Last night I completed my first Christmas gift for this season!  I made a Ruby Doll for my Grandma.  Ruby has turned into quite a sensation with the online sewing community.  She even has her own Flickr group.  In case you haven’t heard of Ruby, she’s an adorable little soft doll that was offered as a free pattern from the very talented Jhoanna Monte Aranez at One Red Robin.

I love stopping by the Ruby Flickr group every once in a while to see what kind of cute Ruby creations people have made.

My latest Ruby is a Christmas Angel for my Grandma.  I added some sequin holly berries with felt leaves, I stitched some beads and sequins on her green shirt to give it some sparkle, and I gave her wings with a little bow-shaped button in the center.

The 7th Annual Halloween Party was great!  The night before, which was actually Halloween, Lindsey and Cornbread and Justin and Kelly came over for some pizza and Jack-O-Lantern carving.  I was hoping we’d get more trick-or-treaters than last year, but we only got one. 

This year’s party set-up went really smooth and stress-free for me.  Thanks to Michael for making me take a nap so he could play garland elf, and Kelly for getting all the decor up to Esco in one turbo trip, and of course Lindsey’s magical spiderweb skills.  It was so nice to have the party all set-up and ready to go with plenty of time to get our costumes on.  Thanks to everyone who made it happen!

We didn’t have a huge turn out of party people, but what really matters is that the RIGHT people showed up.  We got to be treated to a quick little appearance by Elliot in his monkey costume from his beautiful and talented Fairy Godmother.  Alex and Kimbra won their second Pussy Award and brought the most delightfully awful-looking meatheads!  And we had lots of new-comers to the party; even Aunt Gina Lola Zappa and her fortune-telling cards.

The pictures will be added to website soon!

 ”I’m not much of a man by the light of day,

But by night I’m one hell of a lover.”

It’s a Gothic Spider Bride costume made by me!  I started this costume last year with intent to start up Boo Couture, my costume design business.  But with being evacuated during the Witch Fire and then whole craziness of the holiday season, it ended up in the UFO pile.  I finally put all the finishing touches on it last night, and I plan to try and sell it once I get some better pictures of it.

It’s a size 16/18 gown (I need to take some more accurate measurements) with with a headband based veil.  The whole gown is constructed from a polyester satin and trimmed with metallic rick-rack, tulle bows and plastic spiders.  It’ll look great with some goth makeup and fishnet stockings.  I’m really, really happy with how it turned out.  It’s going to be hard to part with it.  I hope whoever gets to be the Gothic Spider Bride for Halloween takes really good care of it.

Friday night Lindsey and Cornbread came up to our house for dinner.  Lindsey made some wonderful pasta for dinner and I’ve been enjoying the leftovers all weekend!  I wanted to put out some seasonal appetizers since it is now officially Halloween season, so I tried out my new eyeball mold.  The green zombie eye dip is kinda like french onion dip and the blue zombie eye dip is garlic and chives.  I just dumped some dip type ingredients in blender then added a packet of Knox dissolved in hot water.  After the eyeballs set-up over night I painted the veins and iris with gel food color.  The blue zombie eye dip was definitely the yummiest.  Onion flavored eye ball dip is just a little too creepy for me.  But the garlic and chives eyeball dip is a keeper and is fabulous on buttery Keebler Club crackers.

YIPPEE!  It’s October 1st!  That means Halloween season!

For our engagement Gail got Michael and I this really cool Halloween Bat-globe.  It’s a very affectionate skeleton couple going for a ride in their dead mobile with bats flying all around.  Plus, it’s a music box that plays “Ding Dong the Witch is Dead”!  Momma Gail always finds the coolest stuff!

We also were very privileged to receive a donation to the Halloween party from Alex and Kimbra.  The newlyweds found a really cool skeleton candle holder while they were on their honeymoon cruise and immediately thought of the Halloween party.  Thanks Mr. and Mrs. Castillo!

Michael brought home two “Wee Bee” pumpkins for me yesterday and I think they look fabulous on our table.  I can’t wait to get carving on some squash this year.  I’ve decided that I’m not limiting myself to just pumpkins.  I want to try some other produce.  Any ideas?

I’ve been making progress on costume construction and the party invites were mailed out today.  If you don’t get one in a few days send me a quick email and I’ll make sure you get one.

shannie@hhhsd.org

 It doesn’t matter how many new and different sewing projects I delve into, I learn something new every time, and I love that about sewing.  Kelly and I are finally going to be Disney Princesses for Halloween.   I say finally because I’ve had my fabric to make a Snow White costume since probably some time in the late 90’s!  And I’ve been holding on to an awesome out-of-print (OOP) Cinderella pattern that I’ve been dying to make for Kelly for almost as long.  Our costumes aren’t a secret this year.  At least I don’t think… (sorry Smelly!)

Anyway, in the process of starting my Snow White costume I have learned SO MUCH about fitting a formal dress to make an ordinary chick look like a princess.  I’ve taken our Halloween costume construction as an opportunity to practice some new techniques I’ve been reading about for making formal dresses, specifically bridal couture.  Now, in now way can I call myself a couturier, but I love reading about couture techniques and trying to learn some of them.  It’s amazing what a difference a little extra hand stitching and careful planning can do for a garment.

For a couple months I’ve been kinda thinking about my game plan for the construction of my wedding dress.  I’ve read through lots of blogs, and looked through some wedding gown forums on pattern review.  It seems that everyone is using Susan Khalje’s book “Bridal Couture”, so I had to buy it.  I also bought a book by Susan Andriks about making the wedding dress of your dreams (I don’t remember the actual title).  This pair of books is all anyone needs to make beautiful formal gowns.  They’re both full of information, and each fills in any gaps the other may have left open.

 I was able to use some techniques I learned from each book already in fitting my Snow White dress.  I also learned a new interlining/corsellette method, and it all went together flawlessly!

I’ve heard style and fashion gurus make statements about how a well fitting garment makes any woman look beautiful, but I always thought “yeah, everyone but me”.  Yes, it’s true, Stacy and Clinton do know what they’re talking about.  As soon as I got the bodice all boned up and lined I was able to just hold it up to myself and see the princess shape!  AMAZING!

 Now I can’t wait to get started on Kelly’s, and I feel totally confident that I’ll be able to put together a gorgeous wedding dress for myself (even though I don’t have a pattern).

Also, I found this blog that I thought was really interesting: Drawing Women

Every single one of my Halloween patterns are now in a slide show.  Just go to my Costume Patterns page.  You’ll find it in the side bar right under my About page. 

I love BigLots this time of year.  It’s a wonderland of creepy low-priced Halloween props and decorations.  I think this bride and groom are especially cool.  It’s so nice to see the undead settle down and tie the knot.  There are also some maniacal clowns and witches that are similar to the bride and groom which are also pretty cool.  I noticed stacks of boxes with the magical orange Jack-O-Lantern stamp blocking some of the aisles in the store, so I’m sure as the actual holiday gets closer, there will be even more terrible treasures for me to drool over.  But I was so excited about the two aisles of goodies that have been put on display, I had to snap a couple crappy cell phone pictures.

The aisle where the bride and groom are, is really the one that catches your attention, but the other aisle of outdoor lights and other electronic-type gadgets shouldn’t be ignored.  This year they have a motion activated thunder and lightning strobe light set.  Basically when it’s activated it makes pretty high quality thunder sound effects and a series of pretty good little strobe lights make the lightning effect.  I think it would be perfect for lighting up your front door for the trick-or-treaters (TOTs).  I might consider buying them, but for today I just pressed the “try-me” button a couple times.  There are the stupid el cheapo lighted lawn stakes, that aren’t cool-looking or creepy in any way, and the pre-carved lighted foam pumpkins that you can never have too many of.  But another new decoration I was kinda interested in was the creepy signs.  There is one that says “The Witch is In”, and the “Bats Motel” which just looks like you forgot the “e”, and then there are quite a few motion activated signs.  My favorite is “The Blood Cafe”, it looks all bloody and dirty. 

 I really could just spend my entire paycheck on Halloween stuff, but today I only bought the old standby 5 foot Glow-In-The-Dark blowmold skeleton.  I’ll pop of his skull and use the rest of him for the talking tree face/skull project I started a couple months ago.  The anatomically correct skull model in no way matches the cheap blowmold plastic skeleton, but I figure I should be able to make them match each other a little better with some paint.

It’s official!

We’re engaged!

My sweet, sweet Michael proposed in the most memorable way yesterday.  He asked me to marry him with orange cupcakes.  It was very sweet and cute.   Of course I said yes, and I can’t wait to be his wife.

I love him with all my heart, and I can’t believe how lucky I am.  Michael is everything I could ever want and more in a man.