Halloween Apothecary Jars

Filling Apothecary Jars with sweets, treats or creeps is a fun way to add some Halloween cheer in your home.  There are so many options to choose from!  Here are some great ideas …

The Creepy Halloween Apothecary Jars

This is a collection of apothecary jars filled with black licorice snakes, gummy bats, gummy worms and giant lollipops.  -Martha Stewart.

It’s easy to make your own by creating your own labels.  Or, Etsy.com has some cute and spooky labels for sale.

Skulls are all the rage this year in Halloween decor.  You’ve got to love the green glowing skulls from Martha Stewart.

Spiders, straw and skulls … oh my!  Easy fillers for creepy looks.  -PrettyPaperbook.com

Spiders and skulls provide an interesting display … along with mercury candle holders.  -Pottery Barn

Candy-filled Apothecary Jars:

I love the bright colors of these candy corn-filled jars!   -UncommonDesigns.blogspot.com

Aren’t these jars of candy fun?  How fun for a party!   You can create your own signs for Frog Eyes, Pumpkin Teeth, Crows Bones, and Jaw Breakers.   -HouseofSmiths blog

And, aren’t these candy jars from The KomKat Studio adorable?

Love the black and white look!  Great for an adult Halloween party or dinner.   You can fill your jars with black licorice, black and white Jelly Beans (or M&Ms).  -Pottery Barn

And these, from a “Wicked Bling” Halloween party are from one of my favorite blogs.   -Hostessblog.com (Hostess with the Mostess!)

Have fun filling your jars!!!

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Pumpkin Crafts

There are so many different things you can do with pumpkins … besides carving them.

You can “bejewel” your pumpkins.  -Good Housekeeping

You can “glitter” your pumpkins.  These sugar pumpkins were sprayed with glue then dusted with glitter.  Martha Stewart sells kits in craft stores with the glitter and glue.  -Martha Stewart

You can “feature” your pumpkins by adding felt faces.  -Pottery Barn Kids

You can “silverize” with metallic silver spray paint.  These make a beautiful display from Halloween through Thanksgiving.  -Martha Stewart

And you can “go metallic”.  Isn’t this a great display of pumpkins and gourds — enhanced with metallic paints?  -Country Living

NOTE:  The trick in creating polka dot pumpkins is to paint them the desired color of the dots.  Place round stickers on dry, painted pumpkin.  Then paint pumpkin with metallic paint and remove the stickers.

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Halloween at Roger’s Gardens

Roger’s Gardens in Newport Beach is one of the best places on earth.  You don’t even have to be a gardener to think it’s great.

Jeff and I went to Roger’s on Saturday to talk to the horticulturists about fall gardening.  Jeff had pulled out most of our summer crops and was pondering what to plant for fall.

Now I had ulterior motives when I suggested to Jeff that we go.  You see, I hadn’t been to the Halloween display at Roger’s yet.  Every Halloween and Christmas, Roger’s Gardens opens a store just for the holiday where they display some of the most amazing holiday decor … all available for purchase, of course.  It’s inspiration for so many of us!

This fall, Roger’s theme for their Halloween store is Funn & Gaems Toy Factory.

The Halloween store is incredible this year!  It’s so detailed.  There are moving displays — some cute, and many scary & gory.  It’s a great place to take kids this year, as there’s something of interest for everyone.  You can see the photo gallery by looking on their website: 
http://www.rogersgardens.com/SpringOpen2010.asp.

I took a few pictures with Jeff’s phone.  The pictures are better on their website, especially as the dark, scary stuff didn’t come out on the phone.

The grounds at Roger’s are covered with pumpkins.  I’ve never seen so many shapes, sizes and colors!

White pumpkins …

And traditional orange pumpkins … and gourds

I bought some new herbs … tarragon and sage.  We’ll be back for lettuce, spinach, broccoli and sugar snap peas … when it gets a little bit cooler.

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Decorating for Halloween

This past week I started decorating the inside of our house for Halloween.  It was fun to go through the boxes of Halloween and fall decor.

I enjoy creating little Halloween vignettes in our home … displaying “like type” or “same color” decorations together.  The entry table, the bar, the hall console, the built-in cabinets are all home to touches of Halloween.

Each year I try to find a new Halloween figure to add to these collections.

I changed out my display cabinet, using some some old & new Halloween plates, my orange & white damask plates, candy corn garland and a couple of Halloween buckets (from the Target $1 bins).

This ledge in our entry has a few black & white Halloween decorations.

And a few Halloween touches in our family room book shelves and side tables.

Happy Decorating!

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Decorating your Mantel for Fall

One of my favorite places to start decorating for the holidays is the fireplace mantel.  I think mantels make great backdrops (or canvases) for holiday decorating.

In general, I tend to prefer the more natural look and in most cases, the “less is more” look.  With fall decor in particular, I like garlands and leaves that look as real as possible.

Here’s a step-by-step process that I used this year for our fall fireplace mantel in our living room.  You can click on any of the pictures and they will enlarge.

First, I generally start with a cleared off mantel.  This time, I did keep my candles and amaryllis topiary, as I was pretty sure I would include them.

Then I took two identical garlands and placed them on both sides of my mantel, weaving the branches between the candles, hiding the bare ends behind the topiary (in the center of the mantel).

Next, I added some branches with sprigs of fall leaves, tucking them in the garland.

I have saved a few painted wood crafts (from my days of hand-crafting, years ago).  I tucked in a couple of pumpkins, behind the garland.

Last, I added several artificial pomegranates, resting them in hollows between the garland and fall leaves.

I ended up using an urn (that matches the topiary base), as I liked the depth and height it provides on the mantel.  It’s often more visually interesting if you vary heights of decorations on your mantel.

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In our family room, I added a couple of Halloween decorations, along with a few sprigs of fall leaves and berries.

Here was part of our mantel, before adding fall decor.

I changed out the red candles with orange candles (tied with orange plaid ribbon).  Then I added a couple of branches of leaves and berries.

Next, I added a couple of Halloween woodcrafts (again, from the good ole crafting days).  Just adding simple touches of fall and Halloween.

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It’s also nice to add a bit of the holidays to ledges on built-in cabinets and/or furniture.  This is the ledge above our family room built-ins.  Here, I added a Halloween woodcraft (that I bought) with a few branches of fall leaves.

And here, I added some calico fabric-stuffed pumpkins with some fall branches and berries.

Have fun decorating for fall!

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Halloween … already?

For those of us that like to decorate our homes for Halloween … now is the time to be browsing the stores for Halloween decorations.  Fall and Halloween decor has been displayed in stores now for weeks.  And the catalogs and magazines arriving by mail all show fall clothes, fall decor and Halloween costumes.  Kind of crazy — especially for those of us in California that feel like our summer just started with the recent hot weather!

Each year I browse around to see if there are few things to add to my Halloween collection.  Here are the things I recently picked up:

1)  I found these great straw nature balls at Homegoods called Home Decor Botanicals, made in Canada.  I found orange, bright green and brown.  I will spray paint the brown balls black. And I might even spray paint some a bright purple.

I plan to use them to fill my apothecary jars during the Halloween season.  If I have extras, I may tuck them in my fall swags on my fireplace mantels.

2)  I also found these cute Halloween dinner plates.  I plan to display them with my fun orange plates (a Christmas gift from several years ago) in my built-in glass cabinet.

I usually don’t change out my raspberry-colored Pierre Frey china that is displayed in my glass cabinet. It will be fun to change out the china for Halloween. Maybe it will even inspire me to change the display for Thanksgiving. I do have some brown and white transferware pieces I picked up a few years ago. We’ll see …

3)  I also found this fun, scary ghoul at TJMaxx.  He’s been hanging in our garage since the end of July.  (Jeff greets him every time he gets in and out of his car.)  I can’t wait to hang him from one of our birch trees in October!  Jeff will be happy, too.

4)  Each year, I hang a big black spider web above our front door.  I found another hairy spider to add to the web.

While browsing Homegoods, TJMaxx and Marshalls over the past couple of weeks – I did see some of the same decorations for sale that I have purchased in years past. Here are my favorites that I’m so glad I bought a couple of years ago.

I bought one black and two silver chandelier candle holders a couple of years ago (at either Marshalls or HomeGoods). I still see variations of these in the stores from time to time. I use the silver ones all year round. I use the black one for tablescapes at Halloween, along with a sheer black table runner. It also looks cute in Natalie’s newly decorated bedroom!

I just saw the Boo blocks at HomeGoods last week. I bought mine two years ago. HomeGoods also had black building blocks that spelled out “Happy Halloween”. I was tempted, but bought the straw nature balls instead.

Happy Halloween shopping!

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