Not Even Death Can Stop Beauty

Photo I took this week during the wake for my grandmother.

 

Butterfly

 

Even in death, we are able to find beauty when we look outside ourselves.

Beach Photography II

Here’s the more artistic pictures I took this weekend, some are the same photo just ‘worked’ different ways.  If you like surfing, you’ll probably enjoy these.  If you missed the first Beach Photography post, be sure to check it out.

(Clicking any image will open an enlarged view, right-clicking and choosing ‘open in a new tab’ will save you from having to continuously use the ‘back’ button.)

Beach Photography

So, I had a great weekend at the beach, even though it was cloudy and rainy most of the time.  I did manage to get a few decent pictures, though, so without further ado:

(Click to view larger image, right-click to open image in a new tab.)  Don’t forget to check out Beach Photography II when you’re finished for more photos!

Pelicans in flight, early morning.

Mini Vacations

Flagler Beach (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Well, it’s that time of year again… not that any of you would know this, since my blog didn’t exist this time last year!  It is time for us to sojourn to the beach for a few days with my family.

I’m really looking forward to it, because I get two and a half days to spend time with my family and my Love away from the normal day to day monotony and annoyances that one has to deal with at ‘home’.  Plus, I really like the beach in Fall.

Hopefully I’ll get some nice pictures (if the rain ever stops!) so I’ll have something for ‘show’ as well as ‘tell’ when we get back!

I’m sure our housemate will appreciate a weekend to himself for once, as well!

Ta-ta for now my lovies, and

May Blessings be upon you all!

A.

Related articles

• The Comfort of Crashing Beach Waves (kellyaus.wordpress.com)
• My simple vacation philosophy (startwithbroken.com)
• Beach beach beach (willetthughes.wordpress.com)

Halloween Is Approaching…

… and this is my first year of decorating for it, so I’m pretty excited.  I didn’t want to go out and spend a whole lot of money I don’t have on Halloween decorations, so I turned to Google (and a few friends!) for ideas on what I could make myself.    Tons of great ideas later, I’ve gotten a little bit done.  Nowhere near as much as I’d like to do, but I’m so excited about what I’ve done so far that I just can’t wait until it’s finished to share, so here are my Halloween decorations so far:

Welcome to my Haunted House! 🙂

So, this is my front door… I bought the things that stick on the window at Wal-Mart because I just couldn’t resist them.  You can’t see them very well, but I had a string of purple LED lights already in my possession, and I hung them around the outside of the window, to light up the creepy cheesecloth curtain at night.  You can’t see him because he’s hidden by the ‘curtain’, but that’s a scarecrow hanging on the door, one of my Dollar Tree finds from about 10 years ago, and one of the few Halloween/Fall decorations I owned.

Incomplete Fireplace Halloween Display

Okay, this is my fireplace display.  It’s not complete because it’s way too naked.  It needs lots more stuff, but I just don’t have anything to put there at the moment.  I wanted a big cauldron to go in the center, underneath the ‘witch’s herbs’ I hung there, but I don’t have one, so for now I settled for a sword with a handle made of skulls that a friend brought over for me to try and sell… anyone want to buy it? lol

The things on top of the mantle are actually on display in our living room all year long (oh, the things we do for love, right?), but just not in that manner.  Mostly I try to hide them back in corners and stuff, lol.

Mantle Close-Up

This is a closer view of my mantle display.  Here you can see the spiderwebs I hand-spun from cotton-balls (can we say ‘tedious’?)  This is actually the first time I’ve ever been happy that My Love has that creepy horned skull.  I need some more good stuff to put up here!

And now for my favorite decoration so far!

My Favorite Decoration So Far!

So, this is my favorite one that I’ve done.  I’ve got two more windows that face the street, so I have to come up with things for those windows, too.  I think I’m going to try a ghost in the upstairs window, with a strobe light behind it (which we also already have here.  Don’t ask).  On the other full-size window I’m going to try to put a witch stirring a cauldron with her broom leaning up against the ‘wall’.  I am SO excited about how this turned out!

That was totally NOT my own idea.  I got it off of Pinterest.  All you have to do is go on there and search for ‘Halloween Window Silhouettes’ and you should find plenty, and if you run across the right blog (it was ‘Craft’-something) you’ll find the guy who originally came up with this window idea (his name was ‘Jeff’-something).

Even though I totally stole the idea, I did manage to draw everything except the pig’s head (enlarged a photo I found on-line and traced the outline.  Interesting images when you Google ‘hanging pig’s head’, by the way) and the cat silhouette (found one I liked, then enlarged it and made my own cutout).

I am SO excited.

We’re also supposed to do Trick-or-Treaters this year, too, which I’ve never done before, either.  This is the first time I will A)be home and B)have lived somewhere where trick-or-treaters might come.

Super exciting stuff!

If we’re still living here next year, I want to make a mini-haunted forest, by making a path that goes in a loop around the house and putting ghosty things on it.  We will see.  That’s a lot of work, lol.

If I manage to get more decorations up, I’ll make an ‘Update’ post to share them with you all.

If you decorate for Halloween and make a post with pictures on your blog, please leave me a link to the post in the comments section so I can go check them out!

Happy (upcoming) Halloween, everyone!

May Blessings be upon you all!

A.

 

Related articles

• Create a frightfully fun environment for trick or treaters this Halloween (personalcreations.com)
• Halloween is approaching – time to decorate! (bellacor.com)
• Halloween Apartment Security: Trick-or-Treating Tips (simplisafe.com)
• Spooky Halloween Decor (myconfetticrush.com)
• Awesome Outdoor Halloween Decorating Ideas (sitaspellshow.wordpress.com)
• Easy DIY Halloween Decor (todaysmama.com)
• Halloween Window Stickers (mediabeetlesuk.com)
• Halloween Home Decor DIY Roundup (mjtrim.com)
• Halloween bathrom decorating ideas (aloiram.wordpress.com)
• Country Living:Video: Our Readers’ Best Halloween Decorating Ideas (countryliving.com)

Purple Universe

Okay… my last few posts have been pretty heavy, in the emotional sense, so I’m going to lighten things up a bit.

Last week, I did some meditation and ‘saw’ some stuff in my mind that I wanted to draw so I didn’t forget, and, well, let’s just say that it didn’t do the picture in my head justice, LOL!  So, I decided that I would attempt to obtain some skills in Graphic Art type stuff.  So, I played around following a few tutorials on YouTube, and came up with the following picture.

Just thought I share it with you all.  It’s nothing spectacular, but it was fun to make. 🙂

Purple Universe

I used GIMP to make it, which is a program like Photoshop, except it’s free… and if it’s free, it’s for me! 😉