The Birds

Last Saturday morning I was lying in bed waiting for my alarm to go off and suddenly heard rain come pouring down. When it first started, I thought to myself, "Whoa! That was sudden; it must be pretty heavy out there!" So I got up and peeked through the blinds. Expecting to see cats and dogs falling from the sky, I was dumbfounded when I saw nothing; it actually looked relatively inviting for 7 a.m. on Saturday morning. Then I saw them, hundreds of black birds atop our surrounding neighbors' homes.

I stepped back from the window, listened again, trying to make out the small little bird feet scraping across our shingles, but it still sounded like rain so I went downstairs to investigate. Funny enough, when I pulled back our hideous vertical blinds, I saw a couple of neighbors also outside looking to the sky. So not being afraid of a few little birds, I walked out on our patio and looked at our roof.

There weren't many birds left on our room, but the flocks flying around had me back in the house quick. I didn't need live out a scene from The Birds; seeing it on the TV was enough.

2010 Halloween Decor

When I was spook-erating our house this year, I realized I never posted photos of our halloween decor from 2009. After digging through my old files, I found that not only do I NOT have photos from Halloween 2009, I don't have photos of our Halloween decor from any years past. However, I do have a photo of us in costume for Halloween 2008.

Fun right? Can you guess who we are? (Hint: Why it's grease lightning!)

But let's get back to the topic at hand. Our Halloween decor for this year, 2010! Here is our front step that I crime-scened-up with some caution tape and haunted house sign.

I have high expectations for the pumpkins also residing on our front step, but we'll see if I can wrangle some spare time this weekend to accomplish the feat.

In our front living room, I stretched more faux cobwebs over some of the furniture and filled a large, green recycled-glass bowl with medium sized gourds.

In our dining room, I heavily draped more faux cobwebs over the chandy and spruced up the tabletop and sideboard with fall themed tablescapes.

The faux spider webs came with these small plastic spiders which I strategically placed for added creepy factor.

I didn't go crazy in our family room and stuck to only changing up our mantel...a tad. For this I rearranged the vintage glass liquor bottles and made some basic white tapered candles more horrific by dripping melted red candle wax down them.

This yellow candlestick was an additional $1 Goodwill score when I picked up the items for the mini-cakestands I made for our kitchen tablescape.

As you can see I didn't go over the top with the heebie-jeebie decor this year, but I definitely feel the halloween vibe. Anyone else spook-up your decor?

Budget Bouquets 2

For my second pass on deliberate bouquet arranging I picked up another bundle of $4 blooms from our local Aldi store.

Because of the current season, I chose a bundle with autumn colors.

I decided this time to first take stock of the options in my inventory and divide and conquer.

In addition to practicing and improving my floral arranging skills, I also want to expand my foliage knowledge so I made a point to learn the buds this time. From left to right we have: daisies, solidago, one type of chrysanthemums, ruscus, another type of chrysanthemums, and alstroemeria.

Following my natural tendencies to group like-colored flowers, I filled two cylindrical vases with river stones. In one vase I clustered the fuchsia daisies and the other one got the yellow chrysanthemums.

In my opinion alstroemeria is a very frilly, romantic flower which can also look great in a small bunch, but looking at what else remained from my selection I decided to include one of the large chrysanthemums and the stem of solidago filler.

The final vase received the second large chrysanthemum flower and the tall ruscus stem.

From the $4 bunch, I worked out 4 fabulous arrangements. I placed the mixed bouquet in the green vase on the desk in our main foyer. The two monochromatic arrangements stayed on our island but I put our hand-carved, gnarled-wood fruit bowl in between them. The remaining white vase with the modern arrangement went upstairs and set on my vanity. Stretching the budget bouquet to four arrangements is great, but being able to place the arrangements around the house makes me smile even bigger.

Fall-oween Tablescape

As I mentioned last week, here is the tablescape I arranged on our kitchen table. I didn't want to make it completely gory (because it is still a dining area), so I mixed fall and halloween items, calling it fall-oween decor. I used the cake stands I made last week for the centerpiece, some simple white dishes, and other various props I had on hand.

First I spread out a poison-apple red table cloth and laid out the dishes, other linens, and centerpiece. Then I placed medium-sized gourds on the cake stands and stretched faux spider-webs over them.

To pump up the spook-factor, I positioned steak knives on the napkins. There is something horror-esque about the sharp stainless steel knives contrasting with the black napkins on top of the crisp white plates with the blood red table cloth as a background. Don't you think?

And when Halloween is over, I'll just pull off the spider webs and swap out the knives for something like a bundle of twigs for a singularly themed fall tablescape. What do you think? Does it scare you-but-also-look-like-an-appealing-place-to-eat-dinner?

Plates, candlesticks, and bowls, oh my!

In preparation of decorating our home for the upcoming Halloween holiday, I wanted to create a centerpiece for our square, counter-height table in our eat-in kitchen area. Taking advantage of the 1/2 price sticker day at Goodwill (Sundays and Mondays if you are wondering), I zipped over Sunday afternoon, donated the items that had begun to overspill our "Goodwill box" in the laundry room, and scoured their shelves looking for inspiration.

As I was browsing, I vaguely remembered a project on my want-to-do list that encompassed creating cake pedestals from recycled candlesticks and plates and some spray paint. So with a direction in mind, I began to pick out various sized candlesticks and plates. Once my basket was full, I situated myself in a conspicuous area in the shop and began playing around with the different sizes, heights, and quantities. I ended up arranging a group of three small stands at descending heights (groupings are always great in odd multiples). Orange was the color of the 1/2 price items that day, so I paid extra attention to selecting items with orange price tags.

Here is my thrift score from the search, which I walked away with for just under $6.

As you can see above, some of the items were quite dirty and the candlesticks had wax remnants, so as soon as I got home I washed them up and made sure I still remembered the arrangement I conjured up in Goodwill.

Then I took them out back and sprayed them with two coats of glossy black paint. Voilà, a trio of miniature cake stands.

I was a little concerned with the coverage on the clear glass candlestick (far back right) and the candlestick that had the painted flower detailing (front and center), but both turned out perfectly. In fact, the spray paint clung so well that I didn't even have any drips, a difficult feat for me! Now I can't wait to share my tablescape design with you. Check back Monday for all the gory details—bwah, ha, ha!