The “Calendar of the Month Club” has created a true cracker for December, a Nutcracker that is!
He looks just adorable jumping out of this box and very festively decorated! What a fun project to make with your little ones!
I hope everyone has a happy weekend, we are going to be baking cookies, listening to Christmas tunes, decorating the house and just enjoying each other’s company!
“Eglantine, Eglantine, Oh how you shine!” This little ditty was playing in my head as we carefully hung our Christmas pixie up last night. She was named after Angela Lansbury’s character in Bedknobs and Broomsticks. Mr. Brown sings this song to her after they go back to the house he has moved into in London. It is one of my favorite movies and it somehow fits this little gal.
This year we decided to fill her elfin sized pockets and hands with candy. I am going first this year, so when Mr. Michie gets in tonight I am going to reach in her pocket and see what surprise awaits me!
I can’t believe it is December 1st! Where has this year gone? I want to enjoy and savor this month. The time spent together, the time spent with family, it all goes by too quickly and I want to capture it all in my memory.
I have to say, living in England I find it hard at times to not automatically jump straight into Christmas, once Halloween is over, since they of course do not celebrate Thanksgiving. You’ll be happy to know, I do restrain myself, but I still let a few Christmas albums slip in under the wire and I listen to them as I do things about the house. We ate Thanksgiving dinner while the Charlie Brown Christmas album softly played in the background.
A new album that I can’t seem to get enough of, is one Mr. Michie bought me. It is Mindy Gledhill’s Christmas album, entitled “Winter Moon”. It is just a delight to listen to. Her voice beautifully floating out some of my favorite Christmas carols, as well as a new song she wrote the same title as the album. That song, “Winter Moon”, has become a favorite! I find myself humming it a lot lately as I work in the cupboard. It is just so happy, so upbeat, who doesn’t want to have a stolen kiss in their living room, under the winter moon?
It is like getting to listen to wintry music without it being overly Christmassy. But, now that Thanksgiving is over, we will be in full Christmas mode, we will even put a Christmas CD into the alarm clock to wake up to, crazy, I know! But, I wake up so much happier with Dean Martin filling the morning silence with “It’s a Marshmallow World”.
The final song on the album is “Winter Moon” replayed, but sung this time with the help of some friends. She has just released the video for it and I thought I would share it with you. Enjoy!
Its almost Turkey Day and these little felt turkeys by Jennifer Murphy are truly sweet.
As always, her designs are whimsical and look like they have walked through a magic vintage door.
(Image by Jennifer Murphy/embellished by J. Michie)
These would be our Halloween costumes this year. Mr. Michie has been sick for over a week, so I have been donning my nurse’s cap and staying busy making homemade chicken soup and jell-o as well as tending to my little patient!
(Image by the adorable Becky, found on Flickr)
I have made a set of 6 Halloween Cupcake Toppers for you to download and make to create some bewitchingly cute cupcakes!
Enjoy and Happy Halloween!
I have been doing a little Halloween reconnaissance today and came across some cute ideas, old and new that I thought I would share with you!
Glittering pumpkins are always beautiful, not just for Halloween, they can carry you through the fall season and adorn your Thanksgiving table, I found these on the beautiful Livy’s blog:
This Candy Corn Mousse, is festively colorful and perfect for a grown-up Halloween get-together with its cheesecake base:
Leave it to Martha to come up with a cute idea for orange balloons! This is a nice thing for little people to have something to take home at the end of your Halloween party. You could even tie a little bag of candy to the bottom, so their pumpkin doesn’t float away:
I love making bark and this Halloween Candy Bark version looks hauntingly delicious:
Bring something home from the Three Broomsticks to your Halloween festivities and make a batch of Butterbeer for all your little witches and wizards:
Use different colored candy melts and your imagination to create spooky Halloween inspired chocolate dipped strawberries:
Hope you found a few bewitching ideas that take your fancy…
(Images courtesy of their respective blogs)
I love Halloween and all that it conjures up. One of my favorite conjurings being: witches. I wouldn’t mind being Samantha Stephens, I know I have said it before, but I’ll say it again, who wouldn’t want to wiggle their nose and have things happen? I want to wiggle my nose and have my house cleaned, dinner on the table and all the laundry done.
But, since I can’t do that, I thought I would settle for sharing with you some of my favorite witches’ houses. The first being non other than Samantha’s from “Bewitched”. I loved watching that show as a child and still watch it any time I catch an episode while flipping through the TV.
One of my most beloved episodes was when her daughter Tabitha turns herself into an oatmeal raisin cookie. Samantha, her mother Endora and her in-laws look all over for the “missing” Tabitha. Sam and her mother know that she has turned herself into something to hide, but they are not sure what. Sam only discovers what Tabitha has changed into when she looks at the plate of cookies sitting on her dining room table and one of them smiles back at her.
I loved their house on Morning Glory Circle and that is the first I will share with you. It is adorably 1960’s and the couch in their living room would fit in perfectly in an episode of “Mad Men”. My Nana had avocado colored appliances in her kitchen when I was growing up and still does. Her stove is adorably retro and something I would love to have, if I had a home of my own to put it in.
The second house is the “Bewitched” movie house. Although, I didn’t think the film truly did the show justice, the sets were stunning and I am enamored with the house they had Nicole Kidman live in. The kitchen was magical and I would be more than happy with that painted fireplace. The entire house just felt very open and airy, yet still cozy. It was all very enchanting.
Last, but not least, is a house where Nicole Kidman first played a witch with her “sister” Sandra Bullock, in “Practical Magic”. I adore the fact that they have a private staircase that comes down into their kitchen, that is a bit of a dream of mine, to have that one day in a home. This house seems to hold a true essence of magic and would fit right in, along any house in Salem.
What a bunch of bewitching houses for Halloween!
(All images from Hooked on Houses)
I love this “Birds” inspired fascinator from the Etsy shop Topsy Turvy.
It is the photograph that makes it, with its Cindy Sherman-esque style. I love it! It would be the icing on the Halloween cake to wear this, if you went as a the stunning Tippi Hedren, to your Halloween party.
