Halloween kids party 2013

First of all. The picture below, does not representing the snacks for the kids party. This is what I found at Lidl (thanks to Lesthi) and we snacked on during the weekend before (except dracula teeth). It's the first time I see Halloween themed food in a store here.

Every year I must do some kind of cupcakes. This years theme was based on bought cupcake set (wrapper, topper and bone sprinkles) bought at kakburken.se. I used butter, blueberry puree, and icing sugar to make the frosting.

The smaller kids claims chocolate balls.

 I also baked simple but decorated cakes. The cutters are also bought at kakburken.

I use to do a typical american treat every year and try a new one. The first year I tried velvet cakepops with jack skellington faces and very few ate those (looks like brain, was the comment), last year I tried to serve caramel popcorn (I had to eat them myself, and loved it too, was the only one). This year I tried to serve Rice Crispie treats, Whats that?? strange, it doesnt taste anything, was some of the comments. A lot of them were left after the party. Children are soo picky about new stuff. Any suggestions of another treat I can try next year?

Soo, over to decorations. I told you in last post that we went to a flea market. This is floor candle holder is one of a pair that I bought. The candle is made of a card roll that transported one way mirror film home to us for one of the tricks.

 Store bought pumpkin garland, a black curtain and a home made boo-banner decorated the door way between entrance and kitchen.

 The old hallway had to store our sofa. 

The kitchen is quite simple and I reused lots of decorations. I don't want to use that common spiderweb as I hate to clean it off later.

Another garland, with bats.

The clock on the wall is fairly new. We have lived in this house for 5 years and never had a clock in the kitchen before. Visitors and family have ask about the time and nagged about me refusing to buy a clock until I find one I like. So this clock was nice enough to get a place in my kitchen. 

View to the stairwell. Witch painting is moved to this room and the only new stuff is the garland with red roses.

Here I am in my creepy clown costume. It looks like mad hatter in combo with the joker, not an intention, o well. The slit mouth make up did creep the young ones out though :). One of Oskars friends was dressed as the joker so we called each other cousins.

The cutest little girl on earth, Johans daughter Moa in her new bat ears and a little blood running from her mouth after a good bite of a human. 

Here are my boys dressed as zombie (refusing makeup) and a military.

So this is why all furnitures were moved from the livingroom. Crazy me, painted the walls black and covered ceiling and floor with black paperboard. Masks were painted in fluorescent colour and hung on the walls. Idea snatched from 102 wicked things to do.  After the arrival of all the kids. I dressed myself in complete black and hide in a corner with one of the masks on. Johan sent them in in small groups. It was successful and very satisfying when they screamed.

Alfons in a white shirt and glowstick

 One of the kids trying the mask that I used.

 But what scared them most was the gost story Johan told while all of them sat around the kitchen table, he accompanied the story with thunder and lightning (flashing lights from a cupboard) and eerie music. Unfortunately a friend that was supposed to make an entrance during the story was supposed to show up but couldnt because of severe back pain. One of the old kids said that it was a relief, it was scary enough.

More to come but thats all for now.

Second hand shopping, more nature and some crafts

Those visits to flea markets and second hand shops has decreased. I don't need to shop that much anymore. But last week we went to one just to see if they had something for us to use at the halloween party. I bought a bible from 1877 with nice graphical illustrations, not something I need but I will use it for the graphics.

I have envied Dark Entries massive collection of beautiful jackets, specially her pinstriped ones. I found a very nice one that fitted me well. Laying flat on the floor it's not visible that it's is form fitting. 

 Last weekend I woke up early. When I went to the bathroom I looked out and saw a beautiful misty and frosty morning. I couldn't go to sleep again so I asked Johan if we could take our cameras and take a walk. The photo below is upstreams by the river.

frosen raspberry leaves

Further down the stream

Remnants from the copper mine. Piles with slag like these can be found on several places around our town.

The lake downstreams is actually only 100 meters from our house, but it's not very accessible, sadly, because it is beautiful.

 I'm thinking of go skating here in winter, this part is shallow and calm so it shouldn't be too risky.

After a couple of hours  the mist was almost gone and we got a lovely autumnday.

We went for a visit at a friend of ours who recently bought an old farm, she gave me a washing cabinet I found in one of the buildings that will be torn down. I love the pale grey blue colour of it but it was impossible to clean it. I have to repaint it. I will also paint it on the inside.

She had bought four so cute and cuddly goats. I think their rectangular pupil looks funny. Do you know any other animal with eyes like these?

Moa didn't have a clue about what to dress like for halloween so I suggested that she could use my bat wings. She chosed the smaller ones to avoid poking someone in the eyes.

I had to make a pair of bat ears, matching the wings. A simple headband with black cotton rags twined around. The ears are made of steel wire and nylon socks. Some silver glitter is glued on the edges and will get a nice grey oxide colour by time.

Next week will be crazy. We have some mad preparations for the party to fix. We are nuts!

I love this season

 Took a beautiful walk at lunch. I had to take photos of all the lovely autumncolours and want to show you some before I dig in my math books again.

Inspirational gift

 We visited my brother to celebrate their eldest daughter last weekend. As my sister in law who is very talented and creative had started to make mixed media and scrap booking I asked her about her work. I had seen a cool photo on her feed of a halloween themed journal and asked if I could take a look at it.

She handed me a wrapped gift and said. Well was supposed to be sent by mail to you but here it is. So she actually had made it thinking of me. 

I'm sorry I don't have enough words for how happy I am and how thankful I am.

That is so truly kind so sit and work for hours to create something like this to another person. Can you see that every page is thought out and worked on. And Between the pages are small folders with tags and ephemera.

That's all for now. Just wanted to show you some loveliness.

Halloween preparations :)

I succeded to find a few Halloween pieces at Ö&B here in Falun. Halloween stuff is so rare here but in a corner that shop had a little shelf with a few decorations. This straw owl looked so ridicilous/cute I had to buy it and get the car all sprinkled with fallen off black glitter.

As we plan a party for the kids (they don't read this blog, I know) I was happy to find dogs litter bags, pink with skulls and crossbone print. 50 bags for 1€ is a good price. But these will be used as candybags. I usually do my own graphical printed candybags but I love shortcut this busy autumn. Electric led lights will be used for those hot glued dripping candles (lots of tutorials floating around).

Another owl for tea candles.

And a ceramic pumpkin. Real ones are so expensive here and if you buy one you just buy one.  

I have been sitting indoors and on my ass for so long it really feels bad in my body. That's the big drawback with double working and studying. I got almost no spare time at all. This morning I had enough and took a lovely powerwalk. The beach was empty of course. Can you see the weird cloud behind the treetops? It looks like a bomb cloud.

I have been such a good student that I actually have some sparetime now :). I'm so looking forward to have a little time with my children next week.

A new family member

This is our new family member, Pooki. She's a small lion hooded albino bunny. We only had her for one week and she has already proved to be a little miscevious one. 

Alfons bunny Wilma, missed her late friend so we put the cages side by side and the pens beside so they were able to say hello. How stupid wasn't I. 

One morning this week when I pulled up the blinds I saw only white fur balls, like snow in Wilmas pen, damn predators, I thought. But just as my thought was that some animal had taken the bunnies I saw that one of the bigger fur balls were Pooki in the middle of it. 

I ran outside and found Alfons bunny in a corner standing on her toes, litteraly.

Pooki had jumped over the fence to give Wilma a real beat up. 

So by that, we now she's a good jumper.

Furious!!

I'm so angry my head is exploding. Things that are unfair makes me really furious. One thing I have been proud of about my country Sweden is that the system is supposed to be fair. The fairness for all, is sustained by taxes. Yes we pay a third of our wages to the taxes system, that seems a lot of money. But, those money are supposed to go to schools, healthcare, those who are too sick to be able to work, roads....many things that we basically need. If you get sick, you only pay a symbolic fee for your care at the hospital.

Our latest government will promote all of us that works hard and push people to work, even those who aren't able to do so. New rules in the social and healthcare system force cancer patients to go to work and refuse multi disabled people assistance with their basical needs.

The governments new budget for next year, gives us all who have a work a fifth discount on our taxes. That means it's the fifth time they will lower my tax wich will give me 40€ more every month. Those with very high wages will have their extra tax cut even more. So what does all those money mean for me? Well, nothing until I get sick, they say my childrens classes in school will be even bigger, or loose my job. Those extra money I will receive are taken from those who can't or don't have a job.

The attitude is that those who fails to get a job in time, or have diseases have to blame themselves. These are lazy, unhealthy people.
One arrogant lady said that "all those who complain, should give their money to funds and make a contribute by that way (if they get the extra money)". I asked her were the fund for workless, sick, and especially those who have been sick or without a job for too long that they have fallen out from the social security system are. Are those people supposed to be dependent on charity? Charity isn't granted just because you need it, right?

If they took off their soft lens glasses and looked how the world is. They would see that segregation breaks down countries.

Enough of this rant. I will join everyone else in voting for a new government next autumn, this one completely made fool of themselves. I will go and get my son at school now and keep on my studies and work.