Blog Halloween Party!

Tallulah House is pleased to be a part of the Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun Halloween party. After you've had a look around here, you might want to click on that link and visit some of the other spooky locales :)


Let me show you around! You approach the front porch:





As you get closer, you notice the urns at the bottom of the steps-- no ashes in them, though, only colourful gourds and owls :)







(Never you mind all the dirt on the urns and leaves that need sweeping off of the walk-- this is an old, haunted house!! It's supposed to look that way, I tell ya!)

On the door is some kind of (tacky) wreath (hey, someone gave me those garlands and the door needed a spot of colour!)





Slowly, the door before you creaks open and you see-- EEEEEK!




(Don't worry, though, he's off duty and just here for the party!)


Have a look around the spooky living room... or should I say the UNliving room??? Muwahahahah!








Here are some closeups of this (not very) frightening tableau!













Come on into the dining room... if you dare!





Here's a closeup up of the decaying tablecloth (I had a blast unravelling the cheesecloth!)





My goodness, look at all of those cobwebs!




Come closer. Closer!






That's close enough! I KNEW that I shouldn't have stencilled these in the dark!



Dante has some spooky treats for you:




A view into the kitchen (The spiders must get paid per piece around here. And is that a rodent army??)





Look at this bewitching beauty!





Oooo, a spooky Halloween painting... and another rat!





Look at the teapots! They've been taken over by the rodent army!










They're-- they're everywhere!









Let's go into the kitchen. There are a few things to see in there.


A vintage-ish Halloween banner:




Some sorceresses:









Some lovely fall foliage and a sign:




A closeup, and Tallulah House's wish for you this All Hallow's Eve:



Thanks for coming to the party :)
Kimberley

Awww, shucks, ma'ams

I am truly flattered! The ever fab-u-lious Kari and Kijsa featured one of my white pumpkins on their blog :) You can see my pitiful efforts, along with their crazy pumpkin decorating talent here.

I'll be posting more pics of the white pumpkins, along with pics of Tallulah House decked out in her Halloween finery, later today as part of the Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun virtual Halloween party.

Kimberley

What fun!

Three lovely ladies have banded together to stage a virtual Halloween party! You can read all of the details at Ghouls Just Wanna Have Fun .

I had wanted to do something similar, but since I only had two participants, I've since called it off. Thanks to the lovely Kari & Kijsa for offering up their photo. Go check out their blog-- you'll love it!

Our annual Halloween party was Saturday night, and was so much fun. Chris was a handsome and dashing pirate, I was a lovely corpse bride, and our guests were all sorts of delightful and spooky things :) I'll post pictures either tomorrow or Wednesday, as part of the virtual Halloween party event.

Have a great day,
Kimberley

Scenes from pumpkin carving

There were pizzas and ghost milkshakes...




There were friends carving pumpkins...







There was a curious Labrador Retriever...




There was a porch full of jack-o-lanterns...




There was lots of Halloween fun :)

50th post!

Woohooo, post #50! How fun that I'm hitting this milestone during my favourite time of the year :) To celebrate, I'm doing a giveaway. Not of this lovely skellington (he belongs to the Art Department and must be returned after Halloween), but of something fun and charming and Halloween-ish.

Here's how it works: you have until midnight on Sunday, 28 October, to leave a comment for THIS post. One comment per person, please. I will then use this random generator in order to pick one lucky winner!

Enjoy,

Kimberley

More Halloween fun!

Here are some photos of our Saturday excursion to a north GA pumpkin farm. I was so excited, standing there in the middle of that huge bunch of pumpkins, that I just about needed a paper bag in order to breathe. If I'd been a dog I would have been thumping my tail wildly and rolling around on the ground :)
There were heirloom pumpkins, regular carving pumpkins, sugar pumpkins, huge, gigantor pumpkins... The weather was incredible: sunny, but cool enough to need the sweater that I'd brought *sigh* It was so much fun. I was very good and only bought two pumpkins! Go ahead: congratulate me on my restraint. (Never mind the fact that I already had 13 and that I will be going back to Whole Foods to buy more for the big carving fest this Friday night...)




Here's a (horrible, awful, blurry) picture of Tallulah's decorated porch:



Some things that you can't see include a cool, motion-activated skeleton hanging from the porch light (thanks, Mom!), the "Welcome" crosspiece that forms the top of the archway (thanks, Mom!), a skeleton "Beware" sign in the right windowbox (thanks, Mom!), a "trick or treat" flag, some owl candleholders.... (My mom is my Halloween enabler, can you tell??) Hmmm, there's quite a lot that you can't see... Sorry! I do love the glow of the lights, though :) I have these darling glass pumpkin shaped candle holders that I suspended by orange ribbons from the bannisters (they're the large orange glows on the sides). I think it looks pretty cool.

More pictures of all the decorative goings-on later! Oh, and if any of you are serious Halloween fans, add to my joy and leave me a comment ;)
Kimberley

Slowly but surely...

Hail, Dante Allighieri and his poisonous treats! :)

As you can see, Frances and I got some decorating done today. I hauled home that bust of Dante from my office yesterday and added the tiny black roses to his head. Frances wrote the labels for the apothecary jars (I'd wanted some for about a year, but refused to pay the outrageous prices-- went to Big Lots yesterday for something else and bam! There they were, a whole set of them, for 1/3 the price of a single jar elsewhere! Now that's what I call a shopping victory!!), and I think that she did a smashing job! The labels read "Boo Bears", "Scary Scotties", and "Lethal Licorice".

Here are a couple more pics of this vignette:








Across from Dante and his jars of creepy goodness, we have "The Bewitching Hour", a piece I'd coveted and finally bought after Halloween last year when she went on sale:




(Notice the rat? Remember my rodent army? More on that in a later post, muwahahaha!)





Chris and I had a really good time last night with Stacy & Andrew, and Christopher; they came over and helped us set up the Halloween archway on the front porch, garland the bannisters, string lights, etc. They were a HUGE help, and I am so grateful to them. To repay them in a small way, I made dinner. I'm happy to report that it was a meal in which everything went absolutely correctly-- that so rarely happens to me that it's worth mentioning when it does ;)
I made them mixed grains with parmesan and herbs over green leaf lettuce, chicken pot pie (and a separate veggie pot pie for myself), carrot muffins, and an apple crisp. Everyone seemed to enjoy the meal-- I know that I did!

I have more Halloween decoration pictures to post, but I am soooo tired (Stacy & Andrew, and Chris & I went up to Burt's Farm today for the corn maze and haunted hay ride and didn't get home until 11pm-- that's way late for this girl!) so that'll have to wait.

Hope you got to do something fun today!
Kimberley

I love pumpkins

Errr. I REALLY love pumpkins :) These are not arranged as artfully as I'd like (and will hopefully get around to doing before they get carved up), but they have such charm in their sheer number and colour that I had to share! Originally I was going to arrange them all down the front steps, but when I got home today I saw that those blasted squirrels-- nasty little tree rodents!-- had been at the three that were already there, grrrr. (I used to like squirrels, until I moved out and got a balcony full of baskets and planters and they made war on my poor, innocent plants!) So for now they'll sit in our living room and greet everyone who comes in the front door.

I plan for Stacy (part of the Friend Brigade coming to help us with outdoor decorations tomorrow night) and I to paint black diamonds on three of the white ones tomorrow night; they'll be on the table during the party, amongst the cheesecloth runner and other black and white decorations.

Here are a couple of other pics:



There's my beloved wooden bowl again, this time with the additon of a pie pumpkin and some beautiful corn. The mini gourds are a mixture of ones I got for SO CHEAP at Trader Joe's and the Farmer's Market. I love how the colours and textures play against the simple beauty of the wood.

*A-hem. A word about the table: the left side looks wet, but it isn't. I bought this new wood polish, Old Craftsman's Lemon Oil & Beeswax, when we were in NC, and tried it out on a section of the table where the wax had gotten steamed off.... No. I'm not going to tell you that story! In any event, I wanted to see how it would work so I only did that part. I think it's lovely, though, so I'm off to finish the rest of it in a bit)*


Here's a closeup of the bowl (and the table):




Lastly, I'd like to leave you with a little story about thoughtfulness. I came home last night around 8pm after a REALLY long day (and always irritating commute) to find that my neighbor Michele had left this little lovely in our mailbox. Y'all should check it out at Amazon-- it's an adorable collection of Mary Englebreight's drawings and poems and lore about Halloween :



She had enclosed a note which read, "For your favourite holiday". Now I ask you, isn't it the greatest feeling to know that someone gets you? That she saw something so perfect and wanted you to have it? I am so touched by that spirit of thoughtfulness. Thank you, Michele.


And now I'm off to finish waxing the rest of the dining room table ;)
Kimberley

Tallulah and I need your help!

Hi, everybody!

As my readers (and since installing the Neo Counter last week I know that there have been over 300 of you!) know, Halloween is my favourite holiday. We have a Halloween party every year and that is always cause for much preparation (which I adore).

Today I come to you with a Halloween decoration-related problem and I cast myself on your creativity! Usually at this time of year I am buying all sorts of glorious mums and pansies for my window boxes and urns. However, as some of you may know from a previous post, Atlanta is experiencing a water crisis, and I'm having a hard time justifying the purchase of plants when I'll just have to watch them thirst to death (plus, it seems frivolous, yeah?). So, here's my question:

What should I put in my window boxes? I've thought about pumpkins, which could be carved into jack-o-lanterns later and also making ghosts out of cheesecloth and sticks, but I'm not overly excited about either of those ideas. Anyone have any ideas that he/she is willing to share? Frye? Buehler??

Also, I would love to host a virtual Halloween open house here, so if you've done anything really creative and would like to share, please e-mail your photos to me and I'll put together a post that's all about you the readers and your amazing Halloween decorations :)

(For inspiration, you should see this post over at The Cottage Nest. Jen has assembled photos from all sorts of spiffy magazines that are making my little Halloween-obsessed heart go pitter-pat)

Thanks in advance for your help with my dilemma!
Kimberley

Weekend getaway

Chris and I just got back from a weekend in the Boone/Blowing Rock area of NC, and I thought I'd share some photos. These are some shots of beautiful Linville Falls. If you look at the above photo, about 1/4 of the way from the top, you'll see some tiny dots. Those are people! That should give you some idea of the scale of the shot. Also, below, see that log in the lower part of the picture? That's a 30 ft. tall tree!




Here are some more shots of the falls area:

(I love the geology of this area-- the rocks look exactly the way pound cake batter does when you pour it into the pan. Chef Jules, Mom, you two will understand that analogy if no one else does!)






Here are some shots of the Linville River:










Here's a (poorly done) shot of Chris under the Linville Cove Viaduct. Chris was very excited to see it, as Modern Marvels featured it once and he's fascinated by its construction, etc.



Below are a couple of shots I took from the Blue Ridge Parkway. I have to tell you about a cool program that Chris and I discovered on Gaston College Radio, called "The Good Stuff". The host "Ol' Rog", as he frequently and somewhat annoyingly refers to himself, plays all of these awesome radio broadcasts of big band music from the 30's, 40's, and 50's. It was the perfect accompaniment to our drive :) I heart college radio!






You can see just a little bit of fall colour starting-- it should be gorgeous in about two weeks. There just hasn't been enough rain to produce the colour yet. Speaking of not enough rain: we found out last week that Atlanta has about four months of water left. Wooohoooo! They're talking about rationing water, and I'm thinking about the fact that we'll need to start putting a bucket in the shower in order to flush the toilets. Good times! (Ahhh, sarcasm. My saviour in times of distress...)

We stayed at a very nice B&B, from which we could see this church tucked away on the nearby mountain. It was just a tiny speck, but we could tell that we'd like it, so we drove up there and I took these photos:






The cemetary was small, but very interesting. Yes, we're cemetary people. When I called my parents to check on the hounds, I told my dad where we'd been that morning, and he said, "You and your cemetaries!". I like them for their gentle melancholy (I'm kind of maudlin that way), and Chris likes them for their history :)

Anyhoo, it was a great weekend. We don't get to travel in the summer, so we always like to take a weekend in October to head to the mountains.

I hope that you also had a great weekend,
Kimberley