Halloween Crafts

**Warning! This post might be very picture heavy, but it will be worth it. I promise!**

About a month ago my wonderful husband and I started to work on Halloween projects in preparation of the upcoming holiday. We love Halloween. I mean, LOVE!! It should come as no surprise to most people who know us, really. Our apartment is completely decked out in Halloween decorations that would put most houses to shame. We just love the decorations, the festiveness (I think I may have made that word up, but just go with it), and the opportunity to do something fun to take our minds off our "normal" problems. I wanted to show you the Halloween crafts we made to make the holiday even more fun.

We made some Halloween jars with a variety of labels on them and placed them on a shelf in our kitchen. We filled them with various objects, and have had a blast looking at them, using them, and seeing them sit on the shelf. Here are a few pictures of them. James made the labels and I put them on the jars.

Go ahead and click on any of the pictures to make them larger and see them in more detail. These were so fun (and quick) to make. James' favorite is the Ghost in a Bottle that has eyes in the back, and mine is the Dragon Tears that you can shake. They are cool, if I do say so myself.

Another project we did was for our mini Halloween graveyard. I purchased these Styrofoam gravestones about six years ago to use at a Halloween party my brother and I had. Since then those gravestones have been pretty much everywhere. I used them at work a couple of times, as well as put them in a variety of locations in my home. Then James started to really get into creating this mini tabletop graveyard and that became their new home. With all the putting up and taking down they got kind of used, so we traced the shape of them and James cut them out wood and I painted them. Now they are totally durable and can be used for years to come.

It looks like I am a master painter, huh? Not so my friends! Do not be deceived. I had two sets of the graveyards. We cut them in half and glued them to the wood shapes, and then glued them to wood bases. If you look closely, you can see where the original gravestones and the wood ones don't quite match up. Not that I want to willingly point out the flaws, but I seriously do not want to disappoint people with my mad gluing skills. I'm just sayin'.

The next project I did was for friends of our. I wanted to make them a special Halloween gift they could use in their own home. They were coming over to help us decorate, so I started working on this first, but it was pretty time consuming what with all the painting and drying. Still, it was so much fun and I was so pleased with the way it turned out. It was an idea I got from Martha Stewart, and it's candy corn garland. I made the candy corn shapes out of foam blocks, and used baking wrappers for the candy pieces in between. Then we strung it up on some fancy string and gave it to them. They loved it and I have no doubt it will be loved and used in their home.

While I was working on all the painting and gluing, James was working on a project himself. James likes to paint, and he does a really good job of it. He decided he wanted to create a picture of pumpkins on a silver tray using oil paints. And create it he did! I am so impressed with his talent, and even more excited to have it added to our collection of Halloween items. It looks awesome!! He is working on building a frame for it, and once that's done we'll have the complete picture. It still looks really good on the wall right now.

I saw an idea online for a Halloween wreath that I thought looked so great, and I really wanted to try it for myself. I know my mom is going to love this one. It's a fabric Halloween wreath made from a bunch of fabric pieces. We got some fabric, cut it up into pieces, then tied it to a metal wreath. I have to admit that I didn't really like the look of it as I was tying all the pieces on, but after I was done it looked much better. Then we loosely wrapped some rich orange ribbon around the wreath and added some black and orange balls on it. We thought that would be it because it was so beautiful and we both really liked it, but then James found this wonderful little sign painted orange with gold glitter that said "Halloween" and we added that to the middle with some fishing wire. After that, we stood back and admired our work. We loved it. I'm excited to try one for Christmas.

Close up of some of the detail. You can see the different patterns of fabric we used.

And the last project we worked on for Halloween was something that is dear to my heart. When I was a kid my grandma sent us a set of these adorable Halloween ceramic figurines that had glowing and blinking red eyes. They were awesome! My brothers and sisters and I were quick to pick our favorite and claim it was "ours". We played with those figurines so many times that eventually they eyes stopped blinking and stopped turning on. We still loved them, though. Fast forward twenty or so years and my mom handed them down to me so I could display them in my own home. I didn't get a chance to try and fix them last year, so my one goal was to get them working. That, however, proved to be more difficult than I thought since technology has advanced so quickly since then and the pieces I had were so archaic people were scared when we showed them the pieces. I eventually turned to my dad for help. He is really good at trying to figure out how things work and how to repair items, so I knew he could help me. He's been working on them for several weeks now, and I am happy to report that they work! They are blinking again! Well, most of them are. Out of eight pieces, there were two or three that had to be completely rebuilt and they don't blink, but I'm just so happy to have these pieces working again. Everyone who has seen them has fallen in love with them. They really are cool. So to end my picture happy post today, I've included the pictures below. The video I had isn't working properly, so once I get it fixed I'll upload it for you all to see them blinking. They are so cool! I know my family will remember these pieces...and try to fight me for them. :) Enjoy!!

Before the lights were turned on. These are not all of them.

And now with the lights on. The wolf/cat and the mummy were the ones we had to replace.

Stronger

I saw a quote about a week ago that said, "Sometimes people cry not because they are weak, but because they have been strong for too long." I smiled a small smile when I saw that because I thought it was a fair quote. Then I started thinking about it and I thought it could use a little revamping. It should say, "Sometimes people cry not because they are weak, but because they have been strong for so long." That was me yesterday.

I don't think I've had to fight for something so hard before in my life. There were things I had to struggle through, and times when I needed to work hard for something, but this has been a serious fight for me and some people may think I'm crazy doing everything I've been doing to try and get some answers, some clarification, and someone to help me figure it out. Health issues are always a challenge, but when you spend 90% of your time trying your absolute best to figure out what the problem may be, it can become exhausting. Yesterday I went to have a neck ultrasound done as a part of the follow-up care to the thyroid cancer. The test was difficult only because of the crazy stretched out position they always put my neck in, in order to get the best results. You'll be happy to know the test came back as clean, and so other than a slight increase in the Synthroid dosage I take each day, and an elevated thyroglobulin level (which means there is still thyroid tissue and thyroid cancer somewhere in my body but no other test can find it), I am not expected back to the endocrinologist for another three months. One area down, another yet to go.

As I was driving back home from the test yesterday, I had a mini break down in my car. It wasn't anything too bad. I could still drive on the freeway and everything, but it was tiring nonetheless. Sometimes I try so hard to be so strong and brave and face whatever tests and medicine and doctors I need to face, and I do really well for a while. Then, in the small moments of quiet thought I break down a little bit and get it out of my system. It's hard doing all this stuff. Sometimes I just need to cry.

Today I went to yet another doctor's appointment for an unrelated issue that has consumed my world for the past four years now, and caused me such heartache. I am hopeful this doctor will help me to figure out what this issue is. I'm not going to go into detail as to what is going on, but suffice it to say that it has been such a struggle. And it still is. I'm hopeful this doctor can help me figure this out. I'm trying to remain strong. I'll do whatever it takes to get this figured out, and I'll let you know if they find anything this time. Thanks for staying with me. You have no idea how much writing all this out helps me to cope. Thank you.

A Bountiful Harvest Indeed

We are in the final week of our garden this season, and we have had so much fun. We've been able to watch the garden grow and produce so many wonderful things in just a little over five months. Plants are amazing, and we have loved growing a garden. We hope to be able to grow one again next year and have already begun talking about what we want to plant.

Last week the weather turned cold, so we went and harvested almost everything. We'll be finishing up the last of it this weekend. Here are some of the items we harvested:

Look at all our wonderful tomatoes. Some of them were red and ripe, but since it was so cold and the garden was no longer being watered, we decided to pick them. We'll see if there are any more left (or that have since grown) when we go back out for the final time this weekend, but this is quite an impressive haul. We counted them all and there was a total of 450 tomatoes!! They are all different sizes, but James' mom is letting them ripen at her house and will be canning them into spaghetti sauce. Thank you, mom!! :) You can also see some of our watermelons in the picture, too. They weren't fully developed, but still so cute. I'm impressed they grew so well since we planted them later. Next year we'll plant them earlier.

These are the pumpkins and the sunflowers we were able to harvest. There were eight pumpkins total (nine counting the one we picked a couple of weeks ago that is currently sitting amongst our Halloween decorations). James is so excited about these. He can hardly wait to carve them and I can hardly wait to make them into pumpkin pies. We'll see how well they turn out. I'll be sure to let you know. Also, the sunflowers did so amazingly well that I feel like a proud parent! They not only survived some of the toughest conditions I have seen, but thy thrived! And just when we thought they were done, we find hundreds upon hundreds of seeds in them that we get to pick and roast. We need to let them dry out a bit more, but we've already taken the seeds out of two of them and we have a big wooden bowl half way full. We till have seven more sunflower heads to harvest seeds from. I'll be sure to post pictures once we have them all done.

The two pumpkins sitting in the grey planter are the from actual Jack-O-Lantern plant we planted. The rest of the ones on the deck are from the Triple Treat plant that we will be able to use for pies, to eat the seeds, and to carve for Halloween as well. It's so fun to look out on our balcony and see these vegetables sitting there, waiting for us to do something with them. It makes us happy.

Well, that's all for now. Like I said, we'll be making our final trip to the garden on Saturday to harvest the few remaining items (like the horse radish) and then that will be it until next year. I wonder what the garden will look like this weekend.