bye-bye

i’m going to be out of town and away from computers until monday, oct 8th. but i will leave you with a new project! party crackers! if you do need to get ahold of me try notmartha@altavista.com.

p.s. I owe a few people email – sorry!

Teri sent me a link to Willa’s Halloween Weblog which is terrific, take a look

I especially like the Ben and Jerry’s Halloween pages from last year – check out the Haunted House (flash)

I am craving these and have been for the last few days. yum.

neato – bottle sealing wax

chel sent me a link to the site of a program I’ve never heard of – Donna’s Day on PBS. (There is an old site as well.) The site has lots of cool kid-centric projects and recipes.

Chel also writes about a project she did but couldn’t find on the site:

“You get an empty water
bottle, fill it halfway with water, drop in a few drops of blue food
coloring and shake, put in some glitter or little plastic fish, then
fill it the rest of the way up with baby oil or near-colorless
cooking oil (leave a bit of room so that the liquid can move). Duct
tape the top shut, move it from side to side, and Voila! an ocean in
a bottle. I lost mine when I moved, but it was always the best thing
for stress.”

Some of the projects which catch my eye are

• homemade ice cream without needing an ice cream maker
• I found the ocean in a bottle project!
• a bouncing ball out of water, borax and glue
• coffee filter flowers
• hot glue creations
• concrete candle holders
• paper mache in the microwave
• chocolate baskets
• for halloween – spider rolls
• burger and fries suprise
• banana boats
• german soft pretzels
• chocolate roses
• british ribbon sandwiches

Thank you

amanda sent me this link – spook’s ghost hunting cams for halloween (warning: huge download time, avoid if on a dial up) thanks!

grabbed from the get crafty boards: there is junk resale shop in berkeley called reuse depot which is worth checking out for miscellaneous material needs

I wouldn’t normally do this but since I’m very nearly an aunt I’m finding the Old Navy newborn halloween costumes and hats to be really adorable. If the kid were here in time for Halloween you’d better believe he’d be the proud owner of a monster cap. And um dog costumes aren’t bad either.

Yay! Pisces Catalog boooique and Pisces Soap boootique! I like the bat love t shirt and the rag hag undies – and the madame zelda soaps and the satan soaps.

know of any super special halloween themed shops?

It would seem so obvious – oilcloth.com. They have nice samples – I like the forks. You can’t buy from this site, but it looks like reprodepot fabrics sells this line on their oilcloth page.

Tops Malibu has something new – ice lights which would work well for a halloween punch bowl

Plum Party has up a nifty halloween section, I love this little bat

castles, haunted houses and scary places

some reading I’ve been doing this afternoon

• franklin castle is a haunted castle in my hometown
• squire’s castle is now part of the park system my mom works for. the actual history is tame but the stories surrounding it are creepy.
• danvers mental hospital a large structure with a lot of history, the setting of and inspiration for the film session 9, which I highly recommend
• modern ruins photo essays amazing photographs of abandonded buildings and ruins
• links to a variety of castles, structures, tunnels and ruins

Know of sites about castles, haunted houses or creepy spots?

what i’m doing

• turning a pair of perfectly good but slightly too small jeans into a skirt
• making an imitation of this bag out of some lovely red corduroy
• starting a denim picnic blanket from Scott’s old jeans – with a snap-on waterproof bottom layer
• actually writing about making salt scrub
• pumpkin gingerbread muffins
• teensy Osgood pies
• new photographs for the surprise ball project
• trying out the Martha small paper mache jack-o-lantern candy balls