Pretzel Friends Clay Earrings

Love snacks?  These adorable clay pretzel friends earrings may be just for you.  I made these as a last minute craft idea to match the Food Friends dress Brian made for me (see pictures below).  If you'd like a Food Friends dress, leggings, or skirt of your own, Brian is selling them in his shop, Wayton Designs.  You can also follow him @wayton.designs on Instagram to be the first to know about his latest designs.

I have a tutorial explaining how I made these earrings at the bottom of this post, so if you want to get straight to that, skip to the end.  But first, I have some pretzely photos I wanted to share with you.

Pretzel Friends Photos

Here I am wearing the pretzel friends earrings and Food Friends dress, with an actual pretzel on hand for the photos.

Here you can see the earrings a little better.  They're pretty eyecatching in my opinion.

And one last picture with our pretzel friends.  Now on to the tutorial.

Pretzel Friends Clay Earrings Tutorial

Materials:

*Oven bake clay

*Brown acrylic paint

*Black acrylic paint

*White acrylic paint

*Pink acrylic paint

*Ultra fine nail art brush

*Nail art dotting tool

*Ear wires

*Jump rings

*Jewelry pliers

*Acrylic sealer (optional)

Directions:

*Roll out clay into a long, thin strip.

*Shape the strip of clay into a pretzel.

*Carefully push jump rings into the tops of the pretzel shapes.

*Bake according to the directions on the clay packaging.  Remove from the oven and let cool.

*Once cool, it's time to paint the earrings.  If you used any color of clay other than brown, the first thing you'll want to do is paint the earrings brown.  If your clay is already brown, then move on to the next step.

*Now it's time to paint the face.  Use a dotting tool and black paint to create two eyes and the ultra fine nail art brush to create a mouth.

*Use the dotting tool and pink paint to create pink cheeks.  Let dry.

*Use the nail art brush and a tiny bit of white paint to add white highlights to the eyes.  This step was really tricky for me, as I had to hold the pretzel inside my focal length to do it, which made the image I was seeing a little blurry.  Feel free to skip this step if you're happy without the white highlights.

*Use the nail art brush and white paint to paint on salt crystals.  Let dry.

*Optional: Once the paint is dry, you can seal it with an acrylic sealer to protect the paint from chipping.

*Use the pliers to open the bottom of the ear wires.  Loop one ear wire through each earring and clamp shut with the pliers.

Tombstone Valentine's Chocolates

If you saw last week's post on repurposing a Valentine's chocolate box to give it a spookier touch, you may be wondering what you should fill your creepy chocolate box with.  Why not make some tombstone chocolates?  If you don't have any spooky molds on hand, keep an eye out around Halloween season.  I got the silicone tombstone molds I used from this project from Joann this past fall.

Materials:

*White chocolate baking chips
*Black candy melts
*Silicone tombstone molds
*Microwavable bowl
*Spoon

Directions:

*Pour some white chocolate baking chips into a microwavable bowl and add some black candy melts.  The black candy melts can be pretty overpowering, color-wise, so I'd recommend only putting in about a quarter as much of the black candy melts as you did the white chocolate.

*Microwave for about 1 minute, then take out and stir.  The candy melts and baking chips will likely not be completely melted yet.

*Pop back in the microwave for another 40 seconds, and then pull out and mix.  My chocolate was completely melted at this point in time, but if yours isn't, pop it back in for another 30 seconds.  Be careful not to over microwave, though, or the chocolate will harden up and won't pour correctly.

*Pour melted chocolate into molds.  Tap against a hard surface to minimize air bubbles and get the chocolate into the crevices of the mold.

*Freeze for 10 minutes.

*Pull the chocolate out of the freezer and pop it out of the molds.  Now you've got some spooky candy for yourself, or to give to someone special.

Alice in Wonderland Wedding Cake Toppers

     Even before COVID, when I was planning a much fancier iteration of my wedding, I had thought about using Little Debbie snack cakes during my reception.  Maybe not at the main cake (although I wasn't opposed to that idea), but I thought about having a couple of cake stands with different Little Debbie treats for my guests to enjoy.  Also, this is not sponsored.  I just love snack cakes, which shouldn't come as too much of a surprise, given my Christmas crafting last year.
     Which is why, when I realized we were going to have to majorly scale back the in person component of our wedding, I wasn't upset to make the switch to Little Debbie Fancy Cakes.  We wanted to have something prepackaged, so that our handful of in person guests wouldn't have to worry about other people coming into contact with their food.  Snack cakes seemed like the perfect option, and if you're having a wedding or another celebration during COVID, I'd definitely recommend going the individually packaged cake route.
     I made two types of cake toppers: a couples set for Brian and me (pictured above) and "Eat Me" toppers for our guests.  It was a fun little touch to make snack cakes feel a little more personal.  I did a video tutorial for the "Eat Me" toppers, which I'll include below, and this post has a written tutorial for the couples (Alice and the Hatter's Hat) toppers.  If you're going for more traditional couples toppers (e.g., bride and groom, bride and bride, spouse and spouse, etc.), you may need some different clip art, but the construction process would be similar.  These toppers could be great not only for weddings, but also for Alice in Wonderland themed parties, and with the right clip art, you could use this technique to make toppers to fit any party theme.

Couples Cake Topper

Materials:

*Medium to heavy weight white paper
*Computer and printer
*This Autumn in Wonderland clip art pack
*This Alice in Wonderland clip art pack
*Toothpicks
*School glue
*Scissors

Directions:

*Open up the Alice or other clip art design of your choosing.  The Autumn in Wonderland pack offers Alice with three different hair colors and two skin tones, but there may be other clip art packs that have an image or symbol that you like better.

*Copy the image and paste it into a word document.

*Shrink the image until it is the size that you would like your topper to be.

*Copy the image and flip it horizontally, so that you have your image in its original orientation and now a second image that is the mirror image of the first.

*Print out the images.

*Cut out the images.  You can either cut close to the images, as I did, or leave a border around them.  Leaving a border will require less precision, and you can always decorate the edges if you'd like.

*Glue the toothpick to the blank side of one of the images.  Glue the other image to the back of the first, blank sides together.

*To make the second topper, repeat the steps above with the hatter hat clip art, or another image of your choice.  Note that when you mirror the hatter hat, the 10/6 will be backward.  This means that when placing the hatter hat on your cake, you'll want to pay attention to which side is facing outward.

My Halloween Party 2019 and New Halloween Trophies

     This past Saturday, Brian and I held our annual Halloween party.  It's been a busy week, so things were a little rushed, but I still had fun, and I hope our guests did as well.  Here's a rundown of our party, plus a look at this year's Halloween trophies.  For more party ideas, check out my 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014 party posts, as well as my X-Files, Goosebumps, and The Shining themed birthday party posts.

Snacks

     Due to time constraints, food crafting took a bit of a backseat once again this year.  We had pizza and soda as the main party foods.  However, we did get around to making some spooky cupcakes this year.

     For these bloody cupcakes, we used Funfetti cupcake mix.  Brian made his classic vanilla icing (scroll to the bottom of this post for the recipe).  For the fake blood, I took sea salted caramel sauce and added red food coloring.  I then used a spoon to drizzle it over the cupcakes.

     If you're looking to plan a Halloween party, but are in a bit of a time crunch, I would definitely recommend making bloody cupcakes.  They look spooky, but take very little time to make.  If you're really in a pinch, you could pick up premade cupcakes and add some caramel sauce fake blood to them.  For other Halloween food and drink ideas, check out this post.

Outdoor Decor

     While the outdoor setup was largely the same as last year, I did have a couple additional elements of the setup.  Above you can see a picture of the front door, which, if you've seen last year's post, should look pretty familiar.  Here's how I made the Wayton Manor sign.  The doorbell, which is hanging up on the door, came from Target.  It looks like Target no longer has the exact same doorbell, but they do have a similar one.

     Next up we have the cemetery.  Five of the stones I made.  You can find the tutorials here, here, here, and here.  You can't really see it well in this picture, but I placed my eerie bouquet in front of Emma Lewis's stone.  My cemetery angel is also hanging out in the back of the cemetery against our maple tree's pot.  The fencing, a couple of the stones, and some of the bones came from a cemetery kit I got from Target a few years back.

     My "Beware of Werewolf" setup made a return again this year.

     Now for the new stuff.  While I unfortunately was unable to keep the larger pieces of my Alice in Halloweenland setup from last year (shown in last year's party post, although you'll have to scroll a little to find it), I did hold onto the skel-a-mingos as well as the clay mushrooms.  I decided to add in my zombie garden gnomes for the start of a haunted garden setup.  This was thrown together last minute, so given that, I think it worked out fine.  I would like to expand on this next year, if I have the time.

     Lastly for the outdoor decor, I gave the haunted artifact prop its own space.  I found a handful of the broken pottery shards and plopped them down in front of the sign.  This one isn't one of my favorite setups, but it is a good way to reuse a broken plant pot.

Indoor Decor

     This is what the overall indoor layout looked like.  A lot of the pieces are the same as last year, although the layout was a bit different.  We rotated the couch to open up the space a bit.

     Here's the wall of lenticulars plus my haunted mirror.

     And here's some of my Stephen King DVD art, along with a false window I made that I haven't written about yet on this blog.

     There's the couch, which I covered in creepy cloth again.  You can find out how to make the eyeball throw pillow in this post, and the zombie pin up girl throw pillows in this post.

     Here's my potions shelf.  I have tutorials for most of the items on this shelf, including my creepy rag doll, my Pet Sematary inspired potion bottles, the "monster blood" (which did not fare as well as I had hoped it would in storage), the spell book on the lowest shelf (you have to dig through this post a bit to find the instructions), my gingerbread zombie, our Halloween 2017 "best couples costume" trophy, various potion bottles, the nebula in a bottle (which actually fares pretty well in storage.  I just have to add water each Halloween), my spooky faced candle, our Halloween 2016 "best couples costume" trophy, the alien parasite, and our Halloween 2018 "best couples costume" trophy.

     The last major indoor setup was the creepy doll shelf.  You can find how to make the dolls in this post.  Brian knocked over the middle doll last year and broke her, but luckily that only adds to the creepiness of the setup.
     I also decorated the bathroom as room 217 in The Shining again this year, although I forgot to take pictures.  If you haven't already, you can check out last year's Halloween party post to get an idea of what it looked like.

My Creepy Doll Costume

     I'm excited to present to you my enchanted porcelain wind up doll Halloween costume.  I'll be posting tutorials for the wind up key as well as the toy box prop soon.  I curled my hair by setting it in pin curls over night, which is a great no heat curling mechanism.  While there are contemporary styling products that will help your pin curls retain their shape, I just pinned my wet hair in curls and slept like that over night.  Since I didn't use any styling products, my curls would have lost some of their shape with brushing, so I opted to brush my hair before curling and then to not brush it out the following day.  This left my curls a little frizzy, but I figured that since I was going for a possessed doll look, that didn't hurt.
     To make the cracks on my forehead and jawline, I used a plain black e.l.f. eyeliner pencil.  I had tested drawing the cracks with liquid liner previously, but I had better control with the pencil, so that's ultimately what I chose.  However, the pencil I went with was not waterproof, so by the end of the party, some of the cracks were looking pretty smeared.  I'll probably be trying this look again on Halloween day, so if anyone has any waterproof vegan eyeliner recommendations, let me know!

The Costume Contest

     People showed up wearing a number of clever costumes, so the competition for our costume contest was pretty stiff.  The top row, from left to right is Sarah as a ninja, mom as a unicorn, Brian's mom, dad as a hunter, me as an enchanted porcelain doll, Brian as a dark sorcerer who enchanted me, and Adam.  The bottom row, from left to right is James as a mummy, Katie as Bunnicula, and Jacob.

     James won "best costume" with his handmade mummy costume.

     Katie won "most creative costume."

     Brian and I won "best couples costume."

Halloween Trophies

     My cat trophies tend to be pretty popular, so I decided to go with them again this year.  It's always fun, if a bit challenging, choosing what costumes to give the cats.  For the couples costume, I opted for zombies.  I painted the cats green and then added a couple of coats of glow in the dark paint.  I then painted their eyes red.  I mixed together red and black paint (maybe a little brown as well; I can't remember now) to make a blood color and painted their paws and faces with this "blood."  I used a pickle jar lid to create the base.  I painted it black and then glued on the cats.  I printed a trophy label and glued that onto the edge of the jar lid.

     For the best costume trophy, I went with Pennywise.  I glued the cat figurine to the olive jar lid and then painted the lid and the cat black.  I made a ruffle collar by folding strips of off white paper accordion style and gluing them together.  I then glued the collar around the cat's neck.  I painted the eyes red.  I used the same crimson paint that I used for the zombies to paint on a nose and makeup.  Once the trophy was dry, I glued on a label.

     For the "most creative" costume, I went with the Cat in the Hat.  I glued the cat figurine to the olive jar lid and painted the lid and the cat black.  I then painted the cat's eyes red.  To make the hat, I cut out a circle from red cardstock and punched a hole in the center.  This created the brim of the hat.  I then cut out a strip of red cardstock and rolled it into a cylinder with the same diameter as the hole punch circle.  I glued the cylinder to the brim and glued the circle I had punched from red cardstock to the top.  I then cut off strips of white cardstock and glued them around the hat.  I glued on a label to finish the trophy.

     I hope you've enjoyed a peek at my Halloween party.  For more inspiration, including alternate snacks as well as some activities, check out my 2018, 2017, 2016, 2015, and 2014 party posts, as well as my X-Files, Goosebumps, and The Shining themed birthday party posts.

Alice in Wonderland Tea Party

     Here is the Alice in Wonderland tea party post I've been promising.  Brian and I held this tea party at the end of last summer, so you won't see the jumbo mushrooms or roses anywhere around.  I didn't end up making those until October, but they would have fit in well with this party.  Here are some tips for throwing a bash of your own.  Check out my Alice in Wonderland birthday party post for some additional decor and dessert ideas.

The Tablescape

     The tablecloth was an old one I sewed for my Alice in Wonderland birthday party a few years back.  The "flowers with faces" centerpiece was also from that party.  Check out this post to see how to make it.  The mini teacups came from Goodwill.  I had planned on getting mismatched teacups because that seemed more fitting for a Mad Tea Party, but when Brian found a set of mini teacups for me, I couldn't resist.  It's hard to tell from this picture, but the teacups are resting on the coffee filter doilies.  See this post for making the coffee filter doilies and this post for dyeing them.
     For the dessert stand, I placed a fancy looking goblet between two nice-ish plates.  I didn't use any sort of adhesive to hold them together, which meant the arrangement was a little more precarious than I would have preferred, although things seemed to work out just fine.  If you have accident prone guests, I would recommend going with something less breakable, though.

Food

     These mosaic sandwiches are pretty and fun to eat.  Prepare your favorite tea sandwich filling and place between two slices of bread.  Cut off the edges, if you'd like.  Cut slices of cucumbers and radishes (or other colorful veggies of your choice) and place atop the sandwiches.  Cut sandwiches into triangles.

     For dessert, macaroons can make a tasty treat.  I can't remember which recipe I used, so use whichever one sounds best to you.  You'll want to keep an eye on the macaroons, though, as some ovens cook faster than others.  When using the recipe I found, I originally tried cooking the macaroons for the amount of time the recipe called for, which left the macaroons a little singed on the bottom.  For successive batches, I put them in for less and less time, but they still ended up a little dark.

     Why not finish your tea party with these "painting the roses red" cream cheese candies?  I used this recipe, with some slight modifications.  I replaced the mint extract with vanilla extract because I'm not too much of a mint person.  I also ended up having to use more confectioner's sugar than the recipe called for, although I didn't record how much more I used.  I live in a really humid environment, so if you live in a drier climate, the original amount of confectioner's sugar may work just fine.
     Once you've prepared the mixture and are satisfied with the consistency, separate the mixture into two equal pieces.  Combine one with some red food coloring, while leaving the other as it is.  Using a silicone rose mold, add red and white mixtures to the mold to create your roses.  Leave uncovered to dry.  Store in a sealed container.

Costumes

     Add some extra wonder to your tea party by encouraging your guests to come as their favorite Wonderland characters.  Looking for some Alice costume ideas?  See this post for a DIY Alice hair bow and this post for how to make your own pinafore apron.  Need a hat for your Hatter?  Check out this post and this post.  Some ears for the Cheshire Cat?  See this post.  Don't have someone to be the White Rabbit?  Add a White Rabbit plushie (see this post).

Goosebumps Purple Peanut Butter

     Purple peanut butter appears in the Give Yourself Goosebumps book Beware of the Purple Peanut Butter.  I thought it would be fun to recreate this snack for my Goosebumps party and it worked out better than I expected.  In the book, the purple peanut butter tastes like peanut butter and jelly, so you could try adding some grape jelly to your purple peanut butter if you want a snack that's more true to the book.  I'm not a jelly fan and neither we're a few of my guests, so I didn't add jelly, but if you try making it with jelly, I'd be interested to know how it comes out.

Ingredients:

*Peanut butter of your choice
*Purple gel food coloring
*Pink gel food coloring

Directions:

*Place the desired amount of peanut butter in a mixing bowl.

*Alternate adding purple and pink food coloring until you reach your desired shade of purple.  The pink is really important to this process.  If you try using just purple, you'll end up with a black-brown color.

*Serve on crackers, in sandwiches, or however you wish.

DIY "Slime" Cake

Materials:

*Cake of your choice
*Icing (such as Brian's icing, recipe in this post)
*Green food coloring
*Yellow food coloring
*Zip lock bag
*Scissors

Directions:

*Prepare cake as you normally would.

*Once the cake is cool, frost it with a thin layer of icing.  The less icing you use in this stage, the more you'll have for the "slime."

*Take the remaining icing and add a few drops of green food coloring and a few drops of yellow.  Mix until the icing is a consistent color.  Add more food coloring as needed, until the icing reaches the desired color.

*Spoon the icing into the zip lock bag.

*Snip a tiny hole in one of the bottom corners of the bag.  This is where you'll be pouring the icing from.  It's best to make the hole as small as possible and then enlarge if needed.

*Squeeze icing along the top edge of the cake, forming "drips" of "slime."  This technique is similar to the one we used for my melted crayon art cake.

*Once you've finished with the slime drips, use the remaining icing to frost the top of the cake.

My Halloween Party 2017

     This past Saturday Brian and I hosted our annual Halloween party.  We spent a good portion of the day on Friday and Saturday morning cleaning, putting up decorations, and making the food.  We were still finishing the snacks when the first of our guests arrived.  In spite of the business, I had a great time.  Here's a recap of our party.

Snacks

     Brian and I made our cemetery cupcakes (recipe in this post, although you'll have to scroll a little to find it).  I had picked up a skeleton mold on clearance at the end of last Halloween season, so this year I added bones to the cupcakes.  They didn't have any mint chocolate baking chips at Joann, so I opted to make the tombstones strawberry flavored instead.
     Brian made his classic eyeball deviled eggs (recipe in this post, although you'll have to scroll here too) and I made some cheese and pretzel "witch's broomsticks" (see this post).  I had stumbled across this caramel apple cream cheese spread online and decided to give it a try.  It was delicious and the easiest of the snacks we made.  The caramel sauce I used spilled off the cream cheese pretty quickly, so I'd recommend waiting to add it until you're about ready to serve it and keep extra caramel sauce on hand so people can add extra if they want.
     I poured the rest of the pretzel sticks into our new candy bowl.  The new bowl has a motion sensor that, when motion is detected, causes the eye to open up and causes the bowl to say something spooky.  Any time people got close enough to the table, the candy bowl would come to life.  We also had three types of pizza on hand, so everyone was well fed.

     For drinks, I had seen this vampire drink idea online and decided to give it a try.  I used Sprite Zero and liquid cherry Kool Aid.  You'll want to use clear plastic cups so that your guests can see the effect.  All you have to do squirt a little of the Kool Aid into the soda and the Kool Aid looks like blood as it disperses.

The Tablescapes

     We had our usual two tables, the snack table, pictured in the snacks section of this post, and the main table.  Some of the items on the tables are hand crafted, so I've included the relevant links in this paragraph in case you want to try making one of your own.  On the snack table, the deviled egg eyes are on top of the Halloween platter I made a couple of years back.  The cupcakes are balanced on my spider web cupcake stand.  The tablecloth I made as well.
     For the big table, I used many of the same adornments I've used in the past.  The only crafted item is the spooky faced candle, which Brian and I made last year for Halloween.  The tablecloth I picked up on clearance from Joann ages ago and the bat salt and pepper shakers came from the Target dollar aisle, also years ago.  I think the tealights might also have been from Target.

Outdoor Decor

     Here's what the whole outdoor setup looked like this year.  The eyeball path markers came from Kmart years ago.  The gnomes were a Christmas gift from Brian's mom a few years ago.  She got them from Oriental Trading.  The rest of the stuff you'll see in greater detail below, so I'll put in links there.

     Here's the door.  I didn't have a good way to display the Wayton manor sign, so I used a twist tie to fasten it to the old mailbox.  My eyeball wreath made an appearance again this year.  I also put up my spooky doorbell from Target and the jack o'lantern lights Brian got me from Rite Aid a few years back.

     Next up is my favorite part of my Halloween decor, my Halloween cemetery.  The cemetery has been gradually expanding and this year I decide it was finally time to make a second row of stones.  Since I'd been leaning my handmade stones against the house previously, I didn't have a way to get them to stand.  I used toothpicks and that held them up for a while, although they were no match for the strong gusts of wind we had that day.  By the end of the party, most if not all of them had toppled.
     If you're looking to make some foam tombstones, check out these posts.  It's kind of hard to see, but my eerie graveyard bouquet is in front of Ada Lillian's stone.  My cemetery angel ended up all the way at the back, next to the small gravestones which are hidden from view by the taller tombstones.  Two of the other stones, the fencing, and some of the bones came in this Halloween cemetery kit from Target.  The other two visible stones I picked up at Dollar Tree a while back.  The "haunted: keep out" tape I picked up at A.C. Moore on clearance a couple of years back, but I also got some from Kmart last year (when we still had a Kmart in this area).  If you look closely, you can see my haunted hedge eyes (from Target) peeking out from behind the tombstone with a bat at the top.  The bat gate posts at the ends of the fence came from Dollar Tree.  They had some purple and red paint on them which I thought was kind of awkward looking, so I painted them black.

     Here's my "beware of werewolf" display.  As far as Halloween displays go, this one was relatively easy to make and people tend to like it.

Indoor Decor

     We don't have a lot of room in our apartment, so when it comes time to put out Halloween decorations, I throw some fabric over the printers and storage containers and put the decorations on top.  Here you'll see the spellbook I made a couple of years ago with my Silhouette CAMEO (I describe the process a little in this post) and my haunted mirror.  The spooky radio is a new addition.  I had seen it at Target last year, but it sold out in store before I had a chance to get one.  I ordered one online, but it wasn't going to arrive until after Halloween, so it became part of my Christmas present from Brian :).  Turn the knob and you'll hear quirky ads, song snippets, and news bulletins.  It's so fun and it has become one of my favorite Halloween decorations.  The spooky telephone is also from Target and that's another fun prop.  The lenticular portrait came from Rite Aid and its frame from the Orono Thrift Shop (if you scroll to the bottom of this post, I talk about reframing store bought lenticulars).  The little blue bottle is an antique poison bottle my dad gave me.

     Here you'll see my murderous dolls, my creepy rag doll, and my gingerbread zombie.  If you've seen last year's post, you'll notice that only a couple of the lenticulars that I usually have as part of this setup are featured here.  I needed more room for the dolls, so I moved the other lenticulars to the wall.  To cover this storage container, I threw my tie dyed sheet over it and then covered the sheet with some cloth I'd gotten from Dollar Tree.

     Here's my potions shelf.  If you're looking to make some potions, you'll find ideas in these posts.  The eyeball beakers and test tubes came from Target.  I filled each one with water and added a few drops of food coloring.  I also made a couple of last minute potion bottles and added some glass bottles my parents had given me to fill out the shelf.  There's the trophy Brian and I won last year for best couples costume up toward the top.  My pom pom pals are also paling around on the shelves.  The candle came from Kohl's ages ago.  The book of spells and potions I made this year.  I don't think I'll have a chance to write about it this Halloween season, but I hope to get a post out on it for next year.

     These are some figurines my mom got me from A.C. Moore years ago.

     This year I added some decorations to the fridge door.  I actually managed to get the Halloween countdown calendar and its Halloween clothespins set up on October 1st and so far Brian and I have been remembering to turn them over each day.  The radiation hazard sign I made using my CAMEO.  I plan to post the template next year, along with the template for the biohazard sign I put on my bedroom door.

     Felt sleepy bat and my Halloween sign ended up back at the edge of the hallway again this year.

     Here's the biohazard sign I mentioned earlier.

     I ended up decorating the bathroom too this year, using some of the decorations from my The Shining themed birthday party.  The door became room 217 (from Stephen King's book.  If you're a fan of Stanley Kubrick's movie, you'll know this as room 237).

     Inside the bathroom across from the mirror I put up the letters spelling out "redrum" . . .

. . . which you'll see what it means if you look in the mirror.  I put the invite I made on the sink (to see the invite in more detail, check out this post).  It got a drop of water splashed on it, but it should be easy to reprint for next year if I want to go with the same theme.

     I tucked the roque mallet in beside the bathtub.

Costume Contest

     Unfortunately I didn't think to take many pictures during the party, so you'll only see a handful of them here.  In addition to the pictures below, we had Rick from Rick and Morty, a werewolf, and a zebra.

     "Most creative costume" went to Katie for her "it's raining cats and dogs" costume.  In the background, you can see my plushie garland hanging over the entryway.

     Jacob won "best costume" with his Buckethead costume.

     Brian and I won the "best couples/group costume" award for our dark sorcerer and witch get ups.  Like my look?  Check out the following links for how to make the cape and hat, the broom pendant, and the magic wand.  You can't really see my top in this pic, but it's by Dare to Wear fashion and it's pretty awesome.

     Here Katie and Jacob are with their trophies.  Brian and I didn't get a pic with ours, but you can see it in this post.

     Well, that about sums up my Halloween party 2017.  I hope you can find some ideas in here for your Halloween get together.