I thought since everyone has received their Halloween cards now, I'd share them with you guys. As usual I made these at the eleventh hour and by some miracle, managed to get them to their recipients by today. WHEW! (I must be an adrenaline junkie. That can be the only answer to this procrastination and insanity of mine. argh!)
(greeting insert for inside of card)
Since I can't draw worth a lick, black cat pattern from here. Darling little house die cuts were made using Sizzix dies. Spooky vintage photos in house windows found at art-e-zine here.
C'mon! Jump in and make some spooky fun for your Halloween!
Isn't this fun from Not Martha, for Babble?! Tentacle Pot Pie! bwahahhaha
Tentacle Pot Pie pastry topper recipe on Babble here. (Just add the tentacles to your favorite pot pie recipe or refer to the one Megan has linked to.) Tentacle Pot Pie on Not Martha here and here.
Super duper fantastic Lori, for your charming and amazing (first log cabin effort!) Day of the Dead runner, mwah!
Uber duber fantabulous Stephanie, for succumbing to my mind control and arm twisting techniques ;) and for giving my (your firstborn and planned on "only" skelly), a beloved brother and dear witchy kitty, an adored sister, mwah!
Love you guys! You're the bestest!
And ... the Great Pumpkin is sending you a little Halloween treat for being so nice to this Silly Sally Annie Magundy. Commence stalking your mailboxes ... fingers crossed for a Saturday delivery.
A cry for help, more spookiness needed at the Magundy household.
Hurray hurrah! Stephanie to the rescue! Where once there was one, there is now double the ghoulish goodness. Two witchy kitty sisters, two debonair skelly brothers.
Scary treats can be found at Old World Primitives, along with other seasonal fun!
I'm off to try and get my Halloween cards done today. Woe is me, inspiration is eluding me this year. WAH! Hopefully the light bulb will go off shortly please please please.
We had fun! On Saturday we went to the uber fun crafty shop, Zinnia, in South Pasadena. I can't seem to stop with the Halloween-ifying around here and picked up some Halloween collage kits. Oh and some spooky mini skulls and bones and a darling black pom pom crow. Maybe even more fun, Zinnia has the most delightful resident kitty cat, Ali (named so because she was found in the Alley - standing ovation for the Zinnia folks for giving her a forever home). I was ready to leave the crafty stuff behind but wanted to linger all day with Ali. We played ball, she and I - I rolled it to her and she batted it back to me, pinball lever style WOOSH! Over and over ... and over ... and over ... and again some more ... again ... over ... again. Yup, I'm an easy mark for the animal types. Ali is quite the lover of all things "container", as evidenced by these photos on the website, here. (keep scrolling down past "inside Zinnia" and "classes", until you find Ali Alley, Container Entertainer.) I love the pic of the yellow one that she's spilling out of. bwahahhaha The cozier, the better, huh?!
And then we toodled off to The Folk Tree in Pasadena for their 27th Annual Day of the Dead Altars and Ephemera Exhibit. Gosh, I wish we had seen all twenty seven years of this wonderful event! I think this is only year five for us???
Ritualized worship of the dead has been practiced in Mexico since at least 1800 B.C. The modern observance is a combination of pre-Hispanic and Catholic influences. Day of the Dead participants prepare elaborate feasts and altars as offerings. A celebration of life and its aftermath, the holiday is a time of reflection and has inspired a rich folk art tradition.
Altars on view at The Folk Tree are often highly personal and include photographs and other mementos, letters, candles and offerings of food. In the past individuals have created altars for deceased family members, pets and other animals, famous individuals, anonymous victims of tragedy and violence, as well as altars dealing with social and environmental concerns.
This year a dozen altars are on display. Among other, altar artists include: Carolyn Potter (who pays homage to family members in an altar that incorporates her gourd and polymer clay art); Johanna Hansen (who memorializes her son and mother in an altar created with her painted ceramics that includes ofrendas or offerings to the public); Nancy Ann Jones (whose interactive altar invites visitors to write their own messages and tributes, which are ultimately burned in a ritual fire by the artist after the close of the show); Janet Olenik (who creates an altar in memory of “Las Muertas de Juarez”); and students from a middle school Spanish class at Westridge School for Girls in Pasadena will also participate with a group altar.
One of the altars was dedicated to the artists mother and mother's in general and we were invited to leave notes for the beloved Mom's in our lives that had passed. I was very inspired by a self-made recipe booklet the artist had done of her mom's recipes. It was filled with photos and charming recipes, one even for toasted bread (toast!) ... which gave me an AHA moment ... a collection of family recipes could be filled with the foods that were my childhood too. Cinnamon Toast, "O, Toe and a Vity Mo" (my dad's specialty, orange juice, toast and a Vitamin C!), Thoup (another one of my dad's, Campbell's Soup), etc. I'm all excited and inspired now to make a cookbook for myself and my nieces.
On Sunday we went and saw a delightful new animated film, "My Dog Tulip". The film is based on J. R. Ackerley's 1956 memoir of the same name. A lovely review can be found here, at the NY Times. Please note the film is not rated but it isn't for the kiddies, it is for the adult sensibilities - please be sure and research well before considering going off with the kiddies in tow. (The audience was largely aging baby boomers and seniors when we saw it.)
I am sharing this fun vintage recipe booklet for Rednesday and Vintage Thingie Thursday this week. (How many of you are singing j-e-ll-o, right now? I sure am!)
I found this fun recipe booklet at the Long Beach Outdoor Antique Market a couple of months ago, isn't it cute?
Does anyone out there remember Jack Benny? (The Mary in the title was Mary Livingstone, Jack Benny's wife in real life and also his co-star on his show.) I remember watching reruns of his television show, The Jack Benny Show - it was either on after school or perhaps I watched it when I was home sick? I remember that my mother loved the singer who was on the show, Dennis Day. So I had to grab this recipe booklet when I saw it since it was sort of a memory from my growing up years and my mom and I watching the show together. (There is a copyright date of 1937 inside.)
My mom was the Casserole Queen - any recipe with ground beef, tomatoes, onion and green peppers, she tried and made ... again and again. hahahhaha
I can only remember her making one foray into the land of jello with additions. It was made with Celery Jello. I am straining my brain to remember what the additions were??? Celery? Cucumber? I found the above photo online - don't you love Google Images?!
(cover)
This first inner page is marked $12.00 - I paid $1.00, that's all I was asked to pay by the vendor. Amazing (and scary and depressing) what the mark-up is when you purchase items at the indoor Antique Malls YIPES!
(Hey! How seasonly fitting, Autumn Glow!)
(ack! Jello flakes! Conversely, Jello Fantasy bwahahahaha! And the all important list of what sinks and what floats in jello!)
(hmmm ... what can one say about Prune whip?!)
(Hey! No fair, nothing funny on this page! including the, groan, comic joke teehee)
(Emergency Fruit Salad. Call 911!)
(oh yuck, spiced relish and cold meat plate, er, jello! and what the hooha is India Relish? Is that like mango chutney? I loves me some mango chutney mmmmm!)
(Now I love beets, probably one of the two people in existence that love beets, so no snark out of me there. I will have to mock and trash the salmon and chicken salad molds I guess. BLECH!)
(How to make Fluffy, Spongy Jello Creams - spongy??? Ohhhh ... like meringue-y, maybe??? Learn something new blah blah blah)
I'm back. I can't seem to make myself do the housewifey things I'm supposed to be doing today, I just want to play and think about all things Halloweenie.
We pulled out more stuff from our holiday storage last night ... things are getting a wee bit spookier over here. I'm not very happy with it all so far, it needs a lot of tweaking - it looks like the storage boxes erupted and spewed their contents all over our living room right now. WAH!
It makes me all smiley as I write this though, to see my things from Pam, Lori and Stephanie! You guys have added so much to my life and my decor teehee. Thank you for your friendship!
I was wondering if anyone could help me with this - a blogger posted this darling black cat printable (I made a garland for my door with it), about three years ago (maybe more) and I can't find where I got it from and I can't find where I downloaded it on my computer. I wanted to make some ornaments for my Halloweenie tree with it. WAH! Do you know what blogger posted it by chance???
Do you know who my mommy is? Thanks for your help!
Since I'm already avoiding my housework hahahha, I thought I'd leave a few links for some darling pumpkin crafts.
This looks so good! Savory Pumpkin Quiche at Babble Pumpkin Quiche recipe here
Make these darling fabric pumpkins from The Cottage Home Fabric pumpkin Tutorial here
YUM! Pumpkin cream cheese truffles from Whole Foods Recipes Pumpkin cream cheese truffles recipe here
Such a darling pumpkin from Gazette94 Pumpkin cross stitch pattern here Scroll down past the adorable squirrel ornament (another must make Fall project!) to find pumpkin chart.
... because I am pooped out after typing and scanning all of this ... whew! Perhaps, I'll try to do it later but I'm not sure ... sorry!
What a weekend we had! From the sublime to the ridiculously annoying.
It was our Anniversary weekend and boy, we had plans! But first we had to run an errand Saturday morning. Well ...
As I entered the garage, I noticed one of the beams had split half way through and it was hanging down, in a V shape, about a foot or so it seemed!!! And we have a ton of stuff up in the rafters, since we live in the most miniscule of cracker box sized wee housies! &%#@*#$*!!!! YIKES!
Thankfully we had a (HUGE) pole and the hubs was able to maneuver the thing underneath the split and push the beam back up. WOW! What a feat of hubsy strength!
Miracle of miracles, when we returned home, everything was still nestled up above (and NOT in a pile on the garage floor ay yi yi - or worse yet, flattening the hood of my car OUCH) - especially since there was not a moment to spare in our anniversary celebrating day!
We first went off to see Shakespeare's "The Merry Wives of Windsor" - the hubby adores Shakespeare and most exciting of all, it was being put on by Shakespeare's Globe Theater.
We woke up this morning to read mixed reviews in the Los Angeles Times but we thoroughly enjoyed it and were so glad we had gone.
After the play, we had to dash home to feed our doggie and give her her thyroid pill, before we could be off to our main event in our anniversary celebrating ... whoop-di-doo French cuisine high falutin fine dining dinner at Melisse. YUM!!!
(this welcomed us at our table, along with two tiny gift wrapped boxes of handmade truffles)
(the chef owner, Josiah Citron, signed our menu for us, FUN!)
We will not be leaving the house for five whole years (maybe ten!) after that meal - the piggy bank is broken to smithereens and may never recover.
But it was sooooooooooo worth it.
Sunday ... back to reality. Our actual anniversary day but we had our fun on Saturday - we were going to go to a movie on Sunday (since it feels like eons since we went to one) but we had to address our sagging beam. WAH!
So the majority of Sunday was spent removing stuff from the rafters, sorting into recycling and Good Will, figuring out where on earth the remaining stuff would fit and shoring up the split beam until we can get it fixed ... which will cost a pretty penny and you know, from reading all of the above, that we just blew all of our pretty pennies on dinner. sniffle sniffle. Life sure has a way of filling you up and then kicking you in the shins, doesn't it?!
(greeting insert for inside of card)
