Dolls.

I'm finally getting around to posting my last few pictures of my Halloween party.

I wish I loved to blog more!  I have SO many things I WANT to write about, post pictures about, etc... but it's kind of a pain putting a post all together.  And I hate how much I complain about it. lol

I still need to post pictures of the living room and the spell books I made, but today I'm sharing the creepy dolls and Kelsi and I made.  Here are the inspiration pictures from Pinterest:

Super disturbing.  Who comes up these things?  

Who finds these images inspiring and wants to make some themselves?  

I'm kind of embarrassed to say that I am inspired by them!  

I found a bunch of cheap dolls at Goodwill and St. Vinny's and I already had the paint we used.  

So it was a relatively cheap project (under $10), and really fun.

Here are Kelsi's and my versions:

Before

After
for some reason this picture won't load right side up!  It's driving me crazy!

There were a few more dolls that we did, but I can't find the pictures.  I'm assuming pictures of them weren't taken because they were somewhere other than on the main tables/displays.

When I was detaching the heads, I thought it would also be disturbing to paint the hands, legs, etc.

I also had more pictures of the hands, legs, etc., but maybe I didn't load then onto my photobucket account.  

- - - - - - -

Anyway, I had a great Christmas, even though Adam was sick on Christmas day, then I had the flu for the three days after Christmas. 

My body physically has been feeling a lot better for the past month or two, so that makes me very happy!  

Speaking of pain, I've gotten several emails from my family recently.  One of my cousins has been diagnosed with breast cancer.  My nephew had enlarged kidneys that caused him so much pain he couldn't even move his toe without screaming in pain.  He had to stay several excruciating days at the hospital.  He's better now, but it was scary.  Once of my sister-in-law's mother had a stroke a few weeks ago.  A month in a half ago, one of my brothers was diagnosed with Bell's Palsey (half of his face is paralyzed) which he got from a cold he had while he was in Korea.  He can't close that side's eye and has to wear a patch over that eye.  Another sister-in-law reports that her sister has ovarian cancer.  

I thought my life was horrible because of my firbomyalgia, mental issues, and debt.  I gained perspective from all of this horrible news.  Someone (or millions of others) have it so much worse than you.  It's crazy how fast your life can change.

Count your blessings.

Love and Happiness,

-T

Merry.

PostSecret.

I saw this email on PostSecret today.  I desperately wanted to pin it to my "Sope Bocks" pinterest board (which is my phonetic spelling of "soap box"; see definition here), but apparently you can't pin an image with a long description anymore, which makes me sad.  Because PostSecret doesn't keep secrets longer than a week, there will be no way for me to read the emailed secret again unless it remains somewhere else on the internet. Therefore, I'm posting the quote on my own blog so I can see the full message when I want to be uplifted again.

"I was at the PostSecret Event in London. I didn't find the courage to go up to the microphone, but if I had been able to, this is what I would have said. 

I spent so long feeling guilty, feeling ashamed of my sadness, and you know what? It just made me sadder. You are allowed to be sad, you are allowed to be angry, you're allowed to be depressed. We all deserve to feel our own sadness in our own time. 

Something you will have heard before - you deserve to be happy. That, of course, is not always easy to hear, especially in the depths of depression - so let me add something. You deserve to be happy - but you don't have to be happy right now or all the time. 

It is okay to be sad, it's okay to not be ready to be happy yet. One day you will be ready to recover - that day doesn't have to be today or even tomorrow, as long as you know and trust me that it will come. 

It's okay not to be okay. 

Thanks for everything Frank, 

Holly, London 

P.S My secret is that I decided last night that I'm ready to recover and it's going to be incredible."

Pictures.

As promised, here at 285 pictures of the individual jars from the apothecary.  I had so much fun with these!

I thought about posting details about where I got each label, what I did to each jar/container/bottle to make it look that way and where I got them, what's inside each one... but I'm too lazy.

Suffice it to say that each container as purchased separately, majority at a thrift store in town.  98% of the jars were aged by myself, each using a unique method.  The bottles that are "sealed" were done and aged mostly by Erin, my best friend, and each charm on select jars were added by myself.  

Labels were found from probably a hundred different websites, which I then weeded out to select the labels you see below.  After measuring each container and making sure each label would be appropriately sized, I had them printed at Office Max.  I cut each one and aged each one by hand.  

Enjoy!

So what do you think?  WAY too much work for a silly party?  Maybe!  But this was more for me and having fun.