Materials for Altered Stuffies

To makeover my thrifted stuffies for Halloween I needed some supplies, but since our local Jo-Ann has closed all that's left in my area is Hobby Lobby, where I absolutely refuse to shop (see this article at The MarySue if you'd like to know my reasons.) Since I had another excuse, off I cheerfully went thrifting!

I found a lovely little pumpkin for my collection at our local church thrift for .99, and a bag of wee faux gourds and berries in autumn colors for $1.00.

A trip to Dollar Tree surprised me when I found two skeins of chenille yarn, some metallic pipe cleaners and three fat quarters of fabric in Halloween colors that I needed. Not a bad haul for $7.50.

I purchased five adorable Halloween novelty prints from an eBay textile seller. These were $13.00, but that's pretty much the only way I can get small amounts of holiday fabric now (plus I got free shipping.)

Sorting my scrap bin earlier this summer made it easy to pull some Halloween and fall fabric remnants for my project. I even found the bag of scraps I saved from last year's Halloween tote. I think I'm ready to start altering. :)

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T-minus Day

This was our little Thanksgiving dinner last year, when it was just the three of us. Time keeps whittling down my favorite holiday; this year it will be just me and my guy, and we likely won't even have a turkey.* That will be a first in 35 years. I feel about Thanksgiving the way other people do about Christmas, and while it's a lot of work it's my favorite holiday. Of all the Thanksgivings I've had in the past sixty years, only three were truly terrible: one when I was a kid that I don't talk about (#1 most miserable); the time I roasted two turkeys together and hosted fifteen people whom I cooked for and served with zero help (the largest and #2 most miserable); and the one I spent in basic training (the #3 most miserable.) I have no pictures of any of those, thank heavens. In addition to doing all the cooking I'm the one who takes all the pictures, washes all the dishes and puts away all the leftovers. I suppose no one else cares because to them it...

Fell Off the Wagon

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Old Loves & Such

My guy kindly bought me my favorite Chinese take out the other night, and my fortune cookie offered up an interesting story starter: This sounds sweet, right? Only the first thing I thought of was an old love coming back from the dead . . . . must be October. In other lovely news, my favorite hand-dyed thread artist, Lorraine from Colour Complements , is moving her business from Etsy to her own web site. Many of my favorite sellers on Etsy are leaving due to the whole "free shipping" coercion debacle, which has also soured me on the site. To show support I did a little shopping at Lorraine's web site and got in these: I love her threads and trims; you simply can't buy anything like them anywhere. Her work makes my specialty thread box look like a treasure chest: At night I'm spending just as hour working on quilting the scrap project runner, and I'm making slow progress: I'll keep quilting the runner while I try to decide on a design for t...

Valerean

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