Goodbye October, Hello November

Time is just flying by ...

 

It's hard to believe it is already November. We had a great time visiting my daughter for Halloween ... we dressed up and ate bad things and handed out candy to about 1,000 trick-or-treaters of all ages. The streets were filled with costumed families, kids of all ages and even dogs. I have never seen anything like it. Even the grown ups were in costume ... serious costumes ... Disneyland quality costumes. 

One of the local churches dropped off bags of candy to every house in my daughter's neighborhood to help with the expenses of giving out candy to so many trick-or-treaters. They enclosed a lovely note thanking all the residents for supporting the community. They served coffee and hot chocolate in the little neighborhood park and even came by the next morning to pick up any trash that was left behind. Small towns are the best!

Dave (our skeleton) came up to share in the fun. 

And so did my mom.  She was a good sport!

We dressed Milo up as a fish Flounder.

We had the best time! 

Dave and I driving home

On the way home I stopped by a Target store to see if I could get my hands on some of these ... I heard they were to be released in the stores on the 28th ... I knew that by November 2nd when I could finally get to a store I might be quite out of luck ...

I had to go to three stores but I was able to get what I wanted. 

Because it is going to be the new year before we know it! Now that is a scary thought!

And yes, I was Ursula! 

Happy Monday everyone!

Halloween fun

We are spending Halloween at my daughter's beautiful house this year. She is supposed to get about 1,000 trick-or-treaters coming by. This will be her first year handing out candy; apparently she lives in "the" neighborhood. We are going "all out" with our costumes ... we will each be a character from The Little Mermaid. We spent hours making our costumes ...

And I may or may not be dressing up as Ursula the Sea Witch. He He He :)

I hope your day is filled with lots of fun and yummy treats ... Happy Halloween everyone!

Painted pumpkins, Fall flowers and a new chalk paint

It took me a while but I am embracing the change over to Fall - the colors that is (I am not loving the late sunrise and the early sunset!). 

I got out the paint brushes and had a little fun with some pumpkins this week. The warty ones are natural.

I used black spray paint, acrylic paint for the reddish-orange one and a new paint I found at Michael's for the blue one. It is by Americana Decor and is called Chalky Finish. It is similar to Annie Sloan's chalk paint and just like hers, there is no prep needed (my kind of paint!). 

It comes in a nice variety of colors and I found this chart that shows you how to custom mix even more colors:

I picked up a small 8 oz. jar of the color, Vintage, for $5.39 (40% off $8.99 with my downloaded phone coupon) and and used about a fourth of the jar to paint a chair I am working on for the wedding next month.

While the paintbrush was still wet I decided to throw some paint on one of the pumpkins I had. You can see it dried a bit more blue than the jar shows. 

I love that the blue is a pop of unexpected color ...

I used this paint for the gold stems.

I picked up some yellow Ilex to bring a little color inside the house too.

And this book came in the mail yesterday. You will LOVE it!

Ah, Fall. The year's last loveliest smile. 

Lindsay Letters

And it is Friday! That is definitely something to smile about. Happy weekend everyone!

Happy Halloween

I'm not a huge fan of Halloween decorating, especially the really scary ones (that's just me ... no offense to anyone else). Did you know that according to the Huffington Post, Americans spend around 8 BILLION dollars on Halloween. Yikes. Now that is really scary.

I did get kind of into it this year though... I brought out the paint.

Happy Halloween everyone!!! I hope whatever you do today, it is filled with childlike fun.  :D