HAPPY HALLOWEEN 2017

Hope your night is filled with lots of Trick or Treaters!

Stay safe...

The real scary thought right now is that tomorrow is already November and Christmas is less than 2 months away. 

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Dollar Tree Scary Pictures

By the time I was able to make a trip to the local Dollar Tree store, the scary pictures I talked about in a post a while back were mostly sold out. I was able to buy a few that they had left.

This bloody mess turns into a nice looking vintage gent when you bend the paper picture (as I did here) or change your position to him by walking past him if he's hanging on the wall.

I didn't have time to put his picture in an old frame before I left on a recent road trip, so I placed him on the chalkboard to get him to stand up straight and not bend. 

That purple ring with bells and ribbon hanging with the cups is meant to hang on a door knob. Nothing practical about it! Just something to add a little cheer and jingle to let you know if a ghost comes through your door!

While the scary photos were mostly sold out at the store, there were dozens of the door knob hangers left in various colors of orange, lime-green, purple, and black. Like everything at Dollar Tree, they were $1 a piece, which I thought was a good buy. 

The jingling bells of the door knob hangers would make a cute addition to a holiday wreath for Halloween, or even for Christmas. 

The lime-green, black, and even the purple ones, seem like they would fit in with Christmas decor these days, as long as your decorations are done in a fun or comical way!

These two evil-doers could add a little Halloween drama to your windows and mirrors! The witch and Count Dracula just lift right off the white plastic backing, and they adhere to any smooth flat surface. 

The great thing is, they are reusable. I stuck the witch on the mirror in our powder room, and she looked like she was staring right out of the mirror at me. 

It was too dark in the powder room to take a photo of her creepy stare, so I moved her out to a window, smoothed out the air bubbles with my hands, and took a photo of her on the window.

The dark solar screens we use on our windows here in Texas (to reflect the strong sunlight) really show up as wavy lines in photos when you take an "up close" picture of them.

Here's a photo of the Count in the window next to the one with the witch...

You'll have to take my word for it! In person they both look like they're kind of floating outside looking in. Here's Count Dracula in a close up...

Truthfully, I bought them a little too late for Halloween decorating this year, but I'll bring them out early next fall and have more time to enjoy them.

I inadvertently got a clearer (but smaller) photo of the witch in this window when I took a photo of a glass cake plate to text to one of the daughters to see if she needed one.

Luckily she did need one, and though she would prefer a white bottom stand, this one was free...and free is almost always good! Our road trip included a stop at her house, so it got packed up and delivered just in time for a Halloween cupcake display.

Here's a better view of the cake stand where you can see the top and bottom together. Just squint a little and you won't see that darn TV at all!

Remember, everything is $1 at the Dollar Tree...You won't find any price tags there because of that! 

All opinions expressed here are my own, and I paid a whopping one dollar for each of the Dollar Tree items shown here! I featured their products here because I love that Dollar Tree is actually a true $1 store.

The cake stand is something I've had for a while and is not from the Dollar Tree store. I've collected a few cake stands over the years, and I'm currently trying to downsize my junk "collections" by passing things on to family members when they express an interest. 

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White Wednesday: Stained Glass

Someday I'll come to the end of the pile in the garage. But today is not that day!

I've never been a stained glass person myself. This is a stained glass piece my mother-in-law didn't want anymore. It was a gift from a friend in 2002.

A while back, she decided to let it go when we were decluttering her apartment in her retirement community. 

When I got home, I placed it in a box marked "To Sell or Donate" and put it in the back of our garage to ruminate on it. 

Within a few weeks it started to grow on me. Always a bad sign when you need to declutter too!

Of course my first thought at that point was, "How would this look with some vintage looking, white distressed paint?" And, just like that, it became my next victim!

First coat of Fusion Mineral Paint in the color Limestone...

Second coat of Limestone...

This little jar is really going far! I absolutely love working with this paint.

Now it was time to rough up that pristine white paint. Some things just call for a little distressing around it, and stained glass is one of them! 

To distress the edges, I used a piece of rough sandpaper and a small bowl of water to wet the sandpaper. Don't get it too wet...just enough to make it easy to take a little of the paint off!

Later I'll add some dark wax to the areas I've sanded to age it a little more. I like to wait until I have a few things to wax, then I'll do them all at the same time. 

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Dollar Tree Halloween Decor

After loving the scary photos found on Saturdays Vintage Finds blog in my last post, I hustled right down to Dollar Tree just like I said I would.

My favorite Halloween purchases today are these two mice. I figured the scariest place for mice would be in the kitchen, right?
I know it would really creep me out to have real mice in there!

The quality of the mice (rats?) is not very good as their little whiskers stick oddly out. I think they would appear more realistic if they were up on a shelf, farther away, instead of close up like this. 

But I thought this little vignette was cute, so I decided to go to one of the seasonal Halloween stores tomorrow and buy some better quality mice to take their place. 

Meanwhile these two will continue to frolic on the kitchen cart until I can replace them.

Did you notice the little white stand this mouse is standing on? A few weeks back I bought a couple of these little stands for $1 each (at the bargain isle) in our local Target store.

Until 3 or 4 years ago, I had never been to a Dollar Tree store! I had been to other "dollar stores" and found most of their prices to be in the $1.99 to $2.99 range. 

On my first trip to Dollar Tree, I got madder and madder until I finally started to walk out of the store empty-handed...in a huff...and, as I passed a clerk in the isle, I loudly complained that there were no prices on any of their products! 

You can bet my face turned red with embarrassment when the kind clerk whispered to me, "Hon...everything is a dollar!"  

But even that is not exactly true. I buy all my greeting cards at Dollar Tree and most of the kid's cards are "2 for $1" -- so that's just 50 cents a piece!

If you've managed to stay with my post this long, I thank you! I'll be back to show you the spooky photos I bought today too.

Dollar Tree Purchases: Six Halloween cards for 50 cents each; Two black mice $1 each.

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Halloween Decor And Dollar Tree Tip

Halloween is closing in fast! The only Halloween decor I've managed to deck the house with are these crows up above the window trim.

Things are looking a little bare in here as I'm still (avoiding) working on this room.

Somewhere there's a box of Halloween decorations hiding in my garage or one of the closets. The box must be where the scarecrow is hiding as I haven't found him yet.

It doesn't seem like Halloween is near without the Scarecrow hanging out.

Here's some pictures of the scarecrow from Halloweens past.

I happened upon a new-to-me blog called "Saturdays Vintage Finds."

Besides lots of drool-worthy painted furniture, I found a post on these adorable "scary framed photos" and was surprised to find the photos were put together from things bought at Dollar Tree. 

Saturdays Vintage Finds

Click on over to Saturdays Vintage Finds and check out how those adorable scary photos were put together. 

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Fixin' To Do List: White Wednesday

Wednesday again! Here's what I painted white this week...

All four of these victims were painted with Fusion Paint in the color Limestone. It's a warm white color I fell in love with while stalking Linda's furniture makeovers at her blog, Q is for Quandie.

TIP: Notice the sandwich baggies turned upside down under the cap? I've found there's less of a chance that your cap will stick (due to paint on the rim) if you put a baggie over the jar and then screw the cap on top of it.

This metal bin originally started out yellow. I bought a few of them in several sizes about 8 years ago. I like the bin much better now that it's a chalky white.

Same goes for this little basket. The yellow tone is gone now and it will get some dark wax this week.

Walmart sells these little baskets for a few dollars, but the colors are like Easter egg colors. You can tone them down with a little chalk paint so they don't stick out like a sore thumb.

The vintage kitchen chair and the old child's rocker already had a few licks of white paint I'd given them recently, so I just added a few new layers of Limestone by Fusion Paints.

Fusion Paint doesn't require a top coat of wax or other finish since it has something built in to create a tougher finish than other chalk-type paints.

This rocker was Wild Bill's when he was a toddler. Yeah, it's that old! When his parents bought it for him it was red and it stayed red until I painted it. 

The little rocker traveled around the family as cousins were added, even going as far as Germany when an Army uncle and family were stationed there. 

You can see on the bottom of the runners that, along the way, it was painted different colors of red quite a few times. I left the bottoms the way they were to preserve a little of its history.

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