(Inside A Black Apple)

Boo!

Happy Halloween, everyone!

Our BYOP Party was a big success.
I got all of my baking done, and I think everyone had a nice, cozy time.

(A little blurry, but you get the picture). I baked pumpkin spice muffins, spinach/goat cheese tarts, orange macaroons/macarons, and sugar cookie ghosts and pumpkins.

The little ghosties might look familiar...I bent a "regular" ghost cookie cutter into a "Black Apple ghost" shape. I painted their faces on with mixed food coloring and very small brushes.
Do you see how I seem to have cut just one backwards? So this photo looks like a mob of ghosts ganging up on this one little guy.

Agh! A casualty!

The photo leaning against the candleabra above on the left got a lot of attention last night...the story on that weird possession is that it was a "white elephant" gift at a Christmas party in college. I fought so hard for that photo. If you click to enlarge it, you can see the ghost-lady in the front.

We realized as we were stringing up a few decorations that our house doesn't really need much to get very Halloween-ish very fast.

Josiah reprised his cool folded paper skulls from last year, and I sewed together a garland of black leaves. I like how they look a little like paper dolls, folded out with joined arms.

From the left, these guys are Josiah's gruff albino, Alicia's jolly little fellow, and Ashley's amazing mopey one.

These are (from left) my wonky, "Meatwad"-ish one, Dave's jolly giant, Trina's elegant + fancy tree, and Drew's winking (and bloodthirsty) fella.

Lucy's was amazing and also kinda gross (that's "earwax", suggested by the youngest member of our party and art director of Lucy's pumpkin, young Eliot).

Aw, everyone looks so happy. Many excellent pumpkins were carved and lit, lots of cookies were eaten, and lots of cider (spiked and otherwise) kept hands warm.

Thanks for wading through all these photos with me!
Today I'm spending time with my favorite pumpkin:

...and his pops. We will watch scary movies, dress up, and get dinner...and hopefully be paid visits by some trick-or-treaters.

Enjoy your day and night, and watch out for ghosts!

PS: If you want some spooky movie suggestions, here's my Halloween Movie picks post from last year. We re-watched Eyes Without a Face on Wednesday night and, damn, that is a crazy-good movie.

xoxo

Picnic Area E

Lately we have been making Laurelhurst Park our home-away-from-home.  One of our favorite things to do is grab soup/salad or sandwiches from somewhere close by and head over there to draw and write. I've been hard at work for the last few weeks doing drawings and planning for a project that isn't quite in the "talk about it" stage yet, so it's nice to get out and do that work in the fresh air, rather than stay cooped up at home. So, "Picnic Area E" is my office.

The weather has been boundlessly perfect in Portland. I had no idea the Fall would be so golden and crisp and lovely...and it has been a daily surprise to see just how beautiful it is!

That San Pelligrino Lemon (and Orange) soda is a current obsession. I looked everywhere for it, and finally found it at the Safeway! So much for the fancy grocers for highfalutin' soda needs.

My lovely "office-mate" (and a large dog that looks like a sheep).

Golden, crunchy leaves, please stay forever!

A Little Halloween Present for You

Hello, Ghostlets! Thanks for all the nice words about the my silhouette room...you guys are so sweet.
I have a little Halloween-ish present for you, and I figured that the time is drawing nigh to use them so I better hop to sharing it!

It's a Halloween card, so free to print out as many as your heart desires for yourself, or maybe for your little ones to give to friends. Do kids even do that? Give each other cards on non-Valentine holidays? I think I did, but I was a strangeling.

It prints two to a sheet of standard 8.5"x11" paper, at full-bleed.
Click to download the high-res PDF, and print, print away! I recommend cardstock or matte photo paper, something nice and sturdy.

This is how I used mine:

They're invites for a BYOP Pumpkin Carving party!

I made a little ghost enclosure to inform the recipients of the particulars.

I had visions of jointed invitations like these Martha ones, but I didn't end up going that route. I'm still itching to make some jointed things...if not for Halloween, maybe I'll get to the store and buy some brads before Christmas?

A Sleepy Silhouette Room

I realized I still had not shown photos of the rest of our dollhouse! I'll get the whole thing photographed one day. Last night I was showing the collection in this simple, peaceful new bedroom to Amy, 'cause I knew she'd dig them. And then I thought: "I should really blog about these".

So.
Here is our new bedroom. And many, many silhouettes:

It's a really small room with very slanted ceilings, so it's pretty much just got the bed + nightstands in it. I think I like it that way. 

If you're wondering what the weird "bucket" thingie is on my side of the bed (the left), it's a receptacle that is meant to hold fireplace wood. I keep my books in it, so they aren't strewn about the floor so badly.

I really wanted this room to be a little less child-like than our last bedroom, so I kept it spare, but with what I like to think are grown-up goth touches. Like the goth plaster deer. The pretty Victorian ladies pillow is from this rad Etsy shop.

I wanted to do a cluster of silhouettes in this room. I can't claim that I invented this idea, because although I thought that the idea had just sprung into my mind when I started work on it, it later came back to me that I think I saw this in Blueprint (RIP). I collected all these silhouettes from thrifting and Ebay-ing. I only wanted silhouettes that seemed to be of actual people (not the decorative, idealized kind), and I have some real gems.

This shows you two of my favorites, the pipe man and the cro-magnon-browed little girl in the wooden frame to his left.

This one is my other favorite. And this one.