Spooky Dinner

Tonight we hosted our first annual Spooky Dinner which was a blast!  We chose the night before Halloween so everyone could make it and still be home to see their trick-or-treaters.  Instead of a costume party, we thought a dinner party would be fun and asked guests to wear something black.

The theme for the table was spiders and skulls, which looked great with candlelight.  I took these photos with the lights on just to show the details!

I chose burnt orange napkins from World Market because 1.) I could use them for Thanksgiving 2.) I thought white would stain 3.) I thought black would fade in the wash.

The crystal goblets are from Goodwill for $0.99 each. I thought they had a 'haunted mansion' feel.  The black plates are also from Goodwill and were $0.99 each.  I needed round plates so I could use silver chargers to hold the creepy plastic spiders!  

I used plastic skulls to create place card holders and printed everyone's names using the font 'Cracked'.

The decor included skeletons hiding throughout the house, a DVD of spooky scenes and sounds, and lots of ripped netting and spider webs!

The menu consisted of regular food that we could easily make more spooky with some changes in color and a spooky name:

I found these halloween tortilla chips at Aldi and 'Skeleton Bones' at World Market that made planning the appetizers easy!

Just some of the spooky things we ate for dinner:


Here is the dining table with lights off--Spooky!

Happy Halloween!!

College Tailgating Water

I've seen this being done lately for parties, so I thought why not do it for tailgating? Duct tape comes in a lot of fun designs now, including College logos!

To make the bottles, I just removed the paper label that came on the bottle and places a piece of duct table over the bottle where the label had been.  It's that easy!  I'm sure you could cover anything you could think of...juice boxes, whatever!

Wrapping Paper Organization

It feels so good to have my wrapping paper organized! I bought a bunch on sale, but it took up so much room in my craft closet that I almost wish I didn't! 

The containers are plastic bag organizers from IKEA, as seen here. They are only $1.99 each so it only cost $6 to organize this! They are meant to hang on the wall, which was originally my plan so I could store something underneath them. However, I like that they're loose so I can take them out to go through them, so I left them unattached to the wall--not a problem since they stand on their own.

Here is the before pic, sort of organized in buckets but not really working: 

Small Curtain Up-date

I love to shop for the house and decorate, which can get hard since my house is already fully furnished and decorated. I try to make small changes to keep things fresh, which is why I was excited to add these clip rings to the sheer panel of my bedroom curtains!

 I got the idea from this Pottery Barn catalog.  I love looking through Pottery Barn, Crate and Barrel, West Elm, and Ballard Design catalogs for ideas to decorate and style my home.  I found this particular Pottery Barn catalog extra fun since it had a lot of holiday and decorating ideas.

Here is an image of the page I got the idea from. I've used clip rings before to hang curtains, but not on the sheer panel only! This  is why I pay attention to every detail when flipping though these catalogs!  Awesome ideas that get delivered to your house--for free!

 Before                                                         After

I love the detail that it adds, and that it ties in nicely with the new wrought iron nightstands I got antiquing last month!