Friday, November 3, 2017

Celebrate the Small Things


This was a big week for celebrations! Halloween, Day of the Dead, Book Giveaway. Lots of stuff going on. But first, let me thank the host of this blog hop: Lexa Cain and her cohosts: L.G. Keltner and Tonja Drecker!

Tuesday through Saturday, I'm offering my collection, Heart Stopper and Other Stories, for free on Amazon. If you like character-driven spooky stuff written under the influence of years of reading and rereading Stephen King, please check it out. 




Halloween is one of our favorite holidays, and we go all out on decorations, pumpkin carving, and costumes. Here is a spooktastic gallery of goodies and some (fake) gore. Enjoy!



I started decorating Halloween morning. We like to put up our big spider, spider lights, spider webs, and this year we added caution tape for extra festivity.

Every member of the family gets a pumpkin to carve and we do buy carving kits and tools. We also scour the internet for cool ideas. This year, Sedona decided on a toothsome fright face along with some ketchup blood splashed about and an old baby shoe. Influenced by Stephen King's It perhaps? (Not that she's seen the movie. She's only 13!)




My husband went with this headless horseman stencil from a kit, but he added a unique twist. Can you guess what it is?





Yep, that horse has a horn. Now why would the headless horseman ride a unicorn? I have no idea. Micada wanted a spooky owl:



Hooty-Hoot!


I opted for a carving I found online titled, Midnight in the Graveyard, with some slight modifications. I love the zombie clawing his way out of the ground on the bottom.




Our orthodontist lives across the street, so my husband had the lovely idea of carving her a very special pumpkin and delivered this to her doorstep:





For costumes, I swore I would do no sewing after spending all of October 2016 putting together a spooky wolf and the Cheshire Cat. Never again! Well, that didn't quite work out. Micada's spooky spirit was pretty easy. Less than half an hour of sewing and cutting was needed and she did her own makeup! 


The one time when red eye enhances the picture.




She scared up a ton of candy this year:



Nom, nom, nom


Sedona wanted to dress up Steampunk, inspired by a character on this year's Escape the Night video series by Joey Graceffa. That took and day and a half of sewing, but the results were totally worth it. 

We bought the skirt at Spirit Halloween and she found a rust-colored, long-sleeved shirt.




I cut the shirt down the front and then sewed on a (fake) leather corset, gears, a chain, and lace on the bodice and sleeves.



She also bought a cool steampunk hand thingamajig and the gear heart necklace (see above).





Believe it or not, Sedona also did her face all by herself with stickers, eyelash glue, and small gears. So cool.





Happy Halloween, y'all!





28 comments:

  1. Great pumpkins and I’ll have to check out your stories!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. And your daughter’s outfit is classic, you all seem to go all out on Halloween.

      Delete
  2. The costumes and decorations are great! Yes, I like that pumpkin with the shoe. Nice touch. Now, pass the candy.

    ReplyDelete
  3. How awesome!! I love the pumpkin with braces...and the foot. Perfect!! And the candy is in such neat piles. Impressive.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Awesome costumes!!!! Have a nice weekend.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Very fun! The neighbor's pumpkin with braces made me laugh out loud. :)

    ReplyDelete
  6. You and your family are too cool lady. The pumpkins were great, the kids looked wonderful and man what decorations.

    I want to download your book but pay you too. I am assuming you are fixing to deliver another book. I may have your book on Kindle. No offense, if you see what I want to read, you would probably hide. HeHeHe, in the spirit of Halloween.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I do have enough short stories to publish another collection, but selling such a collection isn't easy. I might try to submit them to other venues first.

      Delete
  7. Fantastic pumpkins. Your stories sound interesting, too. I started teaching my weekly Art Class on Thursday, and our subject was Day of the Dead — sugar skulls. (It's great to be back with the kids. They are so focused on art!)

    ReplyDelete
  8. We used to go all out with decorations and pumpkins like that. You did a great job.

    ReplyDelete
  9. What fun at your house! The girls are cute:)
    And the orthodontist pumpkin....priceless.

    ReplyDelete
  10. Goodness, that is an impressive lot of Halloween celebrations. Hope it went well! Halloween is not as big here as it is there, but we do have little trick or treaters going around the houses. And I have a niece born on the day who declares she isn't scared of anything!
    To Rewrite Or Not To Rewrite - That Is The Question

    ReplyDelete
  11. Pumpkin carving has become an art. This year I saw more really cool pumpkins that people must have spent a lot of time making them.

    ReplyDelete
  12. Wow! That is a creative Halloween! Love all the decorations, carvings and costumes.

    ReplyDelete
  13. Halloween's my favorite holiday, too. I missed it this year. Drat! But I was off taking a vacation, so that made Trick-or-Treating impossible. Loved your pumpkins!

    ReplyDelete
  14. Those pumpkins look awesome. I never had the patience for the carving bit, but I LOVED ripping out the guts.

    ReplyDelete
  15. Sedona's jack-o-lantern is really creepy.

    ReplyDelete
  16. That's awesome!! Great decorations! I wish Australia was as into it as America!

    http://tropicalcolours.blogspot.com.au

    ReplyDelete
  17. Looks like you guys had a great time! I love the pumpkins. Personally, I tried something new this year and tried to burn smudge sticks in my pumpkins to give them a cool smoking effect...I ended up making a demon pumpkin that was on fire and had to be put out. haha

    ReplyDelete
  18. Wow! That's all awesome. Great carving even if you did have stencils. The girls look great.

    ReplyDelete
  19. Yay, you posted pics of the pumpkins! I was hoping you would. Your house and kids' costumes look great.

    I particularly love the Steampunk one, as I have a thing for Steampunk. And her face! Wow, that's so lovely and creative. She did an amazing job.

    ReplyDelete

I will do everything in my power to visit commenter's blogs unless I've been abducted by aliens or my children get sick. (If my children get abducted by aliens, I will be very busy, of course, catching up on my sleep.)