Ghost Shirts! With glow-in-the-dark paint! Need we say more? How about that they really glow!
Last year we made bat shirts with freezer paper stencils and bleach. This year I wanted to do another shirt, and I was going to use bleach again, but then I saw this paint in Joann’s and thought it was worth a try.
It’s scary movie time! Even if you’re a horror hater, you must watch at least one creepy flick this month. I recently watched The Houses October Built with a few of my friends and I was so surprised at how well done it was, more on that below. I decided to compile a list of my favorite Netflix shows and movies that veer towards the dark side. There are a few I haven’t watched, but are on the list, I’ll denote them with an asterisk* Happy haunting!
The Fall – This is a Netflix original T.V. show and like the rest, it’s amazing. The Fall is about a detective trying to track down a serial killer. This show is disturbing on a few levels. The serial killer is an attractive, unassuming family man, and the violence portrayed against women is pretty graphic. Maybe don’t watch this one if you’re a single lady living alone.
The Killing – Another Netflix original T.V. show, The Killing is based on the investigation that takes place after the murder of teen Rosie Larsen. I watched the first two seasons and then I faded out, but initially, it is a nail-biter.
*Mindhunter – I haven’t watched this one yet, but it sounds super interesting. Yet again, another Netflix original (they obviously know what viewers want) it’s about two FBI agents in the seventies who look at the psychology of murderers.
Hostel – I saw this movie in 2005 before I had ever traveled anywhere. I didn’t even realize what a hostel was or that this concept for shared bunk rooms was prevalent in most countries besides America, where there are surprisingly few. Eeeek, travel and horror, this one hits close to home.
Saw – All the Saws are on Netflix right now, but if you haven’t seen the first one, it’s by far my favorite. Saw is the type of movie that horrifies me because I didn’t even know such dark thoughts were possible. You’re a real freak, James Wan. Thanks for having a healthy outlet for your dark thoughts.
*Gerald’s Game – I haven’t seen this, but it has a rating of 9.1 on IMDB, which is unheard of for a horror film. Here’s the synopsis: while trying to spice up their marriage in their remote lake house, Jessie must fight to survive when her husband dies unexpectedly, leaving her handcuffed to their bed frame. I think the movie delves into the darker side of one’s psyche.
Gremlins – A classic and actually a lot freakier than I remember it being. Basically, a new pet turns into a thousand new mischevious little monsters that wreak havoc all over town.
The Babadook – A dark movie with an interesting theme. I really enjoyed how vague The Babadook was at times, but how evident it was during the final few scenes. A satisfying watch.
The Houses October Built – I thought the premise of this scary movie was sooo spookey. It’s about five friends on a road trip looking for the ultimate haunted house. They travel around looking for bigger and better scares until it seems like it’s being taken too far or is it all part of the haunt? Who knows?!
Hopefully you have a friend or at least a pet to watch these flicks with, if not, you may want to stick to the Gremlins. Good luck!
It’s Friday the thirteenth, which means we’re halfway through October!? Our hearts ache. July has always been my favorite month of the year (hellllllo, it’s our birthday month!), but since I moved south, I’m all about October. In North Carolina, the temperature hovers around eighty and yet the leaves are changing and falling, we experience light afternoon sun showers, and the mornings and evenings are a bit cooler. October is hands feet down the best month for hiking. I could sustain this season’s feeling all year long.
At the beginning of the month, I pulled out my boots, but realized, I’m way too early for that down here, lucky me, I’m headed to Pennsylvania today to photograph a wedding. The boots, sweaters, and jackets are packed in the Schubaru so my buddies don’t have to hear me complain too much. And they won’t because I’m headed to Tulum, Mexico on Sunday! This will be my first trip to Mexico and although I can’t remember ten words of Spanish, I’m mucho pumped.
What does your weekend look like? Working on a Halloween costume or two? Curling up with a good book and a drink? Headed into the woods for a hike? Listen to my new favorite podcast : Spooked. It’s created by the Snap Judgment crew and believe me, it’s so good. I’ve already listened to all the episodes while developing film in the darkroom, ooooo scary. Happy Friyay!
If you do a search for strongman costumes, you’ll find that there are plenty of ideas out there, so we’re just re-inventing the wheel here. Right now my big decisions are which outfit he should wear. I bought the red and navy blue leggings from Old Navy. Note that you have to look in the girls’ section of their site and store for leggings. The tank top onesies are from American Apparel. I used the sharpies to draw tattoos on the women’s stockings. As yet to be completed – his barbell is going to be made from the two styrofoam balls and a shortened segment of the dowel.
I ended up with the two outfits, because I wasn’t sure what I would find at each store, so I thought it was better to have options and I’ll return whatever doesn’t make the cut. I think we’re leaning towards the black stripes and red pants, what do you think? The next choice is whether we cut the pants or not – I think it’ll look good either way. We’ve had some unseasonably warm 70+ degree days here, so I may wait and see what kind of weather we’re dealing with the day of the parade.
As you can see, Alex wasn’t really up for a fashion shoot when we had him try this on. But it was definitely helpful – the stockings are too wide for his arms. On the one hand, this makes it reasonable to have him wear a shirt under the stockings if it’s cold and/or I could stuff them to give him some muscles. Although, I’m also thinking that it could be worth it to buy a pair of small stockings sized for little girls or babies…
I made the original set shown above out of a pair of women’s stockings, but they were pretty large, so the tattoos were super wrinkly unless I decided to stuff the arms and give him BIG muscles. I thought about stuffing them, but knew that our finicky guy might refuse that look, so I decided to go back to the store and pick up a pair of girl’s stockings.
After buying them, I immediately realized the second benefit – if I turned the stockings upside down, and cut a hole in the crotch area, I could slide the one piece over Alex’s head rather than cut off the stocking legs to create two sleeves (that I would then have to attach to the onesie in order to keep them up)! win. win. In addition to cutting the hole for his head, I cut off the tighter elastic material around the stocking’s waist area as well as cutting off the toe seams.
I then drew the tattoos (a heart, cloud with lightning, kite, mermaid, whale, sailboat, anchor, spiderweb, rose, stars, and a shell). I only drew the tattoos from his shoulder area down to about his wrist, this still left a bit of stocking length, and rather than cut it off, I folded it under the sleeves to create a double layer for added warmth. They were still a touch wide for his arms, but his cuteness totally distracted anyone from noticing ;-).
And speaking of cuteness, here we are on Friday night, just before going trick-or-treating at the most amazing/bizarre house (we only went to two houses, because that was more than enough for the little guy).
Funny thing, I had just finished Alex’s barbell (two styrofoam balls and a wooden dowel spray painted black), so this is his first time holding it. As we were about to take the picture, we told him to hold his barbell in the air, and he surprised everyone by doing it! So that’s us, surprise smiling/laughing as he performs on cue.
After these photos, he was more than happy to walk down the street holding his barbell and lifting it up whenever prompted. What a little guy! And what a great Halloween.
Happy October! We first posted this a few years ago, but if you need an idea for a little one, it’s not too early to start. Below is a baby Disco Ball and here is a Circus Strongman.
I feel like it’s been so long since I really dressed up for Halloween. For the past few years, we’ve sat around the house (waiting for those dozen or so trick-or-treaters to show) and would throw on something from my bag of old Halloween costume parts from years past. Witch’s hat, Eskimo, and giant pumpkin for the win! This year Calder said we had to get serious – “don’t get out your witch’s hat” may have been a direct order. Luckily, some serendipitous inspiration struck not once, but twice, last weekend.
Moment 1: It began with me ordering this baby jailbird costume out of desperation. Did you see those tattooed arms?! A few hours after placing the order, I remembered Oh Happy Day’s strongman costume from last year – so awesome, right? And perfect for Little A. If he’s a strongman, then I’m happy to partner up as the bearded lady. And now we have a pair of costumes for our town’s Halloween parade.
Moment 2: Calder was randomly telling me that he wanted to bring 70’s fashion back (no joke). Minutes later we wandered into vintage store and found the most amazing 70’s clothes! Calder walked out with a pair of plaid pants and three rayon shirts with extra large lapels. Me? I’m the proud new owner of a psychedelic jumpsuit. All we needed was a disco ball. Enter Alex. And now we have the family costume theme that we needed for a friend’s party next weekend!
Little A is a mover, and we have a strong feeling that he’s not going to put up with having a costume with a lot of frills, bulk, or even a hat. So we have to keep everything simple and make sure that it’s still easy for him to move. What we wanted to do here was to make him a sequined shirt that he could still easily move in. We thought about stuffing it to give him more of a ball shape, but his big belly is round enough.
I’ve been holding onto a sequined dress since high school (thank you Christmas band concert), knowing that it would come in handy eventually. Our plan was to make a simple sequined shirt/vest for Alex to wear over a black shirt and pants. Originally I thought I would use black felt to make the shoulder straps and snaps for closures (shown in the materials photo above), but as it turns out, I didn’t need either!
The straps on the top of the dress, are almost perfectly spaced for little A’s shoulders. So, all I had to do was take in the sides slightly, and shorten the dress to the length we wanted. The one challenge to shortening it was that the long zipper. In the photo above on the right, I’m showing you where the zipper ends with my thumb and how short I want it with my finger.
The dress’ sides had been brought in once before (red thread above). I wanted to bring in the seams by another inch or so, and I was going to cut off the excess fabric so that it didn’t add bulk. The one challenge I faced was that the sequins seemed to eat up the thread, and I would end up with gaps without stitching. I was using a cotton thread, maybe there’s a better choice? I handled it by just sewing the same line a few times, and it worked well enough.
The next challenge was the zipper. I’m not a zipper expert, but I do know that these zippers with small-ish plastic teeth are easy to shorten. You begin by marking the point that you want to be the new bottom of the zipper. At that point you’ll sew a bar tack over the zipper’s teeth. To do this, set your machine on a zig-zag stitch that is just wider than the zipper’s teeth with the stitch length as short as it can go (so you’re sewing back and forth over the zipper at the same point). I began by testing the stitch without thread in the needle, manually moving the needle to test stitch widths and making sure that the zipper was perfectly centered so that I wouldn’t hit its teeth with the needle.
After the bar tack is sewn, I cut out the zipper’s extra teeth, keeping my scissors as close to the teeth as possible and leaving the zipper tape intact. To close the hole that was made by the missing zipper, I sewed the excess dress hem (that would have covered the zipper) to the zipper tape on the opposite side, closing that hole. You can see this line of stitching in the photo above on the right. At this point I had a segment of the dress that was the correct width and could be cut to the right length for the little guy. So, it was time to try it on and get that final length measurement!
He was a willing model first thing in the morning – as long as I didn’t mind him running around with his dog named Cat. He was super excited when he figured out that Cat could ride the bike by sitting in the water bottle holder. With the fitting done, I cut the dress to the length we wanted and our disco ball costume was complete!
Here are a few more disco shots, crazy eyes and all!
Halloween is just around the corner, and now that we have a 3.5 year-old in the house, every holiday is a big deal! Combining Alex’s current love of bats and the coming holiday, I have a great DIY for you : bleached bat t-shirts!
This project couldn’t be easier, but unfortunately, since you’re working with bleach, this is not necessarily a kid-friendly DIY. Don’t worry, they’ll have a great time watching the “magic formula” work!
And look at that kid, he loves his new shirt! Such a simple project and it brought this little guy so much joy.
Happy Halloween!
It’s so lovely to be home when the leaves are changing. Autumn is a season I can’t stand to miss. This week I drank almost two gallons of local cider, took the pup for a few hikes, and edited photos from Nepal for at least twenty-five hours. Usually it’s equal parts amazing and agonizing to edit travel photos, but this time there’s a bit of inspiration in the mix. I’m finally pursuing my goal of being a travel writer and while I won’t say too much more right now, I’ll keep you updated on that front.
I also came up with a Halloween costume yesterday, which means I’m scurrying around trying to put it together on the cheap. Each year, Chapel Hill has a huge party on Franklin Street, an amazing people watching (and meeting) event to celebrate the holiday. Check our Instagram on Saturday to see the result of my last minute decision 🙂
Katie has been busy keeping this blog afloat while I was trekking and traveling home so I’m sure her bits reads something like this, “Naps, naps, nappity naps since that stinkin’ Sarah is finally home to help with our labor of love.”
Happy Halloween my friends – be safe out there!
ugg! Today’s been quite a day so far, and I’m running on too little sleep…. but – I’m SO HAPPY SARAH’S BACK! Can’t wait to give her a big squeeze in person!
Last Monday I shared a progress post of our Halloween costumes. At that point Little A’s disco ball costume was all ready to go, but his strong man still needed some work. Today I’m back to share the final strongman costume and some family photos from our fun weekend.
Here we are, ready for the disco, and I have to mention that Alex’s costume really worked like a disco ball! On Saturday we went to a party at our friend’s house, which had plenty of large windows and sliding doors facing the setting sun. Anytime Alex would walk past a window or in/out the doors, his shirt would reflect sunlight all over the room, just like a disco ball! Needless to say, everyone, especially the adults in the room, loved it!
When we left off, I had the onesie and leggings for Alex’s costume, but was still working on his tattooed arms. I made the original set shown in the previous costume post out of a pair of women’s stockings, but they were pretty large, so the tattoos were super wrinkly unless I decided to stuff the arms and give him BIG muscles. I thought about stuffing them, but knew that our finicky guy might refuse that look, so I decided to go back to the store and pick up a pair of girl’s stockings.
After buying them, I immediately realized a second benefit – if I turned the stockings upside down, and cut a hole in the crotch area, I could slide the one piece over Alex’s head rather than cut off the stocking legs to create two sleeves (that I would then have to attach to the onesie in order to keep them up)! win. win. In addition to cutting the hole for his head, I cut off the tighter elastic material around the stocking’s waist area as well as cutting off the toe seams.
I then drew the tattoos (a heart, cloud with lightening, kite, mermaid, whale, sailboat, anchor, spiderweb, rose, stars, and a shell). I only drew the tattoos from his shoulder area down to about his wrist, this still left a bit of stocking length, and rather than cut it off, I folded it under the sleeves to create a double layer for added warmth. They were still a touch wide for his arms, but his cuteness totally distracted anyone from noticing ;-).
And speaking of cuteness, here we are on Friday night, just before going trick-or-treating at the most amazing/bizarre house (we only went to two houses, because that was more than enough for the little guy).
Funny thing, I had just finished Alex’s barbell (two styrofoam balls and a wooden dowel spray painted black), so this is his first time holding it. As we were about to take the picture, we told him to hold his barbell in the air, and he surprised everyone by doing it! So that’s us, surprise smiling/laughing as he performs on cue.
After these photos, he was more than happy to walk down the street holding his barbell and lifting it up whenever prompted. What a little guy! And what a great Halloween.
Other than decorating our mantel, my Halloween preparations have been totally stalled, but with Halloween so close I really wanted to do something at the front of our house. We have a small porch area and a single window that faces the sidewalk. I was extra motivated to make this happen because we’re also close to the mailbox cluster, so a lot of neighbors pass by, and I wanted them to see something fun. I haven’t made any progress on the ghosts I mentioned, but while walking the Halloween isles I came up with an idea for the window : create a fabric panel with a witch silhouette!
I know that they sell window silhouettes, and some look like they’re great (a full-window design with a translucent background), but others are just the silhouette, so if you don’t have translucent shades or a curtain, the silhouette won’t have as much of an impact because peepers will be distracted by everything else in your window (know what I mean?). Plus, I thought it would be a creative challenge, and if it worked I would be able to re-use it for years!
I’m going to share my general how-to and materials, but not a specific pattern. This is such a simple project that you should be able to easily tailor it to your window and decoration theme (bats! ghosts! ghouls!).
For being a random idea, I really love how this project turned out! It looks great in our window during both day and night. We hung the side with the silhouette facing out. So during the day, we get to see a shadowy silhouette image inside the house as the sunlight shines through, while everyone outside still sees the witch (I don’t think their view would be as good during the day if we hung it the other way around). You’ll get the same shadowy effect at night if there’s a street or porch light outside of your window. And one last hanging tip – Alex loves looking out of this window during the day, so I just use a couple of binder clips to secure the bottom of the panel to the top; it’s folded in half and we can see out of the bottom half of the window.
**Costume update: C and I felt the costume pressure when we realized that the little guy has no less than 3 costume parties to attend! So we had a brainstorming session tonight and came up with some fun ideas!