Halloween 2011

Well as most of you already know I LOVE Halloween!!  We have had many parties over the last few years too and this year was a great party.  I thought I would share a few photos with you although there are a ton more on my Flickr account.

Some of you may recognize this space as my sewing room, but it is really my living room and was covered in party fixins' before the party.

You can see the part of the living room I usually face as I sew all cleaned up too.

This was our dessert table.

The voo-dough dolls were new for me this year and who doesn't love some cat poop cookies? (Apparently no one liked them as I had a TON left over!! haha)

I guess I should say, "Welcome to my home!" As you walk up this is what you see. 

Frankenstien's monster visits us every year and always has those same clothes on!!

The living room is what you see as you enter the house and you have already seen that in the previous pictures. If you close the door and turn around though this is what you will see. That beautiful quilt was done by my friend, Faith, who lives in the UK. Witchy Woo and Hallie the cat. Amazing. Used that zombie tape to keep the guests downstairs!!

As you walk from the living room into the eating area/kitchen you will see this table on the right, full of cake pops and witch's hats.

and my kitchen table on the left

Where you can peek through into the family room. Didn't all that food look good??

Oh and there were some drinks too, this was the inside group of them.

A few guests

And my beautiful co-hostess in the family room

Now wasn't that a LOT of fun? I hope you come back soon. I have some more quilty stuff to share with you and I am trying to decide if I want to do the blog every day deal again for the month of November. I have done it for the last 2 years and it is a lot of work!! Help me decide! ~XOP~

Halloween Pictures as Promised

I promised the pics of us at the Halloween party so here you go. First up is DD1 (under the hand, in the back)with all her friends.


This is a pic of me and my DH. They made me take my cat mask off for the photo but you can see he was a pirate (Captain Jack Sparrow).


I thought I should post before I go in for the big colonoscopy today. Just so you know, the prep was not too bad. The worst part was drinking the nasty stuff you have to drink. It was a powder and they had you mix it with Gatorade. I had to drink a total of 64 ounces, all but 16 of them last night. You have to drink 8 ounces every 15 minutes. It makes the Gatorade kind of salty tasting and it makes it a little thicker. It's kind of gross. So now I am finishing the last 8 ounces. BLECK! Thought posting might take my mind off of it.

I began working on my SS gift yesterday and am making some good progress. I will post about that and some other things maybe later tonight or tomorrow. I am going on a shop hop with PTM and some other people tomorrow. I made a specific list of just a few things I am looking for.

I am really looking forward to dinner tonight!!
XOP

Halloween

I guess with all the other stuff happening I forgot to tell you guys about my Halloween. I LOVE Halloween!! A party was planned for the evening before Halloween (a Saturday). First though was an open house. I think I forgot to say the party was at LTW's farm! So the open house invite was extended to all the people she quilts for to come and see her new digs as well as her machine. I had taken Friday off to go to her place and help her with whatever she needed so we baked and made food. Then after I got home I made more food. Here are a few pictures from the open house.See the pumpkin cake and those little rice krispie pumpkins? I made those. And the little tarts? I made the crusts.

These are some of the women in my Wednesday night quilt group.

Our friend, D, stitched this beautiful quilt for LTW, then LTW quilted it (not knowing she was the intended recipient! She did a beautiful job!


After we got all the quilters on their way, it was time for me to make some additional Halloween fare. I made a graveyard cake, some Mexicali dip (non Halloween) and a few other things that got put outside for the party. It was pretty awesome. LTW's parents helped me with all this too.


I have only a few pics from the evening party though and I think they are on my work computer. Guess you will have to wait for those!

Today I met my friend Cori, (Crazy Quilt Girl) for breakfast, before I can't have anymore food! Then she dropped me off and PTM picked me up and we went to JAF. I got some material to make some Christmas pillow cases. I'll have to show them later though as the colon prep is beginning to work, LOL. Wish me luck!!

XOP

Halloween Swap Anyone?

Here is a Halloween swap I am considering joining. Let me know if you join it it too.

I just have to decide if I have the time. Every year the women I work with make a Big Ten quilt for the U of M quilt raffle. Today Robin and I took out all the fabric and made our pairings. I need some MSU green but other than that I am all set. The green in the "focus" fabric is an odd green so I am having some trouble matching it. All the centers of the blocks are appliqued (guess who gets that job??) and so I need to get right on that. I will do the tracing on fusible tonight and maybe cut and fuse all the middles. Then I will have to stitch around each of them. I will cut the fabrics into "kits' for each block and then when the group of us get together we will all sew the blocks and "someone" will put it all together and then we will give the whole thing to LTW to quilt for us!! It is a fun day, but I have to have it all finished by Oct 5th since that is when we are meeting. So you see, I just don't know if I will have time.

BTW...

Have any of you met Cori yet?

Recipe

It has been such a busy time around my life lately. I have been asked for the recipe for the Cat Poop Cookise so I thought I would share it with everyone. I did not make it up but I don't remember where I got it from. See previous post for photos.

Here is the recipe:

Cat Poop Cookies

Chocolate Ingredients:

1/2 c honey
2/3c Butter
1 egg
1tsp vanilla extract
2c Whole wheat flour
1/3c Cocoa powder

Gingerbread Ingredients:

1/4c Honey
1/4c Molasses
2/3c Butter
1 Egg
ginger, cinnamon and cloves to taste

Mix Ins:

Coconut (tapeworms)
Chocolate chips
Butterscotch chips
Peanut-butter chips
Ramen noodles, cooked (round worms)
Corn
Peanuts

For chocolate ingredients:

Microwave the honey for about a minute or until it bubbles, add the butter, egg, vanilla extract whole wheat flour, cocoa powder and mix well.

For gingerbread Ingredients;

Microwave the honey for about a minute or until it bubbles, add molasses, butter, egg, and spices.

Add mix-ins as desired.

Chill dough for 1 hour in the freezer or several hours in the fridge.

Roll dough logs of random length and diameter of cat poops.

Bake at 350degrees F for 10-15 minutes or until done.

Serve in a NEW cat litter box on a bed of grapenuts (cat litter) with a NEW cat litter scoop.

I hope you all enjoy them!!

More from HP-07

These are the last pictures from the party. These first ones are of the Haunted gingerbread house my DD1 decorated. I got up early and stuck all the pieces together (they need an hour between each "gluing" to set) and she did the decorating. I think it came out just darling!




These are my cat poop cookies. Served in the grape-nuts "cat litter" and litter box. Complete with a pooper scooper! Unfortunately no one and I mean no one ate a single one! There were 2 kinds of "poop" chocolate and gingerbread, made with whole wheat flour and honey.

I made this pumpkin, really a Jack-O-Lantern, cake. It was a from scratch pumpkin flavored cake. It is a wonderful recipe!! no one cut into that all night either, so I ended up bringing it to work on Monday.

I made this mummy out of cheese logs. DD1 used the pastry bag with thinned down cream cheese to actually create the mummy. Again no one would eat him!

This shows The whole desert table.

Here is the actual food table. Can you find the "vertebrae" on the platter??

These are some friends from work. Who dressed up like work dorks?? They did!
Ahhh here is me as a vampire with my friend "Cher" aka Shelby (the one my DD! was named after and she is DD2's Godmother.

Ahhh here is me as a vampire with my friend "Cher" aka Shelby (the one my DD! was named after and she is DD2's Godmother.

Here I am trying to feed off of my friend Hiro. He is a visiting MD from Japan. He and his wife, my friend, Yuki, are here for 2 more years.

Karen, my friend from Brazil, and me. She is working on her post doc in our lab. She is such a sweetie and was TOTALLY fascinated with Halloween since they don't have it in Brazil

Karen and Hiro (I wonder who did Hiro's make-up since Yuki was still in Japan visiting??)

Aren't they so sweet? It is Karen again with her boyfriend, Cory.


All in all it was a great night!! The party moved outside into the gazebo in the back yard. My DH put the heaters on the propane tanks and we were quite comfortable in the slightly damp, chilly night. just purrrrfect for a Spooktacular Halloween evening!

I LOVE Halloween!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!

As most of you already know, I had a Halloween party at my home last Friday. My DD1 was coming in from IN and really wanted me to have a party, like we always did when she lived with us. So, sucker that I am, I took most of the week off work, cleaned up the sewing, I mean living room, cleaned the house, decorated, made food and hosted a party. We had such a good time. I have so many photos that I will post them a few at a time. The first ones are of the decorations.
This is the front of my house, complete with ghosts that my DH and I made when the kids were little.

This is Frankenstein's monster on our porch. He used to light up but that broke a long time ago. When we first decided to put him on the porch, I took some of DH's clothes and stuffed them with leaves. Wayyyyy to much work. Now we use newspaper. The cup by his hand used to have dry ice in it so it would froth and smoke. My DS asked me on Halloween where the dry ice was!

This is the cat on my front door.

We bought a zombie a few years ago. His eyes light up and he sways while he talks. It is pretty cool!

I fell in love with this cat basket. So cute.

This is a votive candle holder, my...Cat-O-Lantern!

I found these pumpkin folk at an apple orchard. They look very cute on my hearth.

I used one of those carvable pumpkins and carved the face and then made a flower arrangement. i put one of those little battery powered candles inside too.

I love the bathroom. Can you see the JOL quilt showing in the mirror?? This is the black cat room!

Here is a large collection of my black cat Halloween things.

These are on the back of the toilet.

We bought these JOLs many years ago along with the little plastic shelf that attatches to the window. That way they look like they are floating in mid air.


This is my favorite ghost. Jumping out from behind the shutter! BOO!!

One more shot of the front porch.


I will put up some more pictures of the food and the people later, maybe tomorrow. Since the sewing machine is put away I have not done anything quilty except some embroidery for a quilt. I have 2 back from Liz and they will need binding. I will probably sew it on tomorrow night so I can turn it while I watch the Michigan-Michigan State game on Sat. I got back the crazy rail quilt (for the boys home) and the cat one for my friend with bone cancer.

I did manage to get to the Methodist Boys Home and drop off some Halloween candy. My CL's and I are working on making quilts for the boys. They have been taken from abusive homes and sometimes have come with only the clothes they are wearing. They have nothing of "their own" so we decided to try to make them some quilts. There are 70 boys 10 and up living there. They were so appreciative of the candy. The director told me that they usually get candy donations *after* Halloween so the candy from the CL's was greatly appreciated. More later...