A Spooky Halloween Door

 

A Halloween finish, fully finished, in time for Halloween! Can we believe it? No, no we cannot! When I picked up the Just Cross Stitch Halloween issue this year, this spooky little door was the first design that caught my eye. I found several more, and for the first time in years, I bought the issue. I didn't know if I would have time to stitch any Halloween, let alone do any finishing, but I managed it and I'm so happy with how it turned out!

As usual, I made a few small changes you can see below. I left off the spiders and the stoop, and changed the house number to 1931, the year the original Dracula movie was released. I stitched mine with the recommended DMC on 32 count Confederate Grey linen.

I've had this little thing in my finishing stash for a few years. I got it at Michael's, with no specific project in mind; just thought it might come in handy some day.

I gathered up some more supplies for my Halloween door from a couple of Etsy shops (links at the end of this post) and got a stick from my yard.

Look at this adorable wee kitten!

Finally, I took a hacksaw to this dollhouse window (from Hobby Lobby a few years ago, tucked away in my finishing stash) and made a fanlight, painted it black and backed it with yellow fabric.

And there we have it! A spooky Halloween door guarded by a sleepy little black kitten. 

Hope y'all have a happy and safe Halloween! (I may have overdone it on the candy, but in my defense, we didn't get to celebrate last year.)

Supplies:

Kitten

Oak leaf garland, pumpkins, door mat

One Year Ago Today

 

One year ago today we brought these little nuggets home from our local rescue to foster. Underweight. Sick. Fragile. We spent the first night at the emergency vet, fearing the one on the left, Marigold, wouldn't make it. 

A couple of days later they were running around on the patio, getting their Halloween pictures made with their pumpkin stuffy, which was almost as big as they were. We had a long, hard road ahead, but here we are, a year later: Chunky. Healthy. Lovely.

Marigold

Butterfly

Happy Halloween from our black & orange girls!

Stitching Suspended for Snuggles

 

I am so happy to be sneaking in some Halloween stitching, but it's slow going as we have to take frequent snuggle breaks. The girls have learned (for the most part) that the stitching is mine, but the lap is definitely theirs. So we compromise.

I am on my last Christmas Open House project and I can't tell you what a relief it is to be able to say that. This has been another hard year and getting Open House done has been tough. But it's my 10th annual, and I wanted it to be special, and I'm almost there. Close enough to stitch a little Halloween. Hopefully soon I'll have a wee finish to show you, and if nothing goes pear shaped, maybe even a finished finish! Wouldn't that be shocking for all of us?

Halloween Fever & Faking Fall & Werewolves

I'm back! Thank you so much for all the well wishes for my back injury. I'm pretty much all recovered and doing normal things, just being a little more careful as I can still feel that little twinge, especially when moving in certain ways. It's been over seven years since my last back injury, so I guess I was overdue.

A while back, the gal working the Chick-fil-A drive through and I were commiserating about missing fall (she's from Maryland) and I showed her the fall wreath I had just bought. She said, "We gotta fake it til we make it!" Yep. I put up my new wreath, and it looks pretty, but man... I am missing real fall. I've also been bitten by the Halloween bug. I'm not quite finished with Christmas Open House stitching, but I made the mistake (mistake?) of browsing Halloween designs on Etsy and ran across a couple of really cute ones I had to have. Those, together with the JCS Halloween issue I bought for the first time in years, have really got me having a fit to stitch Halloween. Can't right now, so the next best thing was to drag out most of my Halloween stitches and decorate! 

Y'all. Halloween has barfed on my shelves.

Grab your hot apple cider or your pumpkin spice whatever and snuggle in, cuz we got Halloween!

If you see something you'd like to know more about, click on the Halloween label at the end of this post, or in the right sidebar under "Labels". You may have to scroll a bit, but all of this stuff is there (some of the older freebies and designs may no longer be available). The instructions for the homemade display stands are in this post. 

So, I'm stitching Christmas, thinking about Halloween, and faking fall. And taking care of the werewolves...

...who are now pushing 13 pounds.

What?

Yeah, I have no idea how we adopted two teeny tiny, super fragile, underweight babies and ended up with two girls built like bobcats, but here we are. They're not fat, either; they're just... big. 

That's the long overdue update from my house. Hope you're all well, and enjoying fall, and stitching away on whatever makes you happy. Fingers crossed I can get my Christmas stitching done and squeeze in some Halloween (because I clearly don't have enough)! Wish me luck!

Happy Stitching!