pumpkin or apple pie

Make Halloween themed food

Bake Halloween Cookies

Mix spooky drinks

Roast pumpkin seeds

Collect different color leaves

Visit a pumpkin patch

Go on a Hay ride

Dress up

Go to a Haunted house

Attend a Halloween event

Have a scary movie marathon

Visit a cemetery and leave an offering

Wear orange

Wear a sweater

Scare some one

Watch Hoccus Poccus

Take Halloween pictures

Visit family graves

Make a Halloween Play list

Read a Classic Gothic novel

Collect interesting pumpkins

Aged paper

I am aware that I have once more been an absolute slacker. I guiltily self indulged and made two steel boned corsets since my birthday is in a few day. So I have to face the fact I need to post a new project. This time I’m sharing one of my favorite things. Aging paper! Like that which my missing  

 Now think about the number of things you could do involving aged paper. Invitations. Creepy old letter props. Old flyers. Treasure maps. Labels. It’s another one of those endless options sort of things.

Firstly you have to decide if you want to stain the paper with coffee or tea. I personally use both because they offer two different colors.You need a bowl for boiling water in the micro wave (or a stove and a tea kettle) because boiling water seems to help the color permeate through the paper best and a large flat pan to do the staining in so your paper doesn’t fold over.

 

 

I usually boil my water in the microwave with the instant coffee pack already in it.

Yay beloved microwave of doom!!!

Then pour it into the flat pan and toss in the tea bags

See the color difference between the tea and coffee

 

 When you put in the paper it will float so you need to push it under. Be mindful of this if you boiled water on the stove or are sensitive to heat

 

 I use the tea bags to hold it under for a couple minutes to get the primary stain going.

 

 One of the neat things is where you leave the tea bags leaves quite a dark stain

 

 Squeeze out one of the tea bags so it’s not dripping every where and dab puddles of it out onto the paper. I cheat and do this after I’ve already placed the paper into the microwave on a paper towel.

 

 

Close the microwave door and set the timer for 1 minute. I have my power level on the highest which is 10. This is the part where you want to watch what’s going on. Don’t want anything bursting into flames. The microwave seems to help dry the dark puddles into place and speed the drying process (a stroke of genius on my part during an over tired crafty night making labels.)

 

At this point it should be barely damp and you have some choices. A) If you like how it looks you can either take it out to dry the rest of the way on some paper towel. Or nuke it again for another min. Then there is B) if you want more aging dab it up again with your tea bag or try out the instant coffee dabs and nuke it again! Also remember to dab the back side for equal aging if it’s going to be seen. If the paper will be glued down don’t even worry about it!!

 WARNING: don’t over nuke your paper though as you scorch the tea ant it leaves rings on it which isn’t as pretty, but then  I guess it’s a personal preference thing Easy peasy.

Then run it through your printer. Draw on it. Write on it. Burn the edges (ß so guilty of that one) and you’ve got your very old paper that you made just last night