Daria and I have been busy little banshees and have been decking the house out as best we can with the budget we have (which amounts to about $.47 a week). We're not finished, but I can share what progress we've made.
First, the hutch in the dining room. I try to make this look like a Potions display each year and each year I fall miserably short. But this is the best I could come up with this year (bearing in mind; cobwebs aren't up yet):
I tried to hone in on a few particular spots on the hutch. This is where my woefully inadequate photography skills come into sharp relief. Sorry for the blur!
Here we have a teensy cracked egg. Robin's maybe?
This woman is distantly related to me, but I can't remember who she is. I just like tucking her in somewhere at this time of year.
A few potions ingredients. I think what we've got there is "Wormwood," "Unicorn horn powder," and "Monkshood leaves."
These look to me like Asphodel root (waiting to be ground to a powder) and Dragon bile (which I'm almost out of; better get more soon).
I wasn't sure where to put the bodhran, then I realized it looked like a moon and decided I needed a witch flying across it. The Viking generously provided that for me, snipping and cutting one day while he was nursing an aching back on the sofa. The top of the secretary seemed a good place for it, alongside one of the crows and a small white pumpkin.
The lighting in these next few shots really frustrates me. The black, stringy fabric was only $1 a piece at the dollar store so I bought 10, cut them up and flung them everywhere.
They look much better in person. And I think I need a few more.
Top of the tv cabinet. Again, sorry about the blur. This area definitely needs cobwebs.
This may be my favorite and I wish I could leave it like this all year long: the chandelier in the dining room. Hello there, Mr. Crow!
I don't usually put anything up in the kitchen because I need to be able to move around and work in there, but I had a few things leftover and had a space for it so I figured what the heck!
Now, as for that window up there, you may remember it was lovingly trash-picked for me by The Viking last Summer (or you may not, if the main focus of your life is not What Has Pippa Found in The Garbage Lately?). See here?
As seen in the above photo, there were two windows, one of which was hung immediately while the other waited patiently against the wall next to the hutch for me to decide whether I was sure I wanted to hang it here:
I was pretty sure, but thought it seemed kind of blank and empty and thought it probably needed something else. Well, leave it to Daria and the inspirations of the Halloween season to provide the perfect answer!
She took an old sketch she had drawn of John Brown (don't ask me why, but we thought he looked gnarly and imposing enough for our purposes), reworked it a bit and made several copies:
Then she tried out a few tints: grey (done with watercolors):
And sepia, done with tea:
We decided on the grey, so Daria went ahead and painted the whole thing and treated it to a blow dry so we could get it in the frame:
At some point during the framing process, I got a black plastic tablecloth thrown over my head. So we had to get a photo.
A few tweaks on picnik.com almost make it look ghostly, no?
There we have Mr. Brown in his new home:
Man-Cub had to get into the action, literally spinning in front of the camera as I snapped this photo:
And, of course, I had to play with it on picnik, too:
This was the last thing we did before calling it a night. There's Daria, measuring something on my dining room table. What is it, exactly? You'll just have to wait to find out!
1 comment:
I like your decorations. That stringy black cloth stuff is great! I think I'd better hit the Dollar Store too. I really need to get busy so it will all be ready by the 31st.
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