Halloween haunting DIY 2

I ADORE candelabras. This next project is perfect for those who may prefer not to use real candles. instead, make your own using a hot glue gun, a big bag of glue sticks, PVC pipe couplings & Flame-less flickering tea votive. This tutorial on how to make a faux dripping candle appearance is in a coveted copy of the book "How to Haunt your house" by Shawn & Lynn Mitchell. They have 3 in the series of their Haunting books. They are available on their website :http://www.howtohauntyourhouse.com/

as well as a few online book store sources. This project is in their first book of the series. They kindly shared on the DIY network exactly how to reproduce the look, suiting it to what ever decor use you may have in mind. The tutorial is available here

:http://www.diynetwork.com/how-to/halloween-decoration-how-to-make-a-faux-dripping-candelabra/index.html

So overjoyed with how easy it was as well as the outcome which produced many "you made that? no way! Teach me how.".

 

For the Halloween party, I creepified the candelabra by adding a black crow and spider webbing. The perfect centerpiece for the creepy foods table.

I could not get the thought out of my head on how to make realistic creepy night animal eyes which would appear as though they are watching you from a far. Finally the light bulb hit and this is what I whipped up. in daylight, they come out looking a bit like one eyed ninjas but set in pairs dispersed through the haunting woods trail... creep factor and distract from the next jolt of hauntingly fright moment. 

 At the Dollar tree {everything is $1 or below} I found a 12 pack of small pingpong ball style eyeballs. You could always make your own eyes using pingpong's but these were available & quick.

They also had 3 packs of the flamelss battery operated flickering tea candles. I bought over 10 packages of these to use for Halloween. From the carved pumpkins, candelabras and the eyeballs. Still far less in cost then already made projects.

 

 Using an exacto knife or drill, you make a hole in the underside. Depending where you plan to put your one eyed ninjas, determine where you want the hole which will be where you insert the plastic flame tip of the candle. You need to test the size of the hole simply by inserting the flame tip into the hole. Too small? I used a steak knife tip to scrape the hole, shaving small bits off to enlarge it until perfect.

 

On the tea light, you put hot glue circling the plastic flame tip. Not too much or it will ooze from the eyeball placement. Just a few spots close to plastic flame tip.

When you are putting the eyeball on, apply it in a small twist fashion as it comes in contact with the hot glue. This will spread the glue in a uniform way that will help prevent oozing as well.

 

 

 

 Cut rectangle shapes, using your dried eyeball candles as a source of amount, with 1 inch wider then the sides, using black tight knit fabric.Find placement of the eye pupil, mark with white chalk for accuracy. Cut an almond shape from this spot fitting to the proper size of your eye to show.

Using hot glue gun, wrap your eyeball light up, making sure the hole is in proper place. You MUST be sure to have every bit covered right down to the base so light does not shine from underneath. Ruining the illusion.

 

 The eye on the left needs more fabric on the base bottom. Off in the distance, in bushes, amongst the fallen leaves around 20 or more feet away from where people will be walking, place your eyeballs in pairs.

These worked out great for our trail haunting. I place them by tree stumps with leaves scattered around to add to the mirage. The kids LOVED it! These flickered to give the appearance of eyes twitching and blinking off in the distance. Making the kids do a double take, giving a distraction as they walked the trail before... BAM! scary guy moment. Screams and jumps. Thrills and laughter. It's all about messing with their perceptions. Distractions that are not "obvious" help knock their guard off. More or less. Mess with their heads. And they could not get enough. Going back on the trail a few more times.

 Now I'm off to see if I can get my hands on book 2 & 3 of " How to haunt your House " for more projects to work on over the next 360 days... I've got a Teen Halloween Haunting to plan in our own house next year. As well as the creep factor to play on with the woods and old graveyard next door.

Halloween. My favorite Holiday just got better.

Sweet dreams,

~Tammie

Our Halloween Hanuting DIY short series

Halloween is my favorite holiday and this year is even more special. I finally get to expand my Halloween fun by haunting a trail in the woods behind one of Panda's friends home. I volunteered to help the parent with decking out the trail as well as some of the little party details such as the food table. Doing these parties for our children can get a bit overwhelming on our own. Having some help makes itless stressful. Not too mention, a combining of skills most appreciated.

 

I rarely use a glue gun for projects. That is until I began to realize it has far more uses then gluing things down.

I have a few Halloween projects to share with you. This one is all my creation. The others are inspired from other resources.

 

In Frog's garden I discovered some fantastic dead flowers for placing an arrangement on the table. Not just any vase will do. I needed a piece to carry on with the theme.

 

 I grabbed a large glass and began to make crackle spider web effects up and down it's exterior.Keeping the gun tip close to the glass as I trail shaky various size glue strips. Then I utilized the hot tip to squiggle them out which gave a great spidering effect. With a different seasonal theme, this could be done to appear as frost too.

 

Once I felt satisfied with the amount, I grabbed leaves from the yard and stuffed a few in the bottom. The next step was layering them along the walls of the glass so it appears filled to the brim with dead & colorful Fall leaves.

 

 

The next step was arranging dead flowers and stems found in the garden. From Teddy bear sunflowers, basil seed pod strands, dried up zinnias as well as a cosmo appearing flower bunch. I did not want to stuff it full of stems being there must be room inside to retrieve & replace the flameless flickering candle which sets off an eery candle fire effect nestled down inside the glass a few inches from the top.

 

 

To hide the battery operated votive candle, simply place a few small leaves strategically around it's base or just paint the base a neutral color like black or brown to blend it in.

There simply is not a way I have found to share with you the amazing effect seen in person with the candle light on. The votive is great for those dark nights and not so bright rooms. It truly makes it appear as the flowers are on fire inside, casting the shadows of dead stems and heads onto the walls.

This took all but 10 minutes to whip up. Imagine the table decked out with platters of coffin sugar cookies, colored chocolate realistic looking eyeball cookies, deer meat sloppy Joes as well as a few other Haunting foods on a blood deep red tablecloth. Black crows, a realistic dripping wax candelabra complete with flickering flame less candles & bits of glue gun spider webs.{ Of course, don't forget the dead flower arrangement. No proper table is complete without a flower arrangement.

Up next : Have you heard of slender man? Apparently just mentioning this names evokes fear in the minds of the heathens. I'll also share how to make your very own Hauntingly awesome Candelabra. Perfect for everyday use, especially grand for ghoulish mood setting.

 Stay tuned for some Haunted trail DIY & more Halloween treats to whip up.

Sweetest dreams,

~Tammie

The First Honey Harvest

Once again, the greatest of plans turns out not so great when I'm involved. I found this more natural method of removing the bee's from the honey supers. It is suppose to cause less duress and seemed simple enough. You remove the honey supers and set them within a close proximity of the hive. You place a lid with this "witch hat" exit tunnel on the top. The bee's do not sense their queen, so they exit out and can not get back in. It is suppose to take a few hours. So before the sun has risen and the morning was cold, we went into action.

While the supers without the queen sat waiting for the sun to rise & the bee's to exit, I made my way out to Wooster where the Honey extractor, I managed to borrow, was located. This thing was bigger then I thought it would be! It is also about 35 years old and in excellent shape.

I get back home after the 1hour drive each way to discover the bee removal method was not working as planned. There seemed to be a massive traffic jam in the cone. We could only find one veil and the Captain was too big for my suit {he has the strength to lift the box's by himself so he was the lucky party to deal with this part}. Being the Bee's were NOT happy at this point & I could not step outside without getting one caught in my hair, I took refuge in the house. Watching from the second story....

The Captain decided he would just brush off & smoke the bee's from EACH frame. Long story short, it worked but we did not start extracting until the dinner hour.

He transferred all the frames into a large cooler then smoked & brushed them off, placing them into a second cooler- closing the lid between each as to keep the bee's from getting back on.

I would then come out & empty the frames into a rubber maid container in the dining room where we were extracting. It took 4 trips but it worked. Many lessons learned.

Panda had friends who wanted to come over & help when we extract the honey {why would I say No to more help?}. So I made the rounds picking each of them up as soon as I got back with the extractor. I call her friends my Teen heathens. They think it's funny. Especially when I said was going to buy an old station wagon with the rear facing seat to haul all of them around. Complete with back window decal of "Heathen Taxi" just for them.

**If your ever in a store and hear "The Heathen children, your party is waiting at the front of the store"... that would be me... with teen heathens turned loose. Most likely in the toy department trying on Batman masks and riding toddler bikes yelling out "to the Bat mobile!" as they ride and dash in the aisles...{yes, i really do have them use the name "The Heathen Children"  and the kids think it is hilarious I have them paged that way.}...  True story. But let's move on.

The heated uncapping knife was a favorite amongst the Heathens. The rooms were enveloped with the scent of Beeswax and a fruity aroma of our honey. But I think they liked it being they could play with a burning hot knife & not get yelled at...

They honey harvest was very low this year. We managed to get just 5 gallons from 3 shallow Supers.Many frames were only half filled & capped. I think I know why but next year will help determine my suspicion on it.  Hopefully next year it will be triple that.

I used a new tiny mesh hole hair cap, banded onto the bucket top for filtering out chunks of wax & bits of Bee's. Worked fantastic! No heating so it was slow and still made for RAW honey. Heating removes so much of the beneficial greatness one gets from raw honey. Although I did do this single filter method as it came out of the extractor, it is still considered raw. There simply was too much wax particles and bee parts not to do some filtering. 

Each Heathen was sent home with a Pint jar of raw Honey for their help. We also ordered Romeo's Pizza which, having teen boy's, meant ordering far more then I normally would.

All in all, it was a fantastic time & between each boy bringing the quirks of their personality to the party,  {barbie playing with Frog, keeping the laughter bouncing off the walls in our abode with goofy antics, & of course  eating me out of house & home ~ including all of the  Aldi's Nutella on animal crackers},it made for some great memories for each of us.

It appears as though the first Frost is this evening and my work at the Farm is at an end for the year. Good thing too. The Halloween costume orders are in & I have a short Masquerade gown to whip up as well as a Morticia & beheaded Lurch the butler costume to be complete in 3 weeks.

Now off to hop the thrift stores for old formal gowns I can transform & a suit befitting a Statuesque Butler.

Wishing you all...

Sweet Autumn Dreams,

~Tammie