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impyUgh. I loathe the taking down of holiday stuff and to be honest, I'm only so-so on the actual putting up of most of it, too. I love having the Halloween stuff up, but if I were given witchy powers to levetate or something, I would absolutely use them for decorating purposes. :P
Still getting used to the keyboard. I think it could've stood to be a little wider as it feels a bit cramped in some places but I'm not entirely sure since it's very different from the previous one. Fun though.
Lesse. I owe Halloween pictures, yes? I don't remember if I shared any, so a couple may be repeats.
I didn't take any pictures of the outside this year since I only put my purple lanterns out at the last minute when it became clear we weren't actually in danger of the HOA doing any work to the outside during October. To be honest, November ain't looking likely either and I'm kind of annoyed since I avoided my usual Halloween decorating due to their "everything must be gone from the outside OR ELSE" mandate. Anyway.
My wreath. I swapped out the lights this year for a longer set and it alternates between purple and orange, or straight purple/straight orange. Love it, even if it took a jump last year and broke a couple of the ornaments on the side. I really noticed them last year but this year I didn't, and when I did, I figured they added to the Halloween vibe.
Front hall and my JOL for the year. Some years I try to do something interesting (Stitch, Frankie) and some years I say fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck it. Because I kinda hate carving pumpkins. I love the seeds, I absolutely love the way a JOL smells when lit (that smell when paired with a whiff from the candy bowl IS Halloween to me) but carving is a nerve-wracking experience and since I live in a place where your pumpkin can rot before you even get around to carving it, and will definitely risk being dead if you carve too soon on Halloween friggin' day? Yeah. It's a PITA.
Closer look at the table right by the door at various points in the season. The bats are from when I was setting them up and asking for an opinion on whether I had enough (the answer is always: never enough!) and they go about halfway up the stairs. Some years I go a little higher and some years I add them to the downstairs hall, but this year I dialed back a smidge overall but added more to the line going up.
I REALLY like how the tabletop there came out, honestly. I finally broke out the HP luminaria bags and used some of them around the house. This is probably the one that worked the best.
Left side of the hallway! I had to tweak the colors because my camera tended to turn the purple lights pink and while I do own pinkish purples, I specifically used the blue-purple. It's a thing. Anyway, that's the bookcase top and next shelf down has the luminaria. Hanging off the door to the AC unit we have my witch that Mom doesn't love. I got it from work like... six or seven years ago now and I am forever sad that they didn't come out with more the following year. She's black glitter on one side and purple glitter on the other and I love her and you have absolutely seen her if you've ever looked at my Halloween posts.
Go down the hall and you'll find these. I love my little witchy friend from At Home. On the other side of the hall you just have the purple lights strung and I decided not to add anything else because while Mom was recovering from surgery earlier in the year, we moved the game cabinet to the living room so her walker (when she needed it) wouldn't bump into it. It works perfectly where it currently is and that meant that the hallway didn't have a surface to decorate. Which was perfect when I was pretending I was scaling down Halloween this year. :P
I don't remember if I shared these before.
The first was as I was unboxing decorations and I left this up for awhile as is, and then the second is basically how the Halloween 'village' looked for most of the time. I added a few strands of lights (never got a good shot of the orange lights on the tree in the back) and this is before the witch's house came in but you get the idea. I really loved how this looked and while I'd probably tweak a few things, and I definitely wish I'd taken shots of the little scenes (little Wanda the witch is in the backyard raising the dead which you can kind of see in the middle, there are a couple of carnival workers gathering people for the Ferris wheel, that kind of thing) looking at this all season made me stupidly happy.
More lit up and Niles the cat from Target. I debated keeping him out all year but ultimately decided I didn't want to dust him. :P
Computer tower got decorated, too.
My grandmother's desk that I will absolutely fight my brother for should the time come. It's messy and not as cute because it actually gets used for stuff. :P I didn't get a shot of the bats above it (or really any of the places I put them) but they're basically just above this, flying towards the incredibly loud smoke detector.
Didn't get a shot of Widget's funkin and the blue/green spotlight sitting next to my doggo from CB, but it's essentially exactly the same as last year's set up, only I didn't put the pumpkin on the light so it didn't die within an hour.
Moving along, we have the top of the bookcases. I didn't get a shot of the little HP funkos in front of the TV with the orange lights (same as last year) but before that you have the black cat congregation. Ooooooooooh. Ahhhhhhh.
Depending on how Christmas gets decorated, these may stay out again. I put away the DOD cats and my ghosty there, but the rest are still out. We'll see, we'll see. Honestly, the urge to put them away til after Christmas and then display them with the black cat sign is very strong.
Then you get the top of the various players and my Halloween wall decor. Slide to the right a smidge (ignore the fact that the pictures are swapped) and oh, look, its me. You can see the bats in the reflection. Also, Wednesday dress was SUPER comfy.
Top of the game cabinet. Fun fact, the game cabinet doesn't hold any games. It's got a lot of crap but one of the things holding the crap is a McBoo bucket. I don't think it's actually McBoo, I think it's one of the others, but yes. Before you ask why such a legend is not on display, it's because it's holding something like a million metal bits and I don't want to mess with that right now. The more you knooooooowwwwwwww.
But that's my new mummy JOL and my Tori witch and her kitty. The cloche should light up but I have to clean the batter compartment and ugh. I actually really liked how this one turned out, too.
No, I didn't carve two identical JOLs. I moved the JOL to the living room after all hope of TOTing was done. You can see above the backdoor. The middle JOL has my polish swatch sticks, and next to that is the catnip so they don't get to it. Ooh, ahh.
Next up is another bookcase. This one never fully came together but I do like that the spooky bookcase has the Nancy Drew books up top so that's fun. Those orange bottle brush trees are BRIGHT orange. Like obnoxiously so. The cardboard haunted house is one Widget and I made when he was little. I should replace the orange tissue paper but honestly, I'm just surprised this thing has survived so long. I keep thinking it's ten years old but uh, it's probably closer to 13?
If you look down, you'll see the ghost Widget painted. ♥ Sometimes I wonder if he ever notices the fact that I do include his contributions, but I suppose it doesn't truly matter since I add them because I love them/him/the memories.
Behind the couch. Sorry the couch is so messy but I was trying to take pictures before little one appeared. Which she never did but I didn't know that at the time. Anyway, this is another set up I actually really liked more than I thought I would since it was basically just put out as I took things out of boxes and it was never meant to stay this way. You can see Tangie my Squishmallow who has been living downstairs since I got her. Oh, the black fuzzy things are my little black ravens. I have to keep them from getting Ozma's interest so they don't get to be daring.
Did I also dress Marianna up as Wednesday and match my doll? Mmm, yes. Yes I did. I didn't get around to dressing any of the other dolls up but I loved this even if poor Marianna photographed not so well. Behold the squishies! You can just make out the ghost and devil corgi behind her.
And if you made it this far, have a picture of Ozma who was not having any of this photo nonsense.
Oof, headache.
In other news, I made the mistake of actually checking my promotion emails on the day of and noticed that QVC had a Kindle Fire on some insane sale and after debating for a little bit, I went ahead and ordered one because my fire has basically no battery staying power anymore. To drive that point home, when I went to sleep yesterday, I was doing my usual 'watch a nail video and snooze' and less than five minutes in we'd gone from 100% to 0 and we're shutting down. WTF.
So that worked out, maybe.
Still getting used to the keyboard. I think it could've stood to be a little wider as it feels a bit cramped in some places but I'm not entirely sure since it's very different from the previous one. Fun though.
Lesse. I owe Halloween pictures, yes? I don't remember if I shared any, so a couple may be repeats.
I didn't take any pictures of the outside this year since I only put my purple lanterns out at the last minute when it became clear we weren't actually in danger of the HOA doing any work to the outside during October. To be honest, November ain't looking likely either and I'm kind of annoyed since I avoided my usual Halloween decorating due to their "everything must be gone from the outside OR ELSE" mandate. Anyway.
My wreath. I swapped out the lights this year for a longer set and it alternates between purple and orange, or straight purple/straight orange. Love it, even if it took a jump last year and broke a couple of the ornaments on the side. I really noticed them last year but this year I didn't, and when I did, I figured they added to the Halloween vibe.
Front hall and my JOL for the year. Some years I try to do something interesting (Stitch, Frankie) and some years I say fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck it. Because I kinda hate carving pumpkins. I love the seeds, I absolutely love the way a JOL smells when lit (that smell when paired with a whiff from the candy bowl IS Halloween to me) but carving is a nerve-wracking experience and since I live in a place where your pumpkin can rot before you even get around to carving it, and will definitely risk being dead if you carve too soon on Halloween friggin' day? Yeah. It's a PITA.
Closer look at the table right by the door at various points in the season. The bats are from when I was setting them up and asking for an opinion on whether I had enough (the answer is always: never enough!) and they go about halfway up the stairs. Some years I go a little higher and some years I add them to the downstairs hall, but this year I dialed back a smidge overall but added more to the line going up.
I REALLY like how the tabletop there came out, honestly. I finally broke out the HP luminaria bags and used some of them around the house. This is probably the one that worked the best.
Left side of the hallway! I had to tweak the colors because my camera tended to turn the purple lights pink and while I do own pinkish purples, I specifically used the blue-purple. It's a thing. Anyway, that's the bookcase top and next shelf down has the luminaria. Hanging off the door to the AC unit we have my witch that Mom doesn't love. I got it from work like... six or seven years ago now and I am forever sad that they didn't come out with more the following year. She's black glitter on one side and purple glitter on the other and I love her and you have absolutely seen her if you've ever looked at my Halloween posts.
Go down the hall and you'll find these. I love my little witchy friend from At Home. On the other side of the hall you just have the purple lights strung and I decided not to add anything else because while Mom was recovering from surgery earlier in the year, we moved the game cabinet to the living room so her walker (when she needed it) wouldn't bump into it. It works perfectly where it currently is and that meant that the hallway didn't have a surface to decorate. Which was perfect when I was pretending I was scaling down Halloween this year. :P
I don't remember if I shared these before.
The first was as I was unboxing decorations and I left this up for awhile as is, and then the second is basically how the Halloween 'village' looked for most of the time. I added a few strands of lights (never got a good shot of the orange lights on the tree in the back) and this is before the witch's house came in but you get the idea. I really loved how this looked and while I'd probably tweak a few things, and I definitely wish I'd taken shots of the little scenes (little Wanda the witch is in the backyard raising the dead which you can kind of see in the middle, there are a couple of carnival workers gathering people for the Ferris wheel, that kind of thing) looking at this all season made me stupidly happy.
More lit up and Niles the cat from Target. I debated keeping him out all year but ultimately decided I didn't want to dust him. :P
Computer tower got decorated, too.
My grandmother's desk that I will absolutely fight my brother for should the time come. It's messy and not as cute because it actually gets used for stuff. :P I didn't get a shot of the bats above it (or really any of the places I put them) but they're basically just above this, flying towards the incredibly loud smoke detector.
Didn't get a shot of Widget's funkin and the blue/green spotlight sitting next to my doggo from CB, but it's essentially exactly the same as last year's set up, only I didn't put the pumpkin on the light so it didn't die within an hour.
Moving along, we have the top of the bookcases. I didn't get a shot of the little HP funkos in front of the TV with the orange lights (same as last year) but before that you have the black cat congregation. Ooooooooooh. Ahhhhhhh.
Depending on how Christmas gets decorated, these may stay out again. I put away the DOD cats and my ghosty there, but the rest are still out. We'll see, we'll see. Honestly, the urge to put them away til after Christmas and then display them with the black cat sign is very strong.
Then you get the top of the various players and my Halloween wall decor. Slide to the right a smidge (ignore the fact that the pictures are swapped) and oh, look, its me. You can see the bats in the reflection. Also, Wednesday dress was SUPER comfy.
Top of the game cabinet. Fun fact, the game cabinet doesn't hold any games. It's got a lot of crap but one of the things holding the crap is a McBoo bucket. I don't think it's actually McBoo, I think it's one of the others, but yes. Before you ask why such a legend is not on display, it's because it's holding something like a million metal bits and I don't want to mess with that right now. The more you knooooooowwwwwwww.
But that's my new mummy JOL and my Tori witch and her kitty. The cloche should light up but I have to clean the batter compartment and ugh. I actually really liked how this one turned out, too.
No, I didn't carve two identical JOLs. I moved the JOL to the living room after all hope of TOTing was done. You can see above the backdoor. The middle JOL has my polish swatch sticks, and next to that is the catnip so they don't get to it. Ooh, ahh.
Next up is another bookcase. This one never fully came together but I do like that the spooky bookcase has the Nancy Drew books up top so that's fun. Those orange bottle brush trees are BRIGHT orange. Like obnoxiously so. The cardboard haunted house is one Widget and I made when he was little. I should replace the orange tissue paper but honestly, I'm just surprised this thing has survived so long. I keep thinking it's ten years old but uh, it's probably closer to 13?
If you look down, you'll see the ghost Widget painted. ♥ Sometimes I wonder if he ever notices the fact that I do include his contributions, but I suppose it doesn't truly matter since I add them because I love them/him/the memories.
Behind the couch. Sorry the couch is so messy but I was trying to take pictures before little one appeared. Which she never did but I didn't know that at the time. Anyway, this is another set up I actually really liked more than I thought I would since it was basically just put out as I took things out of boxes and it was never meant to stay this way. You can see Tangie my Squishmallow who has been living downstairs since I got her. Oh, the black fuzzy things are my little black ravens. I have to keep them from getting Ozma's interest so they don't get to be daring.
Did I also dress Marianna up as Wednesday and match my doll? Mmm, yes. Yes I did. I didn't get around to dressing any of the other dolls up but I loved this even if poor Marianna photographed not so well. Behold the squishies! You can just make out the ghost and devil corgi behind her.
And if you made it this far, have a picture of Ozma who was not having any of this photo nonsense.
Oof, headache.
In other news, I made the mistake of actually checking my promotion emails on the day of and noticed that QVC had a Kindle Fire on some insane sale and after debating for a little bit, I went ahead and ordered one because my fire has basically no battery staying power anymore. To drive that point home, when I went to sleep yesterday, I was doing my usual 'watch a nail video and snooze' and less than five minutes in we'd gone from 100% to 0 and we're shutting down. WTF.
So that worked out, maybe.