The Beginning of Something Interesting

In the spirit of Fall I am going to slowly build up to Halloween by showing you a lot of my collections and decorations. For those of you who are new to this blog you have missed pictures of my collections that I posted in the past. They are a bit jumbled in my archives so I am going to try to organize them in my future posts. For you who have been with me for a while, you might see some things for a second time but now that I have the new lens I will hopefully be posting much better pics of them. Starting tomorrow I am going to post my collection of spellbooks including my own!

I was putting some finishing touches on some masks yesterday and I thought you might want to see them. This spider web mask is one of my fave's!


It was hard to get good pics of these. You can see the bat wings but not the face too well.


The bats eyes are glass.



Yesterday was another thrift shop day. I seem to keep finding children's items. I instructed both of my children to remember to practice safe sex! I want to be a grandmother, just not yet! This very cute pair of chairs was $1.99 each.


I wasn't lyin'!!!! Here is the price tag.


My niece has been buying lots of these wine boxes and I have been on the lookout for them to no avail. Until yesterday. I found this for $2.99.


It has a nice rope handle and a sturdy metal lock. I like to use these to store my art supplies.


A nice peg board for drying herbs. Someone made this by hand and it is signed on the back. $1.29....so much for artistic appreciation! Hey, I will appreciate it while my herbs are drying.


1960's wooden candlesticks. $1.69. After painting these will work great in fall arrangements. I went to 4 stores yesterday. I am always amazed that I find matching or similar items at different stores on the same day. How does that happen anyway?


I found these amber votive attachments in one store. 29 cents.


Hmmmmm.....I am still formulating my decorating ideas. Wooden candlesticks, amber glass.......hmmmm???


Then I went to another store and found these. $1.49.


In the third store I found this box full of more of not only the amber glass votives but also clear glass as well. $2.99. I feel like the decorating gods are leading me!


This is a metal ruler. $1.99. This may seem insignificant but I was thrilled to find it. When I plant my gardens I always use a ruler to measure the distance between seeds and I turn it on it's side to mark lines in the dirt for even spacing. Wooden rulers fall apart and plastic rulers wear and it is hard to read the numbers. This will be perfect.


There it is on the right in my gardening basket. It makes me happy.


I love these little chairs. They were $9.00 each which is a very good deal because these are heavy and really well built. I hope my kids took my safe sex talk seriously.


This is an example of not being too quick to pass by something you might think is ugly. Actually over the years I have learned that when I have a very strong negative reaction to something, I stop and study it and more often then not, I find that it actually can be used for something. These two owls are a bit beaten up and at first not too attractive. But after some thought I realized they would be great worked in with some of my Halloween decorations. 99 cents each!


My rescue owls are sort of cute!


Now they sit in the bird cage on the potting table waiting to take their place in this years decorations.


I like the way they look in the cage.


I am trying to improve my photography skills especially when it comes to photographing food. One of my biggest problems is remembering to actually take all the photos when I am cooking. I seem to keep skipping steps and today was no exception. This morning I made bierrocks. Bierrocks are originally a Mennonite recipe. Wives of miners baked these for their husband's lunches. They could be taken into the mines and eaten more easily than a sandwich. I had them assembled and ready to rise before I remembered to pull out my camera. The dough is stuffed with a mixture of sauteed ground beef, a bit of mustard, onions, cabbage, S&P, and cheddar cheese. The miner's wives used to coil a piece of dough in the shape of their husband's initial on top of each bun so no one could switch bierrocks on each other.




They rise before baking.


I top mine with cracked sea salt and caraway seeds.


They can be eaten warm.


But they are most often eaten at room temperature. You can get creative and stuff these with all sorts of fillings. I have served small versions of these at parties with great success. Not only are they delicious but they are easy to eat and not messy at all.