All Hallow's Eve!

 

It's here! Happy Halloween out there!

I hope your Halloween Day was fun and your Hallow's Eve will be spooky. I hope you enjoy these lovely vintage Halloween ladies. :)

Betty Grable

Lillian Wells

 Myrna Loy

(Check out more of these images at the source, Chronically Vintage!)

And since I didn't really dress up all that much for Halloween this year, here's a not so good photo of me as a Day of the Dead sugar skull from last year!

 

See you soon! <3

Outfit Post :: Juniper Berries

(Goofiest face ever? Probably :D)

 

This outfit was pretty fun to put together! I found this skirt by chance at Goodwill and I felt like it was fate, because I absolutely love it. It's got a great silhouette and I love things that combine brown, black, AND white...they are so easy and versatile to style. 

Tomorrow is Halloween - finally! Eek, I'm so excited! After Christmas, Halloween is my favorite holiday. I actually get pretty excited this time of year, because it's the triple threat of awesome holidays - Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas! Awesome. My husband is so wonderful, he's got a great fun day planned for us. It will culminate with passing out candy to some trick or treaters and then going to see a movie we're both very excited about - Silent Hill 2! We're not expecting a cinematic masterpiece, but it's one of our favorite games so it will definitely be fun.

As a bonus, to get you in the creepy mood for tomorrow, here's a silly shot of me being creepy through the trees.

I like silly shots. Maybe I'll make them a regular thing! 

See you soon <3

Halloween Treats

I'm so excited to share my Halloween party foods with you. They turned out really great! These aren't quite the DIYS I was planning, but I did get a good step by step for my favorite party dish, The Mummy Meatloaf!

Now there are tons of mummy meatloaf recipes on the net. However, I wasn't very happy with how most of them use noodles as the mummy bandages. I'd seen one recipe that used biscuit dough and I thought that pie crust would make an even better wrapping and sure enough - it turned out great! I'd love to share the process with you!

Now for meatloaf I don't really follow a set recipe. Here's a best guess estimate though:

1 1/2 lbs of ground meat - I used half turkey and half beef

Chopped onion to taste

1 egg

Bread crumbs - I used Italian blend

Parmesan cheese

Worcestershire sauce

Dijon mustard

Pinch of salt and pepper

Meatloaf is so personal. Add whatever you like in a burger, you really can't go wrong! Start off by preheating the oven to 400 degrees. Then add everything together in a bowl. Here's what all the ingredients look like combined:

Now mix everything up! By hand is the best way!

When baking meatloaf I like to try to wick the fat away as best I can. This time I tried baking the loaf on my pizza pan over a deep cookie sheet covered in foil. It seemed to work pretty well! After you mix up your ingredients, form your loaf into a rough skull shape. I made sort of an upside down teardrop with two holes for eyes.

Next we prebake the meatloaf before we add the mummy wrappings. I baked it for about 40 minutes. I checked the internal temperature with a meat thermometer and took it out when it was at about 120 degrees.

(Looks kind of gross, but I promise it works out!)

Now, I rolled out my pie crust and cut it into lots of strips. Some were shorter, some longer. Lay the strips out however you'd like to decorate your mummy. I left some space around the eyes and and pulled some of the wrappings out and ripped some to make him look extra raggedy.

After you wrap up your mummy, put him back in the oven. At first I followed the instructions for my pie crusts, but I found it was difficult to line the timing up. I ended up just checking it every 8-10 minutes until I had an internal temp of 160 degrees and the wrappings looked good. When I took him out I transferred him to a plate and added black olives to his eye sockets. He was ready to serve!

To accompany this guy I made a scary pasta salad with some fun colored pasta I found at Marshalls. Just pasta, balsamic vinegar, olive oil, mozzarella cheese, diced tomatoes, and black olives.
Tasty and pretty good for you too.

And last but not least, for dessert I made a totally cute hairy-scary-spider cake!

He was super easy. Just a two layer chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, chocolate sprinkles, and chocolate twizzlers!

It was truly a scary Halloween feast! You can even see my "Scary Cobweb" decorations in this picture haha! Do you have any scary treats planned for Halloween? 

See you soon! <3

Favorites :: Specimens

Today the prep begins for my family Halloween party on Sunday! Soon I'll have up some cool DIYS of some of my favorite Halloween crafts/recipes.

For today, I wanted to share with you a special love of mine. I've had great interest in preserved specimens for as long as I can remember. I had never thought of owning any for myself! I passed one up while antiquing not too long ago, but I couldn't stop thinking about it. Luckily the other day I stumbled upon an even more beautiful one in one of my favorite antique malls!

 Gorgeous huh? I polished it up nicely and now it's a centerpiece in my living room. I can't wait to get more. Perhaps even make some for myself! This is definitely a collection in the  making!

I would definitely decorate every room in my house with these! This one's from  The Vintage Parlor.

This piece from Ruby Fig Atelier combines two of my loves, beautiful glass bell jars and specimens. This shop is a goldmine...I had to force myself to browse elsewhere to preserve my bank account! :)

 

 Beautiful and practical! Butterfly coasters from Olive Owl Art 

I also love the prop specimens that people make. This fairy specimen is from Kelley Emporium

 

Fascinating and wearable! Honey bee necklace from Alice's Eyes Design Co.

 I definitely envy Kaylah's collections! I'd love to get into collecting more of my favorite things. Her collection of skulls is awesome. Plus, check out that butterfly on the stone! Clearly I'm drawn to butterflies.

Anyway, I could definitely browse for specimens all day! But there are decorations to hang and mummy meatloaf to make! See you soon! :)

Outfit Post :: Watermelon Dress!

Yesterday was a cleaning blitz! I didn't do much but hang around the house all day cleaning, but I always feel a lot more motivated if I look nice while I'm doing it.

 

Dress :: Vintage

Sweater :: Target

Earrings :: Forever 21

Tights :: ?

Shoes :: Target

 

A sneak appearance from one of my kitties! Her name's Miyu! 

And another sneak peek! This is Gloria! I'll be introducing all my pets soon in a Meet My Pets post. :)

Suprise Pumpkin Patch!

What a surprise! It turns out there are lots of pictures of my pumpkin patch adventure. Now I can join in the pumpkin patch post bandwagon (say that three times fast! ^.^) I was lucky enough to share one of my favorite seasonal things with my Brother-in-Law, Sister-in-Law, and nephew!

 

(I admit, this spider-guy startled me when I picked up my pumpkin!)

All photos courtesy of my brother and sister-in-law.

It was a great day! I actually got that coat brand new at Old Navy....alas, it's been way too hot to wear it again since that day. Oh well, winter is on its way!

 

The Colors of Fall

Fall has finally come into full swing in our neck of the woods! Although winter is my favorite season, fall is a very close second. I simply love when the leaves change and we can get ready for Halloween and Thanksgiving, two awesome holidays!

I wanted to make a jack-o-lantern post, but I just couldn't wait to carve pumpkins this year...so I did it a little too early! My jack-o-lanterns are already molding up a bit, so it's likely they won't see Halloween. Instead, I thought I'd give you a little tour of the fall colors around here.

For more fall pumpkin goodness, three of my favorite blogs have great pumpkin patch posts up right now!

Check out Olive My Love, Kitsune-kun, and The Clothes Horse!