The Chimney Sweep World

Chim Chim-iney

Chim Chim-iney

Chim Chim Cher-ee

When you're with a sweep 

you're in glad company!

Up where the smoke is all billowed and curled

'Tween pavement and stars is the chimney sweep world.

I choose me bristles with pride, yes I do.

A broom for the shaft and a brush for the flue.

 Now, as the ladder of life has been strung

You might think a sweeps on the bottom most rung

Though I spends me time in the ashes and smoke

In this ol' wide world there's no happier bloke!

Chim Chim-iney

Chim Chim-iney

Chim Chim Cher-ee

A Sweep is as lucky as lucky can be!

Chim Chim-iney

Chim Chim-iney

Chim Chim Cher-roo

Good luck will rub off when I shakes hands with you!

Or blow me a kiss

and that's lucky too!

For Halloween this year we went as chimney sweeps from one of my all time favorite movies, Mary Poppins.   We took our photos in front of one of the Victorian homes in the historic village because it kinda reminded me of No. 17 Cherry Tree Lane.  As you may have noticed it is the same house from the Victorian Death and Mourning Tour....yes, we dressed up as chimney sweeps as we took the tour!  It was pretty comical. The Death and Mourning tour is only once a day and the day we went was the only day we could go. We got there really early and sat on the front steps to wait.  Next door to the house is a church from 1879, which is used primary as a rental for weddings, which happened to be the case this day.  As we were waiting for our tour to begin another regular tour was approaching the house.   Just to make sure we weren't missing the right tour my husband asked the tour guide if this was for the Death and Mourning Tour, which it was not.  This tour guide was a bit of a doof.  As he was guiding his group into the house, he looks at us and then asks "Are you with the wedding?" and my husband just plainly says "No." The tour guide doesn't ask anything else and takes his group into the house.  Are we with the wedding?  We're covered in soot!  We spent the time while that tour was going on taking photos on the front porch.  When the group was exiting, the doof tour guide looks at us again and asks "Are you part of the tour?" My husband says "No."  You could sense the tour guide was getting frustrated, which my husband was enjoying.  The tour guide then asks "What are you doing here?"  We answered "Waiting for the Death and Mourning Tour." Duh.  We already asked him about this before he started asking the wrong questions.  He leads his group down the sidewalk befuddled.  A few moments later a woman in black Victorian garb was making her way toward us.  Clearly she is our tour guide.  As she approaches and looks us over, she nicely asks "What are you guys dressed up for?" Hey!  There's the right question! To take our Halloween photos at "No. 17 Cherry Tree Lane"!

C'mon mateys!

 Step In Time!

Never need a reason,

Never need a rhyme!

Just step in time!

For our costume pieces we had most of the items in our closets.  I did make the boys matching vests.  I found a vest pattern and the needed fabric at a thrift store for a total of 2 bucks.  I made the sweep brooms from plastic handles from dollar tree and the bristles are black pipe cleaners.

Not only is Mary Poppins one of my favorite movies, but it has one of my favorite persons,

Dick Van Dyke! 

Nowhere is there a more happier crew

than them what sings:

Chim Chim Cher-ee

Chin Cher-oo!

This is Halloween!

Our Jack-O-Lantern this year!

PB is obsessed with The Nightmare Before Christmas movie and music, which certainly makes this momma proud! So I carved this Jack Skellington pumpkin for him.

Here are a few O-Lanterns from past posts:

2005 Jack Skellington-O-Lantern

2010 Screeching Cat-O-Lantern

2011 Cute Kitty-O-Lantern

2013 Ceepy Vulture-O-Lantern

Zombie Food

 I generally insist on my Halloween candy being cleverly creepy. This chocolate "Zombie Food" by  Skybar/Necco is perfect!

 Body parts! Feet, hearts, and of coarse braiiiins!

and they are filled with oozy blood red caramel!

Last Minute Shroudings

Fly Infested Glasses

When it comes to Halloween I start planning far in advance. Kinda like when the Mayor of Halloween Town in Nightmare Before Christmas has the plans for next Halloween, wanting to go over them with Jack on Nov 1st.  That would be me.  

I also try to squeeze in last minute ideas right up to the witching hour!

Here is an example of just that.  

This is something that takes about 15 seconds to do but is super fun and cute!

I used an itty bit of poster putty and attached (temporarily) little cheap plastic flies to the corners of my glasses!  They stay put really well and just peel off (damage free) when their services are no longer needed.

I have since been using poster putty sticking all sorts of critters everywhere!!!  The bathroom mirror, windows, on my car stereo, on top of my drinking glass, the edge of the computer monitor, the front of the microwave....you get the idea!

It's Oogie's turn to boogie now!

For the entire of month of October I like to put little fun Halloween treats in PB's lunchbag.  Everyday I have had a Halloween joke or riddle on a slip of Halloween stationary along with a tiny bag of gummy boogers.  I also made a small round container resemble a magic 8 ball and put one of these cookies inside.  He has to ask his question first and then open the lid to reveal the answer on the cookie.

For the last day, Oct 30, I decided to make something special as the grand finale...an Oogie Boogie stuffed with bugs and gummy worms!

Oogie is made out of green craft sheet foam that I drew his face on with permanent marker and stitched the sides with black upholstery thread. I found a template for Oogie here.

 Everything is water resistant which is a must in a lunchbag.  I placed the bugs and gummy worms in a small halloween ziplock bag and stuffed it up Oogie's.....well, area.  I left this section unstitched for easier candy apprehension.

My bugs! My bugs!

Goblins and Ghoulies, Creepies and Crawlies!

image source

~ ~ ~ ~

Serpents and spiders 

Tail of a rat

Call in the spirits

Wherever they're at!

~ ~ ~ ~

DIY Haunted Mansion Madame Leota Crystal Ball

I have seen several DIY Madame Leota Crystal Ball props on the nets and was dying to try to make my own.  The instructions are always told simply to print image and place it in the globe with some black netting behind/around it. Sounded simple enough and in essence that is all there is to it.  My problem came in when I was trying to find a good image to use and the right sizing.  I went through several early attempts trying to make it look right, with different images of her face, different sizes, trying to add lighting with battery powered tea lights and different colored netting.  I was about to give up when I decided to go with the idea I used in these Christmas Photo Ornaments of PB I made back in 2006.  I made the image use pretty much the entire inside circumference instead of having her printed face 'float' in a wad of netting.

The items I used were found cheaply at thrift stores.  The two main pieces, a glass cloche globe and the metal base, which originally was a candle holder, totaled 2 bucks.  An alternative to the glass globe could be a large clear round christmas ornament.  Michael's has these with their christmas stuff currently that are plastic and open up, making it really easy to place the image inside without having to roll it up or maneuver a chop stick in there to position everything.

~ ~ ~ ~
Rap on a table
It's time to respond!
Send us a message
from somewhere beyond!
~ ~ ~ ~

Victorian Death and Mourning Tour

This year we once again attended the Historic Village's Victorian Death and Mourning tour!

They added more content, items, and staged areas then in previous years.

Generally the upstairs is not part of this particular event but this year it was expanded and included for a death bed scene.

  

 Shown above are cotton and coins used to cover and close the eye lids.

There were photographs of women in mourning, along with postmortem photography.  There were also examples of death announcements.  During the period of mourning this same stationary was used for all correspondence.  The size of the black border on the edge of the stationary was used to alert the receiver that the funeral was coming nigh. The thinner the border the sooner it was impeding.

Another area had several examples of clothing that were worn with descriptions of time frames certain colors, types of fabrics, and amount of skin could be shown and acceptable after the death of a loved one.

A wooden, hand built coffin was added to the parlor...

...with a viewing window.


The tour covers far more than I put here.  See these past posts for the extras such as: a large framed hair woven art piece from deceased loved one's locks, mourning jewelry, and a shrunken head.

Historic Halloween Tour 2013
Haunted House Tour 2012

Demented Decor

 Here are a couple of areas of the demented house festooned for Halloween this year.

Same wretched remains just arranged differently...,

We do have one new area of interest.

My mom bought us a larger (and suitable for framing!) version of the Old Man Rimshaw portrait (The Andy Griffith Show, Episode: The Haunted House) which cleverly came with it's own ax!  She picked it up at a shop in Mt. Airy, NC aka Mayberry.  Last Year I had just printed a small version from the nets and placed it in a frame.

I hung the ax from the ceiling with fishing line similar to the episode:

 "I heard he put chains on his hired man and done away with him with an ax......Shazam!"

image source 
(site also has super cool pumpkin craving templates of several TAGS charaters! Goober? Yo!)

Here are some of my older Halloween posts containing more demented and dreadful decor:

Eerie Asylum Of Ruins 2014
Treehouse of Horror 2014
Tomb Views 2013
Halloween Digs 2013
The Morbid Mortuary 2013
Halloween Decor 2012
Halloween Decor 2011
Haunted Insides 2010

We've been framed!

For the most part I am a quick craft kinda gal.  I like to embellish discards from the recycle bin, scratched up junk from thrift stores, or cheap stuff from Dollar Tree.  This project falls somewhere in there.  I bought a bunch of these plain black frames from Target on clearance a few years back with plans of some embellishment action.   I merely stuck little poison bottle stickers (also bought a few years ago on clearance from Martha Stewart Halloween) sporadically.  The flies happened to land in just the right places and get hot glued down!

Grave Marker Portrait Piece Updated

So, five years ago I put up a post on a Halloween craft I called the Gravemarker Portrait Piece.  I didn't feel it was complete back then but I never really worked on it ...until this year.  I finally finished it. 

The part that was really stumping me all this time was coming up with a clever saying to put on it.  "Boo"....no.  "Happy Halloween"...duh.  "It's Alive!"...maybe.  Every year I take this tombstone out with all of the other Halloween stuff and stare at it with nothing really coming to mind.   PB happened to be wearing one of his favorite shirts, Alice In Wonderland's Cheshire Cat, that has the wording "We Are All Mad Here" the day I was emptily staring at the tombstone this year.  We're All Mad Here! I like it!  It is something that relates to PB, can be seen as a Halloween reference and it fits on the stone!

Here is the "Before" in 2010.

It was just an image of PB making an evil face attached to a Dollar Tree foam grave stone.

After I got the wording worked out it didn't take any time to hot glue a few Halloween bits and bobs and stretch on some spider webbing.

Dem Bones Bread Sticks

Leg bones connected to the .....

Last week I made a Halloween themed dinner of goulash (gumbo) accompanied with these life size (12-14 inches long!) bone bread sticks... dem bones were not dry though!

Last year I did something similar but I made the bread into the shape of a a huge spider!

All Eyes on You Cookies

 Grab them before they slither away!

I don't know really what to call these cookies.  They may be monsters or aliens or possibly a horrid mutant hybrid. But what ever they are, they're yummy! They came about from my adding a bit of this and that from the pantry to see what would happen.  The cookies are a box mix: Hershey's Cookies and Creme.  I then drizzled the tops with Wilton's Green Apple candy melts.  Then topped each one off with a little candy eye.

I am also not sure what special powers these creatures may possess so it's best to eat them as soon as possible.  Your life may depend on it.

Krispy Skremes!!!!

Krispy Kreme has cute monster donuts this year!  And a new box design to add to my collection!

I think this guy is the cutest of the bunch!

See these past posts for more Krispy Skremes:
2013 Krispy Skremes
2012 Krispy Skremes

Dead Threads

Because I like for me and my man to be the snazziest looking couple at any function I made Hubs and I matching outfits to wear to a few Halloween festivities we are attending this month.

I made myself a dress with a few of my own additions and made the mister a matching tie and tie clip.

Here is a closer view of his tie. The best part is it's a no sew project!
 It is made possible by the use of an iron, Wonder Under and bits of iron-on knee patch material.   To make the tie pattern, I took one he already had and traced around it onto the polka dot fabric leaving a margin of border to fold to the back.  I then cut it out and ironed the edges over.  To cover up the rough edges on the back, I used black iron-on knee patch material down the middle.  I then cut out eye balls from my dress fabric and applied them to the front of the tie with Wonder Under.  The tie clip is hard to see but it is just an existing one he already had that I attached a plastic spider to.

My dress is made from Simplicity pattern 1873.  I got the fabric at Joann....on sale and with a coupon!  I added the collar which is from Simplicity pattern 1609 and drafted up the belt on my own.   I don't have a lot of experience with patterns so I always have difficulty and major frustrations throughout the process.  I told myself  I am never making this pattern again!!!!  But truthfully it did come together ok in the end.  I had to do some altering on the shoulders (the pattern's are too wide) and the bodice (too big).

Let the spooky festivities begin!  We're "dressed to kill"! Ha!