Newly Kozell: Halloween 2013

Happy November Y'all!

How was your Halloween? Ours was pretty uneventful! We have never had trick-or-treaters where we live in the 4 ½ years we have lived here. That does not stop me from decorating! I like to enjoy my decorations for as long as possible so for fall I tend to make most of them holiday neutral. This way I can enjoy pumpkins from September till the weekend after Thanksgiving; not just for Halloween or Thanksgiving. We have a console table in our "dining room" if you could actually call it that that is perfect to display our pretties. My mom brought me the leaves home from her trip to Tennessee to visit my Aunt Di. It's our little piece of fall since South Florida never gets the fall memo. Last year, I hand painted a real pumpkin which I was really happy with the results however, it obviously had to be thrown away after the holidays. This is our first married Halloween so I knew I wanted to make a "K" pumpkin. I also knew I would want to enjoy it for years to come so we decided on a fake pumpkin this year. Once we were are Michael's Craft Store we decided it would look even better to make a whole monogram. I free hand painted our initials and I could not be happier with the results. Now I have to figure out how to convince Hubby to let me keep them out year round! It was still important to me to go to a pumpkin patch {it's tradition!} and I really wanted to put tiny pumpkins on the shelf above the console table. We ended up with 3 pumpkins and 3 star gourds.

I love the way it looks. Hopefully one day we'll have a mantle I can decorate!

The console table will have to do until then.

I am slightly embarrassed by how bad our pumpkin patch photos are from this year. It was dark and we ended up going before dinner so Bri was ~~grouchy aka~~ hungry so I only got one {unflattering} picture of me with my handsome husband. How unique is that star gourd?!

I love love love to free hand draw on my chalkboard especially for the holidays. There are so many great sayings to choose from. This Halloween I was too indecisive so I drew both! LOL

Pretty smart eh? {& apparently turned Canadian just now}

I also like to incorporate mason jars like on the console table in the photo above as well as filling them with candy. I filled them with S'mores candy corns {honestly, they are okay but I wouldn't get them again. I like the original ones better and to be even more honest, it's more of a tradition that I eat candy corn rather than me craving them & loving them}. We also got into the Halloween spirit {har har} by watching ~~children's movies~~ Halloweenie movies. What can I say, I still enjoy Hocus Pocus at 29! This year, I DVR'd The Nightmare Before Christmas because I had never seen it. It's pretty good and I could not stop singing "This is Halloween...this is Halloween" like they do at the beginning of the movie. I was hoping to watch Scream. There is still time this weekend... I want to see the 4th one! I feel like I need to have a marathon and refresh my memory. The 4th will probably be stupid but I have seen all the others so I somewhat feel like I need to see it! {Am I strange? Don't answer that Husband!} I threw in a little throwback, conveniently on Thursday from 1986 with my Dad. I think my Halloween costume was found in the Easter clearance section! Ha! At work, we had a halloween costume contest so most of the staff dressed up too. I wanted something comfy and easy to wear. I didn't know if would be so hard to find cat ears. Three stores later, I bought a $5 cat costume for ages 3 & up from Walmart. Apparently, I have a toddler sized head! The string that attached my tail broke within an hour of wearing it but not before I took my clients for a walk out in public all dressed up...and none of them dressed up. There is a joke in there somewhere.

Outside I usually just hang a door sign. When we buy a house I plan to make and invest in some actual outside decorations. I figure there is no point in making something specifically for our townhouse. I am very hopeful that we won't be here this time next year.

Fingers, toes and every strand of hair are crossed!

Today I switched out the Halloween sign for the Turkey! On the inside of the door, I hung our K wreath which is still not finished. I love it so far but I have been meaning to get to Michael's to figure out what kind of embellishment I want to add. I was thinking of using sugar starfish with are orange in color but Husband didn't like the idea. He doesn't see the need for starfish everywhere. I disagree :) Here's the work in progress which I shared on Instagram last month.
You can follow me on Instagram @ashleykozell.

I also made my first garland! I cannot wait to make more along with more wreaths!

You can check out the DIY Fall Yarn Garland I made here!

...and last year's pumpkin here!

One of the reasons I started this blog was to be able to document and remember. I love that I can look in my archives and find a project I made a year ago.

It makes me so happy to document our memories.

Last weekend we attended a Halloween party thrown by my friend from school. I made a Halloween themed 7 layer dip which I was a little bummed that I couldn't find black spiders for! I used this recipe from Six Sisters' Stuff. It was delicious and easy!

We had a great time and it was nice for our husbands to meet.