Halloween Vignettes-Part 2

My challenge every Halloween is to make my decorations look "real."  I like my Halloween decorations to look like they belong there, they aren't just some orange paper cheap party decorations that I picked up from the supermarket or Walmart and threw onto the tables next to my regular stuff.  I want the regular stuff out and the Halloween stuff to look like it has been there all along.  The last post showed my  Halloween mantle and here are some other little vignettes sprinkled through the house.

This black table sits in my living room and usually holds family pictures and board games on the shelf underneath.  During October it holds apothecary jars filled with glittered spiders (dollar store), candy corn and whatever black and orange candy my kids are craving this year.  I use this cloche all year long just changing what goes underneath it.  Halloween finds a creepy styrofoam skull on a silver tray beneath it.  There is a black and orange glittered spider on the table as well.  The black chair next to it holds a handmade felt pillow that a lady at my church made for the festival last year.

This table usually holds our Bible and a candle with a cross.  Right now it has a wooden Halloween child's puzzle that I found years ago at Tuesday Morning, and a creepy little graveyard that I found at a garage sale.  What I like the best is the framed scaredy cat that I made.  Do you remember these party decorations from the late1960's-1970's?  I remember them decorating every hallway at school.  They were very popular and manufactured by Beistle.  I found one at a garage sale among a bunch of old Halloween decorations.  I remembered seeing them everywhere when I was a kid and had to have it.  They charged me .25 for the cat, a witch and two owls.  I added in a black frame from the same garage sale for .75 and with a little green scrapbook paper, my favorite framed piece was born!!  Between our kitchen and living room sits an antique desk that belonged to my grandmother (and probably hers).  I like to add some touches of fall there, too. I especially love the cinnamon Born in a Barn jar candle hand made in my SIL's barn on her property in Indiana.

The kitchen table is a good place to show off some stuff!  Every little shelf holds some other Halloween treat. The cable box/dvd player shelf above the tv is filled with little pumpkins that I painted years ago.  Every year I try to move the decorations around or make something that will add to the creepiness of my home.  I try to make at least one project every Halloween,  this year I am working on a t-shirt that says pumpkin queen.  Stay tuned.........

Halloween Vignettes-Part 1

Halloween is, without a doubt, my favorite time of the year.  I love the fall and everything about it.  I love the way Texas' 102 degree summer days give way to the "cooler" 88 degree days and I love the pumpkins.   I love the way the trees start to drop their leaves and the way the squirrels go around hiding pecans and such for the winter.  I love apples, pears and apple cider.  I love pumpkin bread and Halloween candy.  October 1 through the 31st is my absolute favorite month, even more than my birthday month, March.  One of my favorite things to do in October is to decorate for Halloween.  The mantle (which is just a shelf) over my fireplace offers the best spot to dress up for Halloween.  I change everything, even the picture over the fireplace.  I replace that with  4 framed Halloween icons that I made myself.  I purchased the plain black wooden frames during a sale at Michaels.  I used a scrapbook tool that tears paper neatly and made layers of white and black scrapbook paper.  I printed out the pictures (these came from the Martha Stewart website) , traced them and cut them out.  Then I glued them to the layers of paper and stuck them in the frame.  Probably cost $20.00 (the frames were the biggest expense).  If I were doing this again, I would definitely use my cricut to cut out the pics, but at the time I made these I didn' have one.  The rest of the mantle is made from stuff I found.  I already had the wooden witch statue and the black books it's standing on.  I just went to my husband's book shelf and took the covers off a few books until I found some thin black ones.  The crystal ball looking thing was confiscated from my mom and dad's house years ago.  I did purchase the three glass cylinders from the dollar store, they are vases I think.  I cut three pieces of vellum out and placed them inside the cylinders.  The BOO I cut out from my cricut.  The cylinders are sitting on a metal tray that I found at a garage sale and spray painted black.  The black decorative  picture frame was 50% off at Hobby Lobby and I printed out a quote from PSYCHO to go into it.  The small black urn was a hand me down from my SIL, it actually used to have a Christmasy silk amaryllis bulb in it.  I popped out the silk amaryllis and added a piece of styrofoam and stuck the sticks in.  I think I found the sticks outside in the backyard.  I spray painted them black and added the moss.  To finish the mantle off, I added a bunch of sparkly tulle that comes on a ribbon spool. (50% off at Hobby Lobby) The whole thing was soo simple and cost me less than $40.00.  Next post I will show some other vignettes that I put out around the house.

A Truly Texas Tradition

Texas high School Football in underway and that means the big homecoming game can't be far off! Oddly enough, the biggest fashion statement of the week is not the homecoming dress but the homecoming mum. If you're not from Texas you may not know what a homecoming mum even looks like, the mums seem to be popular only in Texas and Southern Oklahoma.  In the 1920's chrysanthemums became the popular choice for corsages that boyfriends brought to their girlfriends when attending the big game.  Soon the florists began tying little ribbons in the school colors on them.  In the 1960's it became popular to add more ribbons  and trinkets representing the school activities of the girls and their boyfriends.  Throughout the 60's and 70's the mums began to grow to TEXAS size proportions and today the ribbons can hang 3-5 feet off the corsage and weigh up to 12 lbs.

My niece's mum

Some detail

Lil Sis Mum

Senior Queen Mum

 It's not unusual to see the mums adorned with stuffed bears, feather boas and even lights. Now everyone gives and receives mums.  Mums are presented by best friends, siblings, aunts, boyfriends, sports teammates, boyfriends, girlfriends and parents.  Every mum is unique and every mum is different. I remember my first mum in the 1980's. It was given to me by my brother my junior year in High School. In those days we used real flowers but, alas, after a few weeks the dried mum petals would fall to the floor and all that was left was droopy ribbons.  Sometime between my mums and my daughter's mums, faux mums became vogue, mostly so that the huge corsages could adorn high school girl's rooms throughout their four years of high school.  When my daughter was a freshman I learned her number one homecoming rule.  NO COWBELLS!  Cowbells are a favorite trinket to hang off mums in Texas.  The distinct tinkling of the cowbells while Ally walked down school hallways, however, seemed too much for my conservative Texas girl and the bells were scotch taped quiet by second period.  That afternoon I found the offensive cowbell hanging from the hall linen closet doorknob as a warning to other cowbells that may try to make their way onto her mums throughout her HS years.  It is still tied there today.  I love making the mums and Ally's dates are always happy to hear that I have the mum situation under control. This year's mum was a bit of a challenge.  A senior mum is different than a regular mum.  A senior mum has to be white and gold or white and silver.  It should never have the school colors in it, only white and gold/silver.  Since our school colors are purple and gold, our secondary color needed to be gold.  Not as easy to work with than the purple and gold from previous years.  Ally's date is not a senior, which means his had to be purple and gold. I still threw in some white so they would match better. BTW, I always use the scraps to make Catherine a Lil Sis mum, everyone needs a mum!  If your state isn't doing mums, it might be a good year to show off your special kid, there is only one homecoming queen and one homecoming king, but everyone can feel special when they are wearing a Texas Homecoming Mum!!

We Go Together.....

The last few weeks in the Piotrowski household have been devoted to the musical GREASE.  Last spring Ally was cast as "Sandy" and it was the role of a lifetime.  She did a fantastic job with the role, she really developed her character.  Unlike in the movie where Olivia Newton John's Sandy seemed shy and prudish, Ally's stage Sandy had a whole different level.  In our Grease, Sandy came across as a teen who definitely was not happy with her station at Rydell.  She came across as a feisty Sandy, clearly not happy with the prude label she had been given but not quite willing to compromise her values to a group of pink jacket wearing girls who seemed to make one bad decision after another.  However, she did not fit in with the ever happy, ever gloating cheerleader types either, which left Sandy with no where to go.  You could see the struggle on her face throughout the second act of the show.  She wasn't a "go all the way" girl and was clearly confused as to why that was a requirement to fit in with the other girls and the "greaser" type guys. Unlike in the movie where Sandy seems to be compromising her values to become the 'new' Sandy, in the stage version, Sandy seems to make the 'new' Sandy fit her.  During the song Sandra Dee  you can see her plan forming.  She has not been happy with the Sandra Dee role she was assigned to and clearly wanted to make a change on her own terms.  In the end she seems confident and happy in her new role, a stronger, happier,  Sandy.  

The talent in this show was absolutely amazing.  Every single student was outstanding.  No one more than another.  Each student became their character.  It was a little disconcerting to run into Kennicke or Frenchie offstage and realize they were totally different in real life than on stage.  Every song was perfect and every joke was hilarious. The Greased Lightening car quickly became an audience favorite. This ensemble cast (including the car) was a treat to watch and everyone who attended the show had fun. What a wonderful way for Ally to end her HS musical career!

P.S. What are some jobs that this mom (and other booster moms) did to get ready for the show? The list includes preparing four cast dinners, making a cast board with head shots, decorating and running a concession stand that included fresh popped popcorn, candy, drinks, break a legs and roses, ordering t-shirts and running around looking for costumes.  Wow, when it was time for the cast party wrap up, I was happiest of all, and the first one to sleep.