What's Up With Me and Halloween?

Like I said in an earlier post, I'm not a big fan of Halloween. But this year, gotta say, I've really gotten into decorating. It's been spurred on by visits to Dollar Tree who, hands down, has THE best Halloween decorations on the cheap. At the rate I'm going, maybe I will be handing out candy this year. Heck, I've got enough spooky holiday momentum, I might even dress up for the little ones.

Saw this in Better Homes & Gardens. Now granted, their welcome mat wasn't all janky and greeting guests with "lcome" like mine is. With five Dollar Tree snakes, this doormat is saying anything but Welcome.

Rubber spiders that can weather the elements are attacking my pumpkins. 

Simply punched a straight pin into their bodies and through to the pumpkin. 

I think I might pin down their legs to make them look more real.

Dollar Tree had a bunch of different designs of these mirror decals. How cool is this?

I also picked up a packet of spider cut-outs 

and adhered them to both front windows with double-sided tape. 

Chateau Gahan's a real house of horrors.

[Here's the BH&G version of the snake doormat.]

Boo

With a tinge of Fall in the air, I was knee-deep in working outdoors (painting, flower arranging, building, watering, reading, talking on the phone). I got up early all weekend just so as not to waste any of the warm, breezy days. You name it, I took it outside with me. My driveway looked like I'd set up camp for a week. When sundown came it's a wonder I didn't pitch a tent and sleep under the stars.

I'm not a huge fan of Halloween. When Harleigh was a little girl, it was fun. But now that I'm an old character, Halloween usually means coming home from work, turning off all the outdoor and indoor lights, and reading by flashlight in bed just to keep the trick-or-treaters away. I know. I know. A bit of a Halloween scrooge. But I do like our church's Trunk or Treat. Now for that, I'll be ALL in the spirit! For the sign-up poster at the church to collect names for who will be decorating a trunk, I wanted to do something three-dimensional. I saw these figurines at Dollar Tree, and the idea hit me. Here is the poster, the two dressed-up dolls sitting on the open tailgate of a pick-up truck. (The image of the truck in the picture below was a janky printed version from my ink-deprived printer. I later replaced it, as you'll see in subsequent pictures, with a much better quality image.)

I used an old black metal book end for the "open tailgate." Taped it onto the black board using black duck tape. Glued the two figures onto the base of the book end. Behind the figures, there's room for pens.

Chateau Gahan gets her Halloween on with a few special touches. I don't like the look of that stretchable fake spiderweb stuff when it's put it on real thick. I've seen people use it to where it looks like a layer of pillow batting. The secret is to stretch it super good.

If Dollar Tree were a man, I'd marry it. 

IN LOVE.

It's where all my Halloween decorations come from.

Nothing like spiders . . . everywhere.

Oh, and for the record, I do get giddy about Halloween for one VERY special reason . . . the next day begins listening to Christmas music and the wearing of Christmas pins (a different one every day until Christmas — and I still have a ton left unworn!!!!).

Collection of Chairs and Instagram Weekend Recap

I started my collection of miniature/small chairs probably back in 1993. It's not huge by any means. I never bought a chair just because it was small. I only bought what I loved. I hung them on walls. Grouped them on tables. Used them as bookends and in event vignettes. The bottom line  . . . I enjoyed them. But my collection of floral tins soon became my passion. And so, the little chairs were packed away and relegated to the attic where they lived for the next seven years, in the dark and keeping company with tubs of Harleigh's baby clothes and boxes of holiday decorations.

My booth at Simple Finds has been such a joy to style and keep stocked. Furniture is my best seller (as it is with most vendors), but I do like to keep the space filled with quaint, random items. To keep at the steady pace of simplifying my life AND to add to my booth, I decided to sell my chair collection. I do hope they all find good homes.

Here's my booth. Definitely one of the smallest spaces at the antique mall, but in a great location.

[Please forgive the bad-lighting iPhone photos.]

And here are some Instagram images from the last couple of weeks. Harleigh came home this past Friday night for the Georgia Tech / Georgia Southern game at Tech. A co-worker, who is a Tech alum, got us A-MAZ-ING seats on the 40-yard line, 3rd row. We were right behind the Southern bench, so we could cheer on our team within ear shot. The club seats got us free wine and beer and the chance to escape the heat into air-conditioned comfort complete with TV screens so as not to miss any of this fantastic game. We were winning 38-35, and then in the last 20 seconds Tech scored a touchdown. We didn't go down without a fight. My girlie left right after the game to head back to Statesboro; a big test today had her a bit anxious about getting good study time in, so she wanted to be back that evening and have all day Sunday to hit the books. Atta girl!

My Instagram feed has an over-the-top amount of Gideon pix. He's just so darn photogenic.

Pumpkins are at the grocery store!!!! Ingles had them on sale for $4 a piece, and so I bought these two big beauties.

When Friends See "Trash" and Think of You

Ali spied this huge window at the curbside and, if I'm not mistaken, ran home to talk her husband into coming back to help load it into the car . .  and all for little ol' me. I've held onto it for probably a good two years, knowing that I'd put it to good use one day. And that day came on May 10. Friend and co-worker, Julie, had asked me to style her wedding. This lucky find was turned into the perfect table assignment chart. I cleaned her up real good and gave the wood a coat of fresh white paint. I keyed the guest list into Word and then chose the script font she had used on her wedding invitations. I printed out the panels — black type on white paper — and then taped them to the back of the window panes. With a white liquid chalk marker, I simply traced the names onto the front of the window panes, removed the white sheets from the back, and then taped black paper onto the back of the panes that had writing on them (for some reason, in the picture the black looks like rippling fabric, but it was a nice solid matte black). Topped it off with a ribbon, flower, twig and bird (she had a bird theme for the wedding). From dumpster to diva!