The Interior DIYer
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‘Tis the season

I asked my mom the other day if I was ever a princess for Halloween. “No, never. You always wanted to be a witch or something scary. You never wanted to be a princess“, and so it stands. I’ve always been more comfortable with darker Halloween costumes, and darker colours in general – not just at Halloween time. Case in point – I’m naturally blonde, but I dye my hair black because I prefer darker colours and I think it suits me better. Husband however, disagrees. Strongly.

I’m a firm believer in scary Halloween in my house. Not cute and bright – not to say any of those things are wrong in any way, I always find when I decorate my home, out comes the creep. All the old books, my swelling decanter collection takes the spotlight, and more stuff from outside comes in. I’ve almost always decorated from pieces I already have. I’m sure in time, when I produce spawn, the cuter Halloween will come out. I’ll cross that bridge when I come to it … 

Something that irritates me to no end around this time of year is bad fake blood. It’s either believable and I’m going to faint, or it’s such a high-pitch red ain’t nobody believing that. A good few years back I came up with a recipe for good fake blood, which I use to this day. Mix a couple spoonfulls of instant coffee with a teaspoon of regular red food dye, and dilute with around 5 cups of water. You’ll more than likely need to mess with the coffee / red dye / water ratio, but it’s minimal effort for what I think to be convincing results. Keep in mind this is red food dye, so don’t be mixing it over your 3,000 count Egyptian sheets. Unless of course you’re looking to add a blood stain to a costume,  then by all means, drip away. 

This year I decorated with mostly pieces we already have. I got fancy on the shelf over our TV and taped a Blair Witch style stick man in our cloche {that movie still terrifies me. Please don’t judge}, I added some discerning labels to our decanters, an awesome skull wreath my dad found at Home Store + More {it was 50% off – and still is!}, and a smattering of skulls here and there – most of which were already out. Because in case you’re new here, I like skulls. 

So that is what I’ve added to our home so far this creepy season. I’ve been pouring all my spare time into making my Halloween costume. To go along with the creep factor, I’m dressing up as Lydia in her red wedding dress {which has about one million layers of lace that I’m sewing by hand}, and hubster will be Beetlejuice, obv. I cannot. Wait! What are you guys being for Halloween? And do you try your hand at making your own costumes? xx A
NOTE: no kittens were harmed in the making of this post.  
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Autumn accents

As I’ve said a couple times already {broken record, anyone?}, autumn is my favouritest. This week I made a couple of changes to our home as we inch towards the winter months. I didn’t go out and buy anything – just subtracted what we had, and brought a bit of the outdoors in. 
I pulled back on the lavender and pink stuff in our home and tucked them out of sight for the season. I still love those colours, but I think they have a time and place; that being in the brighter months. The light colours get swapped with dark berry shades, gold and brown. All things cosy. And candles. Candles on anything that will sit still. I’m such a creepy romantic. Especially my black candles which sometimes remind me of Hocus Pocus. 
One last thing – this morning me and my messy hair were on the other side of the lens as part of an exciting feature coming up. I was snapped at my desk crocheting, with gold spray paint. Yeah, I’m going to do that annoying thing where I don’t give you any more details and leave you hanging. More details on that next week.

Do you like to decorate for autumn? Or do you skip autumn decorating and jump right into Halloween? I don’t know how much longer I can wait before I crack out the skulls and creepy Halloween stuff. xx A
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DIY Friday – fall wall

Some of the trees near us have finally started turning really lovely autumny reds last week. I just couldn’t resist, so while embracing my social awkwardness at full capacity, on my way home from work I started collecting my favourite leaves, which attracted some interesting glances. Once I got home, I lazily taped them all in one bundle to the wall over our TV and then that little light bulb sound went off – create a leafy gallery wall and my own little ode to autumn. A super simple DIY Friday that doesn’t require mad craft skills. 

All you need are leaves and washi tape. Just head outside, or even better – if you have children that still consider picking up leaves fun, send them outside to collect their favourite ones. I used my favourite black and white washi tape and taped them over the chair in our living room which currently doesn’t have a focal point. I didn’t get technical, just eye balled it and stuck the leaves in no particular order. 
TIP: I would advise pressing and drying your leaves in a heavy book for a couple of days before you tape them up. It prevents your leaves from rolling up as they dry, and they will look much more manicured on your wall. Two days in a book will do the trick. I didn’t have time to do this, so I have some backpedaling to do. I blame the eager blogger bug. 

I’m really happy with how it turned out and I can wholeheartedly say the {blurry} pictures do not do it justice. Once I’ve properly pressed and dried my leaves, I’m hoping to keep them up from now through to Halloween, Thanksgiving and right up until I switch things up for Christmas. A perfect little autumn accent me thinks.
That’s it really. Nothing more to add. Happy Friday, peeps! I got a ridiculously good deal on some monk fish today, so we will be dining like frugal kings tonight. I hope you have an autumny weekend lined up. xx A