Fathers day

Poor old man. He need his rest in the couch...

This sunday we celebrated fathers day. I'm very glad that I have Johan in my life because he's a very good father and give my boys another male rolemodel for their life. He loves computor games as much as our kids and he finds out fun treasure (candy) hunts for the kids, that always contains something with electronics. A good geek dad needs a geek tie right?

I made this tie out of scraps of the Ghastlies fabrics I have. It turned out really good. It is lightly padded as a tie should be and is sewn by hand. 

As swedes are very casual at work, some dress up at fridays. At Johans work they have "fancy friday" when they dress up in jacket and tie and eat lunch in a restaurant. Someone's looking forward to this fancy friday :D

Alfons and I made and decorated monster cakes and chokolate cupcakes.

The darkness in november

November is such a boring month. The daylight is more like a gloomy sunset. It is impossible to take photos indoors ( I don't like to use flash of lamplight). One of the evenings before Halloween, me and Johan sat in front of the tv and made som steel wire crafts. I made a cross with beads to hang on the wall.

Last saturday evening was All Saint's eve. Thats the night when every gravestone has at least one candle lit. Me and Oskar went to visit his grandmothers grave. I know he miss her deeply, but I also know that she follows him werever he goes. Although he cannot see her, he says someone use to follow him and that is propably her. 

The grave yard outside our town is huge so it is a very impressive sight to see all the candles in the dark.

Today I tried the new harness on our bunny. She's so grumpy about it and it took only 20 minutes before she had gnawed it down. I was raking the leaves during that time.

 You can see on the pictures that we haven't got snow yet and the temperatures vary from -10 to  +10. I really long for snow.

Halloween treats

I tried to keep the treats simple this year, but after checking Martha Stewarts website I got lots of inspiration. For example for the welcoming drink and snacks.

The glass has black sugar frosted edge. Lime soda is served with eyeballs made of  rambutan fruits stuffed with blueberries. Not many dared to eat the fruits.

Caramel popcorn. For the first time I made them myself and damn they are dangerous, so tasty, I ate too much of it! I coloured the caramel with red food colour. 

I used the same candy bags I made last year, the text says "trick and treat".

I made simple cookie dough and used our new cookie cutters to make Halloween themed shapes and simple frosting with food colour to decorate the cookies.

I've been dying to try theese broken glass cupcake and after three trials I succeded to make some sugar glass I could use for the decoration. The blood is simple raspberry ice cream sauce.

 These ghosts are an idea I took from cakepops, but under the cover of sugarpaste I used chocolate balls, a very common treat for kids (and adults). 

Mr Bones is sitting on the porch to welcome our guests. I lend him my antique top hat and my welding glasses. A bow tie and a flower gives him the perfect Gentleman look. 

Here he is, sitting and laughing in the dark.

View of the porch in the dark.

I bought a pumpkin for the entrance and carved a smiling face. 

A few days later I made some delicious pumpkin soup of the meat.

Last week we had a little snowstorm , sadly it has all melted away now.

My childhood dream came true this Halloween! I always wanted a doorbell that played Bach ; Toccata and Fugue in D-minor and Johan made it come true. I'm so happy to live with an electronics nerd. Alfons wanted a face to appear the same time the doorbell rang and he achieved that as well. The garage was turned to a spooky house with different props installed; a slamming door, a monster coming up from a coffin, lightning and spooky sounds.

I'm glad that I worked half time, otherwise it wouldn't be a Halloween at all this year. The scedule for the day has been working, sleeping, eating, some decoration and sleeping again. I have noticed that I'm very confused and lacking short time memory. I have difficulties to read instructions and protocols and I had to take help from Johan to fill in the form for the health insurance money. But I started to do some technical drawings at work and that worked fine. My mood is better but not ok. I feel so stupid.

November theme post; Hosiery

Time for Sophistique Noirs monthly theme post! This time it's a very well chosen subject for the season, hosiery. 

I realized when I dug through my hosiery drawer, that I have a lot of them. Since I live in a very cold place it's often leggings under the skirt and nylon stockings only in summer. But today i choosed a newly bought pair, dark blue with paisley pattern that I bought at Indiska. My son is behind the camera and when I edited the picture I saw that the picture was blurry even though he used a tripod :). Since it's friday I thought I would go a bit more colourful than usual.

As I collect everything vintage I have a vintage hosiery collection as well. Some are well used and some are safely packed in their original parcels in the box.

Theese are my new old stock stockings. Some are made in nylon and some are made in real silk.  All of them have back seams.

Look at the quality of these stockings!

I can assure you that they are in perfect quality. I have used some several times without any holes. The pink ones in the middle are never used, I'm afraid that I would look like Miss Piggy with them on.

It was quite some years ago when I used them. It was when I was a skinny girl that spent the weekends at a gig or a dancefloor.

Home decorated for Halloween

 Every year, the house is transformated in the end of october for our annual Halloween party. Some things are repeats from earlier years, if you want to see them, click the Halloween tag on the sidebar or the end of this post. 

We bought two sculls on a aquarium store, one is displayed under a glass bell at the hallway table, a little led-candle lights it up from the inside.

The zinc cones that always hangs in the kitchen are embellished with black paper strips and fake mini pumpkins. The dark figure sitting on the shelf in the corner is a dark sow. A local folk tale entity that lurks in the shadows.

The old hallway was cleaned from exercise bike and clothes hangers and was furnished with a corner for spells and prophecies.

Some pictures of the Ghastlies and the haunted house with black bottle brush trees.

An improvement from last year in the livingroom. The white piedistal is changed to a black dito. 

The mossy twigs got some black decorations and a black bow around the neck of the jar.

This is how our home will look the rest of november. In Johans opinion it should look like this all the year around :)

I will return later with pictures of some Halloween treats.

The Ghastlies

In a healing process it's very important to do silly things, if you definitely must do something. So I picked up all the glitter, glue, beads, flowers and cardboard to work with the Ghastlies Gallery.

It's a lovely printed cotton fabric from Alexander Henry. 

Mathilde Ghastlie, the matriarch

Gunnar Grislie, Mathilde's father

Sebastiean Ghastlie, son of Mathilde and Gaspar

The widow Ghastlie, Gaspars beloved mother

Daria Ghastlie, Sebastian's errant wife

Garrick Ghastlie, second son of Mathilde and Gasper

Mildred, Magda and Minerva Grislie, Mathilde's sisters.

Gaspar Ghastlie, devoted husband and Cordelia and Cassius Ghastlie, the twins of Sebastian and Daria.

I will add these pictures to our Halloween decoration for this year. I have yards of the other prints in this serie and will sew some cusion covers of them. On monday I will start working again, half time. The medicine have started to work and I feel ok but I'm still very tired. 

I laughed when I read the poste were I was talking about walks in the forest and garden work. Silly me didn't realize I was going to sleep for a couple of weeks.

Haunted house, simple tutorial

 Inspite of my sickness, we continue to prepare for a Halloween party for the kids. Johan is working hard on special effects while I just lazing around. I've been sleeping a whole week now, insanely tired. Anyway, I achieved to finish one decoration for halloween. A haunted house, that took me a month, even if it's simple.

If you want to make one yourself; make a sketch first to imagine how it will look like and dont make it too difficult for yourself ;).

Gather all the material for example cardboard for the walls, paper rolls for towers, a lighter foldable paper, exacto knife and all sorts of crafty glues.

Cut out the walls and windows with the exacto knife.

You can see I used a lego box for this purpose.

Cut paper straps and glue them. Glue together the walls with the paper straps, or you can use tape. But it is important to do the walls first.

Then measure carefully to get a fitting roof.

You can see I used well for the roof. As trimming around windows and doors, I used a sturdy paper. The roof is glued at place with hot glue.

Looks like a gingerbread house now. The walls are not straight but that's on purpose.

 At last I spray painted the whole house with matte black colour. The door and windows are closed with orange tissuepaper. A nice effect is to place a led light inside of it. I will place a flickering LED candle inside.

 This is the last flower in my garden, a huge sunflower. I had to stretch my arms as long as I could to capture it with my camera. 

Wish you all a lovely weekend. I will continue to rest and hopefully I will be able to stay at home another week.