The Colour of the Sun...

One of the last for this year I think - oh I am going to miss these, their colours...

Most Scary Costume for Halloween Ever!

Halloween is all about scary stuff and fancy dress costumes play a big part in that so, I thought what would be quite fun is to find the most scary costumes for Halloween out there. But what exactly is scary, I think the idea of something being scary and therefore a scary costume is different for everyone. Some people are scared of spiders, so would a Spider costume make a good Halloween scary costume? I am not so sure, so what I have tried to do is find things that would be scary to most people, things like:


Scary clown costumes
I guess from the list above, I find scary clowns the most scary of all, this possibly has something to do with a certain Stephen King film called "IT" that I watched as a child and don't think I have ever quite got over! Funny thing is the Scary clown from IT reminds me a little of Crusty The Clown from the Simpsons and would make an excellent scary fancy dress costume especially as a boys Halloween costume. The good news is that there are a bunch of scary clown costumes out there for sale, but also feel that with a little (or a lot) of make up it would also be possible to make your own scary clown Halloween costume.

Ghost costumes
The traditional scary costume for Halloween has to be a ghost costume, for me in sharp comparison to scary clown costumes, I don't find ghost's scary, again this is just me and this time probably has something with me liking Casper the friendly ghost when I was a kid! You may have an altogether different view on ghost costumes and for you here are a few of the most scary ghost costumes for Halloween that I could find: Ghost Costumes on Amazon.co.uk
For US Shoppers: Ghost Costumesfrom Amazon.com

Bloody Vampire costumes
Vampire costumes can be pretty scary, especially if there is some blood involved! And don't be fooled as these days vampires are not just for men, there are plenty of pretty scary women's vampire Halloween costumes out there. Here are a few of my favorite vampire fancy dress ideas for you: Vampire Costumes on Amazon.co.uk or for people from the USA: Vampire Costumes on Amazon.com



Right you have seen my scariest costume ideas for Halloween, I would love to get your thoughts or ideas on other scary costumes.

Little yellow Suns

These are really little happy suns...how do you call it in English? In German we call them "sun bride" - literally translated...

"Helenium" (Asteraceae)
Sonnenbraut

GTS - Green Thumb Sunday

This is a last summer greeting I chose for today's theme. The weather is like in November here in Munich but everywhere you can still see these:

"Cosmos bipinnatus" (Asteraceae)

How to join:

An Altered Witch

Happy Fall everyone! Fall is my favorite season of the year! All the colors, pumpkins, the crisp feel in the air, cinnamon and pies and then Christmas is right around the corner!

I did a little Halloween project that I thought I'd share........................

I made an altered witch! I love altered art and have only dabbled in it just a bit and oh my how fun it was to get to cut, paste and glitter for a change! I'm still sweeping up the glitter, but I have to tell you that Martha Stewart glitter is the absolute best! It has the most shine and is so fine and the colors are vibrant and gorgeous! Those feathers on the other hand sure made a mess, but I think they spiffed the old witch up!

I had that wonderful moon piece and it was the start of this project. He just needed a witch and I've had the image of this lady for quite sometime and she has such a kindly look on her face and I only like kindly, make believe, do good witches, so she was it. I wonder what this woman would think if she could see herself now. LOL!

I thoroughly enjoyed this project and I'm thinking of maybe making one to sell on Etsy. Oh and by the way that lovely orangey colored background in case you're wondering--well it's awful to say, but that is my bedroom wall!! I thought it made the perfect background color--however it makes an AWFUL bedroom color! Yup, it's got to get painted, but that's another day and another story.

Tomorrow I'm off to Montana again for a few days to enjoy the beautiful fall colors in the mountains and I hope to finally see a bear!! I've got my camera all ready, so keep your fingers crossed!

Bamboo - another Silk Carving©

This is also not a photo from a natural bloom or blossom but a silk carving© of a plant that has many faces. More about the making of a silk carving you can read here

Bamboo serves many purposes besides being a multi-facetted garden plant, looking marvellous and being food for animals.
Bamboo is used mainly in Asia as construction material for whole houses and as scuffolding for multi storage buildings. Who has ever seen these amazing suffoldings reaching far into the sky knows what qualities the stems of this plant has. Additionally growing very fast and in multiple forms gives this plant a special importance.

In other parts of this world bamboo is used for building whole ships, for floors and furniture, decoration and even for dishes and clothing. I think there is no plant with more applications than bamboo besides being eco friendly, non-toxic, renewable.

But there is one downside to this plant also: When it blooms the plant dies and animals who feed exclusively on the leaves and sprouts of bamboo are in great danger of starving as it can happen with the big panda bears in China.

Every few years the bamboo starts to bloom and it does not do it in small groups but in whole areas at the same time. Which means that the bamboo dies in large patches. The pandas' natural habitats have become very constraint due to the growing of Chinas's population and cities and the bears don't have the chance to move from one territory into another any more because they cannot cover big distances. So the fate of these magnificent animals seems to be doomed.

Although China has initiated several breeding programs and plans to release the bears, who have been born in captivity, into the wild, I doubt that this will be a success. Too much territory has already been destroyed. And when there is no habitat to live in what sense does it make to increase the population?

"Bamboo", 59" x 15", Silk Carving

You Scream

Just got back in town from being in Lawton for 2 days. Cute town and nice people.

It seems I'm always posting about free stuff lately, so here goes:

Free Ice Cream - Cold Stone Creamery Ice Cream Social , 9/25, 5-8pm
Mark your calendars!
Thursday, September 25
5-8pm

A nationwide event to benefit the Make-A-Wish Foundation, customers will receive a free 3 oz. serving of either Wish Child Emily or Wish Child Jack's creation and can donate to Make-A-Wish. These creations were made using two of Cold Stone Creamery's new ice cream flavors, Nutter Butter and marshmallow. Emily combined Nutter Butter ice cream with yellow cake, Kit Kat Candy, and white chocolate chips. Jack mixed marshmallow ice cream Oreo cookies, chocolate chips and fudge.Pray for those little kids to get better,than treat yourself to some delicious ice cream.

Pet Halloween Costumes

I have spoken previously about how it is ok to have a funny Halloween costume, now I am about to approach a topic that for me really pushes out the boundaries of fancy dress: Pet Halloween costumes.

From the research that I have carried out, when we talk about pet costumes, we are generally talking about fancy dress for your dog, I am yet to find anything for your pet iguana or parrot, but you never know! Dog costumes, I think must have originated in the US and now are becoming more and more popular here in the UK and I guess if you are going to take your Fido out for a walk on Halloween it would be kind of cool to have him dressed up in a Halloween costume.

So what pet costumes are there out there and specifically what pet Halloween costumes are there? Here are my favorite ones that I have managed to find:

This excellent Pirate Dog Pet Halloween Costume is only on Amazon in the US you can buy it on Amazon.com here Dog Pirate Halloween Costume

Or if Dracula is your thing for Halloween you could try this costume:Dogula Dog Dracula Costume Small

It seems that in the UK pet Halloween costumes are a little harder to find there are a few for you to take a look at here: Dog Costumes

Here is hoping that you and you pets have the best Halloween ever!

Fairy Halloween Costume

If you think about it traditionally the only woman's and girls Halloween costumes available were scary witch costumes, these days we have a much larger selection of fancy dress ideas to choose from and one of the most interesting for me being Fairy Halloween costumes.


Fairies whilst not scary, have a mischievous, sometimes wicked side to them and so for me make excellent Halloween fancy dress costumes. Fairies originally come from Western European folklore during the medieval times. They and are almost always human in appearance, with wings and have magical powers that include being able to cast spells and to influence or foresee the future.

Tinkerbell is probably the most well known of all fairies, and playing on that and the Halloween theme you can get a Teen Tinkerhell Costume, the adult Halloween costume version is also available (The main image in this blog post is of the Tinkerhell Halloween Costume):

As well as Tinkerhell there are also Tinkerspell Costumes, Skull Fairy Costumes and Graveyard Fairy Costumes, so you see, as well as dressing up as a witch this Halloween there are also plenty of other choices for girls of all ages. Other famous fairies include the Blue Fairy from Pinocchio and the Tooth Fairy, but I am yet to see any Halloween themed costumes based around either of these two characters, what about this for a fancy dress idea: perhaps you could make Halloween costume based on one of them? with that note, I will cast a spell and disappear from here for today...



For UK Shoppers
Fairy Halloween Costume on Amazon.co.uk

For US Shoppers:
Fairy Halloween Costume on Amazon.com

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Witch Costume

As far as fancy dress and women's Halloween costumes go, you can't get more traditional than a Witch Halloween costume, sure there are probably more creative Halloween costumes out there, but if your hear is set on dressing up as a scary witch this year, which are the best outfits for you?

Because witch costumes are so popular as a womans and girls Halloween costume there are literally hundreds of them out there, so which one should you get? Here are a few of my top picks this year:

Cheap Halloween costumes: Witches
If you want to look good, but don't want to break the bank, here are a few great witch costumes that cost less than £10 in the UK and $20 in the US:



For US Shoppers
Cheap Halloween Witch Costume on Amazon.com

For UK Shoppers
Cheap Halloween Witch Costume on Amazon.co.uk


Deluxe Halloween costume: Witches
Just want the best Halloween costume? Here are a few Deluxe fancy dress witches that I managed to find out there:



For US Shoppers
Adult Sexy Glinda Witch Costume on Amazon.com

For UK Shoppers
Glinda Deluxe Halloween Witch Costume on Amazon.co.uk



Girls Halloween costumes: Girl Witch Costumes
If you are looking for witch costumes for your girls, here are a few I managed to dig up from the web, to give a few fancy dress ideas, also look out for the witch infant Halloween costume, totally brilliant!



For US Shoppers
Girls Witch Costumes on Amazon.com


For UK Shoppers
Girls Witch Costumes on Amazon.co.uk


Witches can also make great group Halloween costumes, you could all go as different witches, think of William Shakespeare's Macbeth: hubble, bubble, toil and trouble...! In fact come to think of there are plenty of films where there are more than one witch: Witches of Eastwick, Witches of Oz etc

Anyway here is hoping you have find that scary costume and have a Happy Halloween!

Disney for F-R-E-E

How cool is this? Disney will give you a free ticket to a Disney theme park on your birthday. Click on the link... the fun starts next year :-)
Time to plan a trip!!

FREE DISNEY TICKET

Pirate Costume for Talk Like a Pirate Day

Escaping for a minute the build up to fancy dress costumes for Halloween, did you know that September the 19th every year is Talk like a Pirate day, it's origins are far more recent than the like of famous pirates of yesteryear: The International Talk Like A Pirate Day was born in the 1990s, when two Americans, John Baur (Ol' Chum Bucket) and Mark Summers (Cap'n Slappy), be talkin' like pirates all o'a sudden. Because of this they then They decided that, from that day forward every September the 19th would become a day where people could talk like a pirate! Since then this annual event has grown and now it actually has quite a large following which continues to grow.

Video of Cap'n Slappy, Ol' Chumbucket and Chumpail sing an original pirate ditty composed by Slappy himself:



So now would be a perfect time for a fancy dressed party based around the theme of pirates and for you to dress in a pirate costume. Pirates costumes are extremely popular, probably the most popular theme in fancy dress that there as and as such there are literally hundreds of pirate costumes for sale on the web, infant pirate costumes, kids pirate costumes, adult pirate costumes and even pet pirate costumes, they are all available.
Shop for Pirate Costumes on the web:

Amazon.co.uk for UK shoppers Pirate Costumes Amazon.com for US shoppers Pirate Costumes

A few things you may want to know about pirates for your talk like a pirate day:

Did Pirates bury their treasure so nobody else could find it?
Pirates burying their treasure may have happened now and again, but probably not that often as most Pirates didn't expect to live very long basically because of what they did for a living, so having a retirement plan probably was not high on their list of concerns. On top of that do you know of any pirate ship crew that would allow their captain burying the treasure they'd won together?

Did Pirates made their victims walk the plank?
There is actually no evidence that pirates made people walk the plank. Pirates' preferred means of punishment was keel-hauling, which meant tying their victims to a rope and dragging them under the ship. Considering that ships' hulls tended to accumulate debris from the water, this tended to result either in wounds (if the victim was dragged quickly) or drowning (if slowly). Either way this was probably much worse than walking the plank!

Pirate Master Costume

For more information on Talk like a Pirate day check out these sites:

Talk Like A Pirate Day UK Headquarters (http://www.yarr.org.uk/)
The Official site for International Talk Like A Pirate Day (http://www.talklikeapirate.com/ )

I Opened Another Blog--For Blog Events!

For over a year now I've wanted to start a blog about the events going on in blogland. Events like giveaways-tours-weekly carnivals/show & tells-parties-charity events etc--that sort of thing. So often I see them on a blog after the fact, so I thought a blog dedicated only to events and where to find them might be fun and helpful for everyone.

To find out what it's all about and how to enter your blog event or to find fun blog events to participate in either click on my banner above or go to BlogEvents.blogspot.com Happy Blogging!

The Sarah Palin Halloween Costume!

Topical Halloween Costumes

By far one of the most popular Halloween customes is to dress up in a scary fancy dress costume, children often go trick-or-treating and adults go to costume parties. Now because it is so popular and because the custom of dressing up on Halloween or more traditionally the eve of All Hallows day goes back to pagan times hundreds of years ago when people believed that to mimic the evil spirits would prevent sickness or the destruction of their crops, most adult Halloween costumes tend to be scary witch and ghost costumes and related themes. For more creative Halloween costumes you have to try a bit harder!

An new idea seems to be to dress up as a dark character from a movie, so a Darth Vader costume from Star wars would be a good example. So to make it more in the now, or topical you could dress up as a character from the new batman film: The Dark Knight, either in a Batman costume or Joker costume, both make great Halloween costumes as both are pretty "dark" characters.

This got me thinking what about politics, thats a pretty dark theme at the moment! Surely these days a Gordon Brown costume would make a pretty good mens Halloween costume! Or if you wanted to be real bad why not a Robert Mugabe Costume! Thats fine for me, but what about some political ideas for womens Halloween costumes?

I guess if you wanted to go retro you could always dress up as the Iron Lady, Margaret Thatcher or for something more now, I found this post (see link below) on The Sarah Palin Halloween Costume, it sure is topical, as for dark, I guess we will all have to wait and see!


Sundries: The Sarah Palin Halloween Costume: "The Sarah Palin Halloween Costume"

Happy Halloween!

Creative Halloween Costumes: Top tips to find the best

One of the hardest things about deciding what Halloween fancy dress costumes to make or even to buy is to come up with unique and creative costume ideas. Inspiration is what you need and with this in mind, here are my top tips on how to come up with the best Halloween costume ideas this year:

1) Take a look at websites that sell fancy dress. I know this sounds obvious, especially if you plan to buy your costume, but if you are looking to make your own Halloween costume and just need some inspiration this can be one of the best place to start. Some of the larger on-line fancy dress retailers have literally thousands of costumes and that means that they also have thousands of ideas for you to take a look at. Another advantage is many of them have their costumes divided into categories, making it easy to come up with the perfect fancy dress theme for your party. Jokers' Masquerade fancy dress have over 10,000 (or so they say) fancy dress costumes and accessories on their site and makes a great place to do some research.

2) Photos are also a great for coming up with inspiration and there are many places on the web that you can browse photos of Halloween fancy dress costumes:

Try Google's image search (http://images.google.co.uk), most people know about searching for websites on Google, but did you know that you can also search just for images? The great thing is you can also be pretty specific if the term Halloween costume is too specific, why not try searching for:
Kids Halloween Costumes, Infants Halloween Costumes, scary Halloween Costumes, Funny Halloween Costumes, Witch Halloween costume or Couple Halloween Costumes, anyway i think you get the idea, you can get loads of ideas this way and not only for fancy dress. One word of caution, you may want to keep the Safe search filter on, there are also plenty of pretty nasty photos out there!

Google are a bunch of pretty creative guys themselves, in fact you can take a look at what costumes some of their employees wear for Halloween here:

Official Google Blog: By the pricking of our thumbs...

Flickr (http://flickr.com/) is also another great place to search for fancy dress ideas: Just type in Halloween Costume into the search box on the homepage and you will get back a bunch of inspiration. What is great about Flickr in comparison to google is pretty much all of the photos will be from normal people, like you and me posting photos of the halloween fancy dress costumes and not fancy dress companies posting pics of their outfits. So many of the photos will be from people who make Halloween costume themselves. My thought being: if they can make their own costume so can you!

So there it is, those are my top tips to help you come up with the most unique, creative Halloween costumes this year!

Happy Halloween.

New Bag

Made it home from D.C. What an awesome trip, but it's very nice to be home. Unfortunately, I came home to the same pile of unpacked boxes that were here when I left two weeks ago. DH claims he didn't want to do anything without me (how sweet...)

Anyway, to celebrate and spoil myself for such a successful trip I splurged on a new handbag to add to my collection.

Gee... ain't she pretty?

OUR OFFICIAL WEBSITE - www.giftafavour.com.sg

Just want to say "Thank You" to all who have viewed our official website at http://www.giftafavour.com.sg/. We are happy to receive many compliments about the website design which was done inhouse. However, we take your feedback and comments seriously and will be adding the "What in the Pack" photos of each theme very soon.

Thank you all for your patience and in the meantime, do continue to email or call us when you find a theme that you like and want to know what you be getting in the READY PACK.

Plus Size Halloween Costumes

Halloween Plus Size Costumes
I have also recently noticed that there are now specific ranges of plus size costumes for women and men, in fact one fancy dress company, Jokers' Masquerade Fancy dress has a whole section named 'Plus Size Fancy Dress.' many of which could easily be used as a Halloween costume.


Women's Halloween Costumes (Plus Size)
For example if you are looking for larger sized women Halloween costumes they have an excellent plus size Adult Elegant Witch Costume, a classic Halloween witch costume as well as a Devil Princess Costume. If you are looking for something more unique you may want to try the Adult Malice in Wonderland Costume!


Mens Halloween costumes (Plus Size)
Men are also well represented this year on the in the plus size costumes for Halloween category, and with a small amount of searching I managed to come up with a whole bunch of fancy dress ideas for you, with everything from Vampire costumes, Grim Reaper Costumes to a plus size Frankenstein Costume!


Plus Size Couple Halloween Costumes
Looking to attend that Halloween fancy dress party as a couple? You can easily find matching plus size fancy dress outfits on the web that make great couples costumes. There are heaps of plus size Devil Costumes for both him and her, so how about as a deluxe Halloween costume? He could go as in the Elite Quality Handsome Devil Costume and she in the matching Deluxe Devil's Temptress Costume, one of my fav outfits for Halloween. If you are after couples cheap Halloween costumes, there are also many very reasonably priced outfits out there, which I wont list now as prices are bound to change!

For some more ideas take a look at my previous post on Plus Size Halloween Costume Ideas

Make Your Own Star Wars Lightsaber

A document that I found with instructions on how to make your own lightsaber for your Star Wars Halloween Costume:



Creating your own Lightsaber

According to the above document, it is not very hard to make a simple good looking Star Wars lightsaber

What do you need?
1. A chrome tube
2. A pipe cutter
3. A PVC Pipe a little thicker than the tube
4. Aluminium plate (very thin)
5. Iron Wire
6. Small Saw
7. Copper PC mainboard Screws
8. Little block of wood or Alu
9. 2 components Expoxy Glue
10. Iron Drill
11. Whatever you can find to customise your lightsaber

Solo Tourist

Everything is swell here in D.C. I love this city! The weather is beautiful, the people are nice and it's steeped with some awesome history. I've been trying to finish work early to check out some of the touristy stuff.

Declaration of Independence:
John Hancock signature (so faded!):
The Constitution:
The Emancipation Proclamation:

I also walked around the National Mall (the big park that all the cool history-stuff is located on). There, I saw the Washington Memorial:
And, my favorite, the Capitol. SO much bigger in real life and quite pretty.


Oh.. and work is going great too ;-)