Couple Costumes are for Blockheads

So we don't normally dress up for Halloween, but decided to go all out for it last year. The party itself wasn't until the weekend after Halloween due to how it fell on the calendar in 2013, so now seems like a good time to share the results!

Peanuts costume inspiration

I love old school holiday cartoons—from claymation anything to classic animation,—it is just not a holiday without them. At some point, I got it into my head that we could dress up as Lucy and Schroeder from Peanuts. I know people normally do Lucy and Charlie Brown but it's Schroeder that Lucy is so hung up on.

This is my "I just made an Anne of Green Gables-esque puffed sleeve SUCKAS!" face

I made my dress using the Kwik Sew K4002 tunic pattern as a base with some cheap blue fabric that I found on sale. I then added some length, raised the neck line to a crew neck, and  drafted a ruffled collar finished with bias binding as well as some puffed sleeves. To get the neckline just right, I traced the curve of a crew neck garment I already had and felt comfortable with. I completed the look with oversized black buttons (actually from a snowman kit on clearance at Joann's) and embroidery, hair dye, saddle shoes, and some bright blue socks from Target. Luckily, my naturally not contemporary 60's-esque haircut was just right. My husbands outfit was really easy as it was just a matter of finding a purple and black stripe t-shirt to pair with black pants and hair dye.

Here we are, looking like dorky 12 year olds. It was awesome.

I'd never done alterations like this before and just went for it after reading as much as I could find. I haven't done a lot of garment sewing so this was definitely a confidence booster for me. I would definitely recommend experimenting with simple silhouettes for Halloween costumes as a way to get comfortable with sewing clothes—it's very creatively freeing and doesn't come with all the pressure of having to get things just right since it's not the kind of thing you'll be wearing on a regular basis.

After the Storm...

The little mini pumpkin my husband carved just chillaxin' in the kitchen

Happy (belated) Halloween to you all!

It's been quite the week 'round these parts—there are trees of all sizes down here and there, the T closed for roughly a day, and our work and classes were cancelled throughout the beginning of the week—all due to Hurricane Sandy. All things considered though, we came through just fine, but are still without an internet signal at home so I am posting this quick update on my lunch break to let you know that my etsy shop will be closed until our wifi is restored...which I seriously hope is soon because I am starting to go through withdrawals. All current orders will be shipped out tomorrow and I hope to have the shop and blog up and running again soon. Of course we are just one of many many many households waiting to be hooked back up though so we shall see. Things are starting to fall back into place here in northeastern Massachusetts where things were less severe but still rather intense. I hope everyone who was affected by the storm is safe and on their way back to normalcy. As for me, I am going to spend the weekend gobbling roasted pumpkin seeds and finishing my midterm paper....can you guess which one of those things I am most excited about?

Snow Before the Frost

mums on ice

Happy Halloween friends! In the words of one of my favorite Halloween specials from the 1980's (old school Garfield of course), I hope you are enjoying, "candy! candy! candy!"

From my studio window, I can see porchlights flickering on as if by magic for all the little trick-or-treaters. I hope they stay warm as I can also make out the snowy climes steppes sidewalks of our neighborhood where we have about four inches of white stuff still melting off from our surprisingly chilly nor'easter this weekend! I've experienced early snowfalls before but two snowfalls before the first frost? I wasn't sure that was even possible. Our friends in the western reaches of the state actually got an entire foot and two days later, many areas are still without power. Though shoveling our driveway was not something I expected to be doing pre-Halloween, the combination of snow, fall colors, and autumnal sunlight certainly has been disarmingly beautiful.

Alas, *sigh*, cold weather does require indulging in so many of my favorite things: bulky knitwear, mountains of blankets, comfort food, hot drinks, more days inside for crafting cozy things, and hopefully some cross country skiing before too long! Anything that heralds the arrival of all those things can't be so bad after all so tonight we will start it off by hunkering down with caramel apples, Charlie Brown's Great Pumpkin, and cheddar ale soup. I think we finally found the perfect pale ale to go in/with this soup at last and you can sneak a peek at it here as I couldn't bring myself to post flash food photography on the blog. I know, I'm such a snob sometimes, good grief  :)

happy halloween!

i usually take the weekends off from blogging but since it's a holiday, i just couldn't help from posting something a bit festive. having been gone for the last chunk of october, my husband and i just carved our pumpkins last night. my main motivation is just to get all the yummy seeds out for roasting though...you can tell this because his pumpkins always look better than mine, just check out the picture at the end of this post.

so here is my recipe for roasting pumpkin seeds (it's super simple!):

1. wash your seeds and get all the pumpkin guts off of them while you preheat the oven to 325 degrees.

2. spread your seeds in a single layer on a baking sheet (usually one sheet per pumpkin will suffice).

3. lightly drizzle canola oil over the seeds and then sprinkle them with kosher salt.

4. bake for 30 minutes and open the oven to flip and redistribute the seeds every 10 minutes to ensure even roasting.

5. allow to cool and then gobble those babies up! these are a great healthy snack (as long as you go easy on the oil and salt) or as a festive appetizer for your halloween parties. you can also roast squash seeds the same way, they have a similar nutty flavor.

my husband's is the awesome one on the left.