Yes We Carve

Have you carved your pumpkins yet?
Yes We Carve is a website set up for Obama supporters to contribute their Obama related pumpkin art. There's even a contest to win an Ipod for the best one. Cool idea! A very unique confluence of politics, holidays, art, design, and pumpkins!
I love all these hopeful pumpkins, with the light shining through, and the happy people and pets pictured with them, very uplifting and inspiring.

Getting Spooky With Sacred Suzie

I was so happy to receive my halloween pendant in the mail from Sacred Suzie, she packaged it up with fun candy and a cute little pumpkin purse. (it is the tombstone shape with the ghost). I liked reading the packaging for the gummy mummy in French, heehee. Thanks Suzie, it is lovely and spooky and even cooler in person. And I'm having fun wearing it around and telling people it is international. She still has a few things left in her etsy store, so check it out.

The Big Read

“The Big Read is an NEA program designed to encourage community reading initiatives. Of their top 100 books, they estimate the average adult has read only six.”

Another book meme, from DebR of course!

I find that to be really sad. The average is only six. Hmmm, that seems like a really really low figure.

A lot of these we had to read in high school, so I find that hard to believe, maybe people didn't remember the names of the books they read way back when?

I noted the books that I've only seen the movie for, which is kind of sad in a way, sometimes if the movie is dreadful, it makes you want to avoid wasting more time on reading the book.

I have to admit I haven't heard of several of these books, which surprised me, I don't know if they're old or new and don't even recognize the author's names. And several of these I truly have no interest in reading. Looking over this list I see several books that I'd love to re-read too, it is always nice to be reminded of old book friends you haven't visited in a while.

Mark in bold the ones you’ve read.

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman (So pleased these books are included in this list!)

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller (I camped at the beach in Mexico where the movie was filmed)

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare (some, but not all of them!)

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveler’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis (why is this here, when #33 is the Chronicles of Narnia which include TLTWATW ??)

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini (I don't know if I can bring myself to watch the movie version)

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres (awful movie, made me not want to read the book)

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood (one of top 10 books Ever)

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan (really great movie!)

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel (great movie!)

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold (looking forward to the movie!)

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding (loved the movie)

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett (one of the most re-read of my childhood)

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola7

9 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro (saw the movie!)

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare (Hey! Wasn't the COMPLETE works already listed above? They could have put another book here in this spot!)

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

61 out of 100, what is that a C? Not toooo bad I guess. But there are several that I'm kind of embarrassed to admit that I haven't read as of yet. Lots better than the average of six though!

How about you, have you read many of these books??

Riddikulous and Unecessary

Most ridiculous Halloween decorating tool, ever:
The WebCaster Gun.
I just don't get the need for this, I have plenty of spiders working overtime for me outside already thankyouverymuch. Plus, how the heck do you ever clean up this plastic-y webby stuff once it is out there in your bushes and trees? Yuck.It isn't going to biodegrade on its own I'm guessing...

Thinking About Poverty Today

Blog Action Day is today October 15th. Tons of bloggers from around the world are participating in writing about poverty today. I hope that you'll enjoy what I've contributed and that you'll search out some other sources of information about the condition, cause, experience, or elimination of poverty and share them with me.

Thinking about the issue of poverty, I either just get too sad and thus paralyzed about it, or sometimes, I'll find something that is informative and energizing. Something that makes me get clear about my impact on the world, what I can change, what I as one person can do to help. This short film The Story of Stuff with Annie Leonard is one such thing. I really recommend watching it, it is 20 minutes long and I bet it will help clarify the situation for you and leave you feeling a bit more hopeful.
Educating ourselves and our children about the interconnectedness of poverty, global sutainability and environmental justice is the key here. We need to get the change ball rolling, no matter who is elected president!

One organization that has a complete curriculum prepared that you can buy for a teacher is Facing the Future. There are free downloads so you can see what type of lessons they are incorporating into the curricula. I'm going to ask at my children's schools if they would welcome something like this for their science and/or world history classes. I'm pretty sure they'll say they don't have time for it, as the time is taken up with "teaching to the test" from beginning to end of the school year. But maybe it would be something they could use. Worth asking at least.

I don't personally have a lot of contact with poverty in my day to day life. The poor are pretty well hidden in my community. The street people/homeless people asking for change downtown in Santa Cruz are about it really. But I know there are a lot of people around here that are living below the poverty level, I just don't see them as separate from the rest of us folks. Not seeing the poor makes it hard to even imagine that someone is having a hard time, living in this area of bounty and abundance, near all the fertile productive farm fields, the life-giving ocean. But it is expensive here, among the most pricey in the nation and there aren't a lot of housing options besides those expensive single family homes.

I wasn't even sure what the definition of poverty was these days, so I looked it up, as it is adjusted every year: $21,200 per year for a family of four. That's the federal standard definition of poverty. I can't even imagine how families can survive on that in California, or anywhere else. Or even one person for that matter, much less 4 people. The thought that there are families around me working hard, trying to make it on so little seems unreal because I don't know any personally. I'm not active in any organizations that work on local poverty issues. Maybe I should be! (duh, of course I should!)

Does Money=Happiness? I have this impression that we are the wealthiest nation on Earth, and simultaneously we're one of the most unhappiest nations. All our money has not gotten us what we need, it has only gotten us what we want (or are conditioned to think that we want from advertising!). All this striving and consuming isn't what is ultimately fulfilling for a human life. Plus the overconsumption and excess consumerism produced from it is definitely going to make life harder in the future for everyone. But maybe I'm completely wrong about that. I think it probably comes down to how you define happiness! When your definition of "enough" is met, then you're happy.

I think that we need to advocate here in our own country for going back to basics, where we agree that our government's main responsibility besides keeping the country safe, is to make policies that ensure that all citizen's basic needs are met. This should be a given. That no one is hungry, thirsty, un-sheltered, and has medical care. Why is this still an issue here in the US? And how can we possibly go around the world preaching to the poorer nations that they need to copy our ways of doing things when the basics aren't a given back home? Fixing up your own house before you fix your neighbors is what I'm thinking here. We need to get back to being a good example and helping out the poorer nations more than we do now!

There are lots of views from the left and right on whether the eradication of poverty is ever even possible or even a worthwhile goal to tackle. And much of what each view brings up is absolutely correct. I personally think that it is probably a practical impossibility to achieve the eradication of poverty. But there has got to be an effort from all of us that have more than enough to help those who haven't nearly enough. Organizations such as The One Campaign are definitely worth supporting. The UN Millenial goals are a big step towards that, and even those will be very hard to meet.

What about you? Do you think about the issue of poverty very much?

I know I'm very grateful to have the opportunity to be able to sit around and just think and write about this today. I acknowledge that there are a whole lot of people out there who are not able to do that.

Freaky not Spooky

Sunday I came upstairs with the intention of having a lie-down on my bed with my laptop.
I was just about to put it down on the bed when something moved.
Aieeeeeeee.
A gigantic lizard!
Alive!
On my bed!
He was just as surprised as I was I think. We eyed each other warily as I yelled my surprise. Luckily Alex came quickly and his eyes got very wide at the size of this guy. "I need something to pick him up with!" he went and got a sock to put over his hand. We have the unfortunate personal experience with alligator lizards and how hard they bit and how they don't ever want to let go (just like alligators) once they've bitten you. Just ask Zach or Alex as they've both had that traumatic experience.

Removal was quick and easy and we were a bit worried about him, was he injured? Or just stunned and scared? The cats love to hunt lizards, and this one had an obviously regrown tail. He didn't seem to have any visible injuries. He laid there on the deck barely breathing. Finally he started moving almost imperceptibly as I watched him. I took a movie of it because it was fascinating to see the order in which he moved his legs and his tongue moving in and out slowly.



He was calm enough to let me get this neat closeup
Then one of our cats came along, and I had to chase him off so he'd be safe, at least for a little while. Still don't know how he got in the house, did he really come in and climb up the stairs? Was he brought in by a cat? I don't think so because there weren't any bite marks on him. Very mysterious! Hope he stays out for a while, I've had enough of strange animals around here...

Shadows and Light

An early morning shot of the sun shining through the fog and trees. Kind of hopeful looking right? Now here is the spooky version after being put through the lomo-izer filter at dumpr Doesn't it look like the end is nigh, better turn back now, your best days are behind you. Pretty creep-i-fied.
An over-exposed yet happy shot of Zelda the Wonder Dog. Yes she was posing for me. And after the lomo-izing. Look at how the greens change, and how her muzzle becomes the same color as the sky. Lomography is pretty interesting, I think it might be something I want to investigate...The lens that creates the blurry, color instense effect was originally made in Russia, and the current versions are all Chinese made now. Apparently there are quite a few original Lomo cameras for sale on ebay and various models go for lots of $$$.

A sunny photo of Zelda the Wonder Dog on the driveway. I love the almost spirally tail shadow!And then here it is after being lomo-ized. See how purpley the shadows become? And the driveway becomes somehow ominous. And Zelda's fur becomes unreal looking.

Now I think I need to get that Lomo camera I saw for sale at Urban Outfitters. Just to see how it comes out compared to using this digital filter as a substitute. Better start another birthday list going!

Raccoon Party

I left one of my car windows down the other night and look what I found on my car hood in the morning. The raccoons went in my car by climbing up on the hood, stepping onto the rearview mirror and going in the open window. I imagine they immediately found the only edible thing in the car, a plastic baggie with trail mix, dragged it back out to the hood, chewed into it and ate everything except the raisins. I had no idea that raccoons don't like raisins, did you? Maybe it was just these particular raccoons, picky or something. Left behind a whole lot of muddy smeary tracks in and out of the car. Luckily they didn't mess up anything in the car like a friend of mine, whose brand new car had a similar occurence. The raccoons in her case ripped up the upholstery, headliner and carpets. All ruined! Luckily insurance covered it (amazing, huh?)!

Apple Surplus

We have too many apples around here.
I shouldn't complain, but I can only eat so many fresh apples.
They are taking over the kitchen.
They fill an entire drawer in the fridge.
They fill several big bowls out on the counter.
There are still more on the trees in my yard.

So what to make with them?

I'm not up to making applesauce (not this week, hopefully that will change soon), so I thought I'd bake something, that wasn't a pie.

I chose a cinnamon roll dough recipe from my breadmaker cookbook, it is a simple sweet dough recipe. I love making dough in the breadmaker, so easy. This dough turned out really lovely. I rolled it out into a big rectangle, and filled it up with sliced apples which had been mixed with cinnamon and brown sugar. Rolled it up into a big loaf pinching the edges closed. Brushed the top with a beaten egg, sprinkled some more cinnamon and sugar on top.
After baking, here is what it looked like. Pretty gigantic, and man did it ever smell good.

Here's what it looked like inside.

Yummmm.

Alex said "Mom this smells better than Cinnabon at the mall." High compliment indeed.

It only used up six apples though.

Halp!

Concrete-a-Palooza

Last Saturday was Concrete Day around the Stiller Compound. The long-awaited deck/patio is getting started. First step of the day is to fill up these holes with cement. Amazing Digger Marc used a pick to dig out the clay and rock,they're about 3 feet deep, he also made the wood forms, bent steel rebar and got the right tie-downs to use. Of course it hasn't rained in months, and when does it rain? The night before the cement is due to arrive. Cement of course needs to be kept damp for a while as it dries, but lots of rain would be a big problem (like filling up the holes with water as we try to fill them up with cement). A race with nature. I awoke to large clay footprints in the kitchen, followed them out into the backyard and there is the pit, awash in wet clay that has been tracked all over. Spike is here smelling it to make sure it is authorized. Zelda the wonder dog was locked up on the deck so she couldn't "help" as we struggled around with wheelbarrows full of wet cement.
We hung around drinking coffee waiting for the cement truck to arrive. We could hear a big truck driving around down the mountain (sound travels well early in the morning), and of course the driver was lost. Marc went down to town to lead him back home. Finally we heard the sounds of a big truck coming...The cement truck is here, the cement truck is here, joy in Whoville...

The two wheelbarrows stand at the ready, along with the worker bees. It is nice to have a big strapping teenager around to help out (costs in groceries though letmetellya). Once the cement is mixed, there are about two hours before it sets, as it took the guy an hour to get to our house, we were now racing against time.
Zach couldn't believe how excited his dad was about the cement truck. "Mom he is acting like a little kid." a little embarrassed, but still appreciating that it is nice to have a father that is both fun and funny.So here is one of the holes filled in with the cement (I was on shoveling duty), pieces of rebar are put into the hole for additional strength, the wood form is placed over the hole, filled up with cement, then the bent rebar is inserted through the steel tie-down and all the way down to the bottom of the hole. The upright posts for the deck will be attached there(eventually). Some people enjoyed getting down and dirty with the cement, using fingers to get it smoothed out on top.

At one point Zach ended up with one of his feet down in one of the holes. Unfortunately the hole was also filled with cement at that point. After lots of hollering, he washed it all off quickly. Not as much fun as stepping in mud, much grittier!
Here is what Marc's shoes looked like in the morning, absolutely coated in the incredibly sticky mud from our backyard. These are one of the pairs of shoes he wears to work. Why he doesn't change into sneakers when he works outside is well, one of the mysteries of the universe. I guess they were handy when he got going in the morning. And I hadn't gotten up yet to bug him to change. sigh. Well, the mud eventually came off. I spent about an hour washing off the driveway so it wouldn't get tracked into the house.

Pretty fun huh? Next up, laying down drain rock and rebar in the space where the patio will be
poured. Guess we better get going before the rain really starts and fills in the excavation Marc has worked so hard on.

Colors of the Season

We have this beautiful picture of a Japanese temple on our calendar this month. Aren't those maples gorgeous? The leaves on our mini-Japanese-maple haven't really started turning quite yet, although it is supposed to cool off the next few days so that may be coming soon. Contrary to most opinion, the leaves do change in California, we don't have the same trees in the same numbers as say Maine, but at higher elevations, where it gets cool enough, biology holds forth, and the color changes ensue.But, wait, here are some leaves that have definitely changed color recently, turning the corner, this brilliant red orange appears. No, you don't want to collect those leaves to display on your table at home, that's poison oak! You know it is almost Halloween when the poison oak turns colorful. It sure easier to avoid it when it is this stand-out color. It is still pretty green down by the river though. Soon, some of the overhanging trees will turn yellow and get very spooky and bare.

Halloween Houses In Progress

One day post-surgery, I'm back to posting spooky. The house is not decorated yet, and I'm not being allowed to do any decorating by certain care-taking husbands. I know he's right, but I'm dying to get those fun decorations out. I'm not able to carry the big boxes up from under the house, so unless I bribe some children, it will have to wait a couple days.

So I thought I'd show the Halloween quilt I've been working on for years now. I couldn't find it in my archives on the blog, so here are a bunch of pictures of what I've got so far.

I started out making house blocks of different varieties and have been adding other types of blocks as I go along. It is all kind of a big mish mosh, but there are lots of houses left to make. As I have two boxes of Halloween prints I need to use them for something don't I?

One of the paper-pieced houses. It is fun to fussy cut the prints to fall in the windows or doors. I like the spiders crawling across the front of the house. Some of the bigger scale prints don't work so well on a small house.
I really like this little one with the skeleton in the window.
So those are my houses so far. I think the paper pieced ones have turned out better, and I have a bunch printed off of EQ6 to make up this year. After I get back to some sewing, I'll show you what I come up with.

A New Fall Skirt

I recently found these two fabrics on the sale table at my local fabric store. They were marked down to $3 a yard. I thought they'd make a nice new skirt for fall having the brownish plum colors that I like to wear so much.I thought I'd try a different pattern that I'd never used, one with pockets this time around. The Park Bench pattern is quite simple, but when I tried it on the first time, ooh, it was just a little bit too tight. The pattern is mostly recommended for knits, it probably would have fit if I'd done it up in a knit. So I undid one of the side seams and added an insert of the contrast fabric. I think I like how it turned out. I missed having pockets on the other skirts I've made recently.

Topper Returns

One of my favorite ghostly bits from the 1941 black and white movie sequel Topper Returns( I used to watch the tv show Topper in re-re-re-re-re-runs based on the original and wonderful Cary Grant movie Topper).
And yes you do recognize the actress playing the wife, it is Billie Burke (aka Glinda from Wizard of Oz). Her voice is so very distinctive isn't it? "And Toto too"

And yes, it is weird that the husband and wife have separate bedrooms. Guess people who have lots of money (they have staff too) can do when you have more than a few rooms in your house.

The ghosts in this show and movies crack me up, they're corporeal when they feel like it, and do other unusual kinds of other non-ghostly stuff. A very wry, witty series and movies that I used to watch and wish I could wear the dresses and have fun ghost friends and have a St. Bernard just like them. They just don't make shows like this any more. More's the pity.

I think I'll check with my library to see if they have the dvd's available just for old time's sake.

I'll have to do another post with my favorite ghost-related movies!

Friday Cornucopia

Hooray for Friday! Stretch. (That's always Zippy's advice).

Time for a cornucopia post, of all those tidbits and items that weren't worthy of their own blog post. Because I say so.
First of all check out those claws on Zippy, he's my 13 year old cat. He keeps them very sharp by climbing up and down the redwoods.

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Feel like going to an auction but can't get out of the house just now? How about the Surface Design Association's They've got it all there, cloth, scarves, shawls sweaters, jewelry, books, videos, quilts.

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Want to have a book read to you by the author? I do, especially if it is Neil Gaiman (love his voice and writing). As part of his book tour for his latest, The Graveyard Book he is reading a chapter per stop on the tour, which are being videoed and posted. Cool idea!

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Another book I'm excited about is Gregory Maguire's A Lion Among Men, the third in his alterna-Oz series. The other two being Wicked and Son of A Witch.

I can't wait to see where he takes the familiar, yet new characters this time. The blurb says: "seen now through the eyes of the Cowardly Lion—the once tiny cub defended by Elphaba in Wicked. "

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A quilt that isn't a quilt. Huh? Digital Online Quilt Collaborative. Separate images all sewn together into one whole. There are some really interesting pieces here. Not quilt related at all though. They're using the word quilt in the sense of patching together pieces into a whole.

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A new set of products for preparing fabric to be printed by your ink-jet printer by Golden. Sounds pretty interesting, might be worth trying once I run out of Bubble Jet Set. Word is that it works much better and is more reliable than BJS. And of course Dick Blick carries it, don't they have absolutely everything?!

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I think I've got to make something for the Quilting Arts Magazine "Rock On" Challenge. Although I'm stuck on David Essex's "Rock On", hopefully I can get past it to make something a bit more creative.

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Another cool tool from BigHugeLabs is the Photo Fortune which serves up a random image chosen from Flickr along with a fortune cookie fortune or quote. Sometimes the photos seem to be an illustration of the quote or fortune, other times the juxtaposition is unintentionally hilarious.

BigHugeLabs also has a poster maker for Breast Cancer Awareness month, which is October, hey that's now! That's the one I made using a vintage ad for breast supporters.

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How about a challenge to art up a blank Skooba laptop case? Deb is considering organizing one, any interest out there?

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If you want to read my political thoughts and/or rants, I've begun posting over at Open Salon, which is a great community with interesting discussions about the issues of the day.

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Now onto the weekend! Have a good one.

September Pumpkins

Yesterday I showed you my outdoor pre-decor, now here is my inside pre-decor.

We just couldn't wait to get pumpkins, so when we saw a bin of them at the store a couple weeks ago, my son Zach and I snagged four that we liked. It was really funny how my heart soared with happiness to see all that orange in the grocery store. And when I looked at Zach he had the same silly happy grin. It doesn't take much to make us happy, which is a good thing isn't it?! These four beauties got us through the end of September until the big pumpkins become available. We always like trying to carve the smaller pumpkins, more challenging. I haven't tried to carve a mini pumpkin yet, maybe this is the year. One of these has a soft spot though, so it will get tossed off the deck into the forest. And then in a confusing holiday confluence, the local Kmart had
Summer,
BacktoSchool,
Halloween,
Thanksgiving
AND Christmas
products out on display, all in adjoining overlapping areas. I wish I had thought to take a picture, because now it is cleaned up, but wow, it was really disorienting walking through that store. Probably how I ended up with the eerie skull, which Alex took the black Sharpie to, it needed to be spookier he says... And my Monet enamel hinged witch hat box with spider dangle which I always have out and about in the house. It is just so little and perfectly formed that it makes me smile when I see it.

I need to find something to keep in there, but the space is really really small. Maybe one of the beads I have that look like eyes....That would be good and spooky wouldn't it?

Self Portrait Challenge - Mirrors

The theme for this month on Self Portrait Challenge is mirrors.

At the doctor office yesterday for my pre-op appointment, I took advantage of the nerve-filled waiting time between nurse and doctor by taking some pictures. Thankfully I had my camera put away by the time the doctor popped in, although I suppose it would be easy to explain. No I'm not an undercover reporter documenting doctor's offices nefarious practices...just an obsessed photo taking blogger...

Sitting there, I noticed how mirror-like the paper towel holder was across from the exam table. I like the distortion, the not quite accurate reflection of myself, and also the internal frame caused by the raised rectangular design. I was pleased to be able to capture myself without having the camera showing. That almost always ruins an otherwise good mirror shot (to my eyes at least). The exam room has windows on two walls with a mirror in between, so this looks kind of neat with the dark window frame dividing up the picture. The morning light in the trees is beautiful too.

Pre Decorated

I really love decorating for the season, especially Halloween. I'm gearing up for getting it done this weekend, but I thought I'd show you what is already there, before I even begin. I'll admit it, it has been there all year. So this isn't truly decorating, just part of the normal house decor at this point. First of all is a witch broom. Zach used this as part of his Harry Potter costume years ago, but it has hung around. It was formerly stored in the garage with the Halloween costume box. Ever since we started construction it has been bouncing around the front yard in various places. But it has been in the flag holder bracket for quite a while. I stuck it there to get it out of the way so it wouldn't get busted up too much. And there it has stayed. I like walking under it as I come into my front door.
Here is a cool picture of it against the clouding up sky. It is actually supposed to rain this weekend. Which would be good I guess. I think this picture makes it look like my house is flying on the broom. I suppose it would like that. Maybe not though, not all houses have wanderlust, thank goodness.
The other perma-decoration is the gigantic grapevine wreath my mom made for me from her grape trimmings. It is kind of an oval, pretty loosely woven with lots of spaces to tuck stuff in. Last year I filled it up with bay leaves for the winter holidays, it looked really pretty, but of course has turned brown and decrepit just in time for Halloween. Doesn't it look spooky? I hadn't noticed that until today. The Indian corn is from some Thanksgiving decorations that got ruined by water spillage during construction, so I stuck them in there for more "atmosphere".

I was thinking I'd burn the dried out bay leaves as part of a Samhain fire ritual. If it is safe to have a fire by that point, that is.

Post Spooky

Laume (aka The Queen of Halloween) has a cool idea to Post Spooky this month of October (oh my goodness already?!). If you're interested go check it out and sign up and get spooky with us during this fun season. To start off, here is my all time favorite oldie but goodie Silly Symphony Skeleton Dance:

Nice Niece Still Needs New Quilt

Finally up to assembling the backing for my niece's quilt. I feel like such a slow poke, taking so long to get to this stage, but I'm staggering as fast as I can, I swear. I'm finally having long-delayed minor surgery on Monday morning, so hopefully I'll be more comfortable and able to sit and quilt and move around better. Fingers crossed.

Anyways, the four colors on the left, purple, blue, pink and green are all a nice cozy flannel, found on fabric.com. I liked how they weren't quite solids, slightly mottled. For a bed quilt I find it really nice to use flannel as a backing. Sure it is a little stretchy, but the softness is worth the extra work that it takes to quilt it.
The darker pink on the right is the fabric I'll be using for the binding. Now all I have left to do besides the layering and quilting is to decide which type of batting to use, I better ask how warm they want this quilt to be. Usually I'd pick warm and natural cotton, but they might want something else. I've never tried a wool, silk or the new bamboo batts all of which might be a good alternative. The nicest thing I used for a bed quilt was polar fleece, now that was hard to quilt, especially since I used a flannel backing too, talk about stretchy! But they are the softest, warmest, cuddliest quilts I've made so far.