twit-a-fied

pumpkinbutt's class is reading The Twits by Roald Dahl of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, James and the Giant Peach fame right now. this week is literacy awareness week and i saw an opportunity to have some fun! The Twits is an extremely funny little book about an old married couple that are horrid and haggard and play mean tricks on each other that are actually pretty funny!
mr. twit has a long nasty beard that he never washes and food gets stuck in it so....
i started with having the class help me build upon this mr. mashed potato head rendition of mr. twit:

as we added peas, corn flakes and hot dogs the class " Ewww"ed so much that my original plan of us actually eating him didn't happen. i got this idea from a book i found at a thrift store. it is all food stuff based after many of Roald Dahl's works. Recipe and instructions below if you happen to be needing a mashed potato face and beard:

next i had pre-drawn beards on brown construction paper. i gave all the kid's dried foods (rice, split peas, cornflakes, noodles) to glue down. afterwards they sported their dirty beards:

pumkinbutt gave the activity a thumbs up!

one trick that mrs. twit played on mr. twit was tricking him into eating spaghetti with worms in it. i made the kid's some wormy spaghetti out of twizzlers and gummy worms and put it into little ziplock bags with an image from the book of the trick taking place.

another trick that she played on him was putting her glass eye in his mug of beer...

so i got "kid beer" (root beer) and made a label with mr. twit on it:

and them snuck eyeballs (marshmallow, life saver, raisin) into the cups:


so why all the tricks done by mrs. twit? because i dressed up like her! in the book she is a rude, ugly, fowl women, and i can relate! in the book it describes how she used to be good looking but with all the horrible thoughts she had it made her look horrible. so i told the kid's that their teacher and i are the same age....60, but the teacher looks so good because she doesn't think bad stuff like i do. ( their teacher is only in her 20's ) i then passed around a photo of natalie wood and said that's what i used to look like!

so here is the book's mrs. twit:



and here is my rendition:

hahahahahahaha! so freaking funny! as i would talk to the kids, i would call them "dirty little street urchins" and "varmits" but quickly change it too "little dears" and "sweethearts" because i told them i was trying to change my ways. they asked where mr. twit was and i told them he was at home trying to figure out how to use a stick of deodorant and a bar of soap. i wanted to start it off with that my parole office was making me be here as part of my community service. but these kids are too quick and would have questioned it and that would have lead to my not being allowed to have any more activities with them.
whew! it was fun but a lot of work. i spent about 4 hours on all this stuff for 1 hour of kid-crazy fun but i loved doing it. looking forward to the next book they read about vile individuals!

goody tins

this year i revamped some old ugly cookie tins for my christmas gift goodies.

i bought tins from a thrift store and painted them with flat black spray paint. i had an idea that it might work like chalk board paint...not so much! so new plan was to highly embellish them with loads of ribbon and a cut out of a funny christmas card on top.
Inside i made coconut macaroons....

and peanut butter fudge....

i added my touch by drizzling everything with chocolate.

Robots Attack Christmas!!

the decided theme for this year's tree was robots! here are a few images of the decor:

i made the ornaments from photocopied images of old metal robots and then added glitter/sequins/pipe cleaners and then attached them to mini pie tins, vintage light reflectors or just hung as is. also used the aluminum tree to continue the metal theme.

Then the christmas village was attacked!


above the village i put a few old ornament boxes for display. no robots involved, nor harmed.

asshole alert!

LOOK FAMILAR????!!!!

APPARENTLY SOME ASSHOLE STOLE MY IMAGE FOR HIS OWN PERSONAL PROFIT!
david yerbury IS THE ASSHOLE'S NAME. I AM URGING ALL OF MY READERS TO REPORT HIM TO ETSY ALONG WITH CONTACTING HIM SO HE KNOWS THIS IS ABSOLUTELY UNEXCEPTABLE!
I HAVE DONE SO MYSELF. AND CAN YOU BELEIVE HIS NERVE TO PUT HIS NAME OVER MY IMAGE!? AN IMAGE THAT HE STOLE ALREADY!?

CONTACT ASSHOLE

lil' coco dress

i vamped up this little pink polka dot dress as a gift for my friend heather's little girl, coco. i got the dress several years ago from a thrift store and held on to it until she was big enough to fit into it.

i added the rick rack and made a mini attached apron with a little handmade girlie skull applique. i paired the dress with little girl's black fish net stockings.

heather!!!! after years of searching i think this is the fabric you have been looking for!

gruesome graveyard

the JOL this year was from a martha stewart idea and stencil. the pumpkin i got was apparently a concrete hybrid because i could not get the tools to touch it. i actually had to use a dremel to just remove the relief parts and a chainsaw to cut the top...well maybe i didn't use a chainsaw but looking back that would have worked. so this idea of cutting/carving less and adding black paint to bring out the features worked out nicely. for the duration of the photos you will get to experience ohhhhhh.....the gruesome graveyard! (say all italics with a spooky voice!)

dollar tree tombstones, severed hand luminaries (more on that in another post below) and tea lights.

light up bone lights, an old piece of a picket fence (that i could never throw out and now glad i didn't) and old moss i picked up from the ground of the local park.

black birds (i got on clearance several years ago post halloween) perched on the tops of the markers and in the background is the tree of the dead with hanging skeletons done by pumpkinbutt himself. we also had the green strobe going and the fog machine!

haunted insides

here are a few shots of the inside halloween decor. on the mantle is a dead tree branch...free, moss...free, a few crows..1$ each from dollar tree, tombstone revamped (more on that in a post below)...1$, construction paper bats...had on hand.

these are tombstone rubbings that i did while visiting my mom in NC several years ago. i draped the tops with moss and then applied a few of those sticky stretchy mice. i bought the mice on clearance a few years ago not realizing that they were of this composition. i had no idea what to do with them until now. the sticky mice work awesome on mirrors and picture frames...oh the possibilities now!

the dolls are up all year 'round but i added to the display with a framed embalming certificate from 1933 that my brother fished out of a local dumpster behind a mortuary...i don't ask questions, like why were you dumpster diving there!? i am just thrilled to have it.

some of the vintage stuff. it's hard to come by when you aren't willing to play 500 bucks for it on ebay. i have been lucky enough to get most of it from thrifts over the years.

display of the universal monsters stuff. it looks better when just the little purple lights are on and the camera flash is not, but would have been blurry.

gravemarker portrait piece

here is, in my opinion, an extremely cool and simple revamp craft project involving a dollar tree styrofoam tombstone. so it started as a styrofoam tombstone...

i then cut away the skull relief with a kitchen knife. then printed out a picture of pumpkinbutt and placed it accordingly.

i have future plans of adding spiders, moss and wording with a humorous twist (similar to "i told you i was sick"...not sure what just yet though...it will have to involve legos) i would like to do his name on it also a-la the simpson's tree house of horror credits (ex: james "hell" brooks). many unexplored possibilities!

creepy hand luminary

meet the severed hand luminary! (seen in the background...kinda hard to miss). i was faced with the dilemma that cemeteries are just so gosh darn dark but wanted the lovely severed hands to not go unnoticed! so i came up with a quick and neat solution ...take plastic severed hand from dollar tree....

dremel a hole in the palm and insert a flame less candle tip inside (conveniently also from dollar tree). now it has become a flickering morbid addition to the dark cemetery grounds!

neat-o signs

<

i spotted these signs while staying in cherokee, NC.

Adventure Golf

During the summer Pumpkinbutt and i got the thrill of playing a round at Adventure Golf Pigeon Forge TN. It was full of wonderful kooky statues for neato photo ops!

pink castle! scary sharkey! wrecked pirate ship! water falls! yay!

pumpkinbutt exiting the pink castle. he is very embarrassed that someone would have the nerve to paint such a fine castle this horrid shade.

mom and i surviving a shark attack. note the "Caution" sign...i took some editing liberties...

my favorite critter there! once again, i got to play out my Ed Wood Bride of the Monster bit! if i was brave (and wanted to get the police involved to escort me out) i would have jumped into the water and thrashed around and screamed "hey! throw me that weeeskey!"

Below is my same act at the panama city goofy golf a few years and pounds less ago.


note to self: funyuns and soda for meals can have undesirable consequences in the ass and thigh regions.