Halloween - Disney Style

Yes, it's still September and Halloween is over a month away but the Parks have started Mickey's Not So Scary Halloween Parties, which means the decorations are up and I just love them.

If you follow me on Twitter you'll know that I've love all the seasons but I've been longing for crunchy leaves and chunky jumpers for a few weeks now, so I'm ready to embrace Autumn and Halloween.

I only decorate my own house for Halloween on the day. I know in other parts of the world decorations for Halloween are more like decorations for Christmas and go up weeks in advance but my neighbours would just think I was confused or really strange.

On this basis, I don't want to spend too much money on something that only comes out once a year although I found these lights on the Disney Store (US) website and I love them. Plus, I've just found a way to get them shipped to the UK - this is dangerous and certainly going to mean a lot of online shopping. 

I especially like these because they look so friendly, having a small child, I don't want Halloween to be too scary. 

Another favourite activity to Disneyfy (is that a word??) is pumpkin carving.  There are lots of fab templates and stencils out there and I've tried a few.  This one is definitely my favourite.  This was last years effort.  I also did Mickey and Minnie but they didn't turn out too well.

I also have a bit of a cheat which is a Jack Skellington tea light holder.  It comes out every year (about 5 years now) and it so much less time, effort and mess than a pumpkin.  

A little flower arranging weekend

This past weekend was the local village fair and I like to support it by entering a couple of flower arrangements.  So, I thought I'd share some photos of them here.

The first category was arrangement for a wedding, this was mine, a rose topiary ball mounted on a champagne bottle.  I won't do a full tutorial but I'll go through it quickly.  

This is a 16cm topiary oasis, I found the bottle I wanted to use, but for stability I had to mount the ball on sticks which went into the bottle. (Special thanks to my dad for drinking the contents of the bottle so that I could use it - what a hero!!!).  I added the foliage (and I should know what it is, but it was just a plant in the garden) I added roses all over mixing the colours and then filled the gaps with a little gypsophila.  I stuck labels over the bottle to show a table number and date.

The slight shock was how many roses it required - 60 small rose heads went into this one ball! 

A few people asked me about the costs to make at the show so I'll try to break that down.
Oasis - £5 (think this was discounted)
Roses - £12 (6 packs from supermarket)
Gypsophila £1.50 but only used about half
Foliage - free from the garden
Sticks - £1
Bottle - had already but I know you can buy empty bottles online or buy a drink you happen to like
TOTAL: £17.50 excluding bottle, which isn't bad as DIY for a wedding.

The next category I chose to enter was a flower arrangement depicting a song.  Here is mine.....guess the song.

 Got it?  Here is a little close up that might help!

It's "We're Off to See the Wizard" more commonly known as "Follow the Yellow Brick Road" from the Wizard of Oz (helpfully the category was depict a song, not song title, so I got away with it).  

The yellow roses to depict the yellow road, the foliage at the back (with leaf shine although that doesn't really show in the photo) to represent the emerald city and red shoes as an extra clue that Dorothy might be visiting.

My favourite part of this, of course, is the red shoes.  Although they were by far the most difficult part.  My daughter refused to donate any of her dolls shoes, so I bought a doll (shhhh, daughter will be getting a shoeless doll from Christmas) and tried to coat them in PVA ready for glitter.  This is where I learnt that plastic doll shoes are totally repellant to PVA glue. Even after thorough soapy washing and even after submerging in glue, it just ran straight off.  So being the girl that I am, got some hairspray from my bag and that stuck the glitter on.  Hairspray worked brilliantly and I did a couple of coats to make sure it was truly covered.  I used a hot glue gun to stick cocktail sticks to the shoes to secure them to the arrangement.

I was super pleased that these both won first prize in their category and the Yellow Brick Road one won Best in Show. It's only a small village show but it's still always nice to win something.