Bewitching Bottles

I love to decorate my kitchen windowsill with bottles. You can see here that I used to collect different colors and change them out for various holiday/seasons. After I redecorated the kitchen/living room those colored bottles didn’t seem to work any longer.

Until Halloween…Then anything goes, right? For the last few Halloweens, I’ve been looking at bottles at the craft store that have spooky labels on them. I never bought them because I always thought they were too expensive. So this year I decided I was going to make my own.

Late August early September I emptied a small bottle of pinoli nuts. I liked the shape and at first I thought it would make a nice tea light holder. Then right after that my husband emptied a glass bottle for one of his meds. Then I realized I could use both of them for something fun and the challenge grew. A quick look around the pantry and in the frig and I realized that in no time I could manage to empty out several bottles and use them to make my “Potion” bottles.
Once I had a few bottle together I started getting them ready. I washed them out and removed the labels.


For the more resistive labels, I used cooking oil on a paper towel to loosen the adhesive. After they were all label free, washed and dry it was time for some paint. I have seen some people use acrylic paints to decorate their own colored bottles but they all seem to look streaky. I heard that oil based paint might work better so off I went to the home improvement store.

I bought a half pint can of high gloss black oil base paint and I was good to go. I poured about a third of the paint into one of the bottles and rolled it around the inside. Then poured the rest out into the next bottle and so on until all the bottles were coated with paint.

While the paint was drying I got started on some labels. I wanted to find some brownish, parchment looking paper but didn’t want to pay for it so I used regular white paper. I found a list of “ingredients” by googeling “witches brew”. I found a few fonts that looked the part and printed them out.

To give the paper and aged look I used shoe polish. First some tan and them around the edges with brown. I tore the label and used a match to burn the edges. Glued them onto the bottles and lined them up on the windowsill.

Now it looks like all I need is a cauldron and I’m ready to get started on a ghoulish concoction.

Here’s a list of the “ingredients” that I came up with…

Old Hag Cackle Extract
Vanishing Cream
Mummy Dust
Black of Night
Eye of Newt
Toe of Frog
Wool of Bat
Toil and Trouble Tonic
Ear of Troll
Dragon’s Breath
Hell Broth
Vanishing Cream
Mermaid Scales
Poison # 26
(Only use after midnight)

Not all the bottles were painted. I kept a few clear so I could fill them with different things. The poison bottle has purple colored water,

the mummy dust is a mix of salt and pepper.

and the hell broth has red colored water.



Did you guess what any of the bottles were used for originally?

From left to right…

Blue Curacao
Sambuca
Green Olives
Porto
Red-hot sauce
Florastor
Tonic water
Capers
Tequila
Pine nuts
Sesame oil
Taco sauce
Red-hot sauce #2


Have a fun Halloween!!

No Sew Halloween Costume

I like to make some or all of the kids costumes when I can. This can be tricky if they choose something challenging or when they are changing their minds every few days. I have learned to wait until I get really close to the Halloween before I purchase any supplies. This year my son (3 yr.) started off saying he wanted to be Buzz Light-year. That is what he went as last year and I’m not so sure he understood that he could be something different. Then he said he would be a fireman. Great. We have a hat in the dress up box and his coat has some bright yellow on it so we’re most of the way there.

Then he said he WAS NOT going to be a fireman! Ok, now what?

I asked what he thought about a skeleton and then his face lit up with excitement.

I had an idea that was going to make this the easiest costume for Mama to make.
Wooo Hooo!!!!

I already had all the supplies I needed.


Black pants and a black T-shirt. Already had those items in the dresser.
A sheet of craft foam. Had a large enough piece left from a previous project. (ok, so I’m part pack-rat)
White(ish) contact paper. I had some left from lining dresser drawers and I had used this same stuff when I did the ceiling fan makeover in our bedroom. It looks a little like white/gray marble when you see the whole sheet but cut up I thought it would be perfect as a dirty bone.

I used my seam ripper to remove the pocket from the T-shirt.

I made some rough sketches of bones to use as a pattern. I first cut them out of paper and then traced them onto the back of the contact paper.

It took a little time to cut out all the bones but I sat on the living room floor and watched Jailhouse Rock while I tinkered away at the costume.

I used google images to find the outline of a skull and then traced that onto the craft foam. I cut out the eyes, nose holes and a slit for the mouth and then used a marker to draw in some details. All that is left, is to staple a piece of elastic on and the mask is all done.

I had some gloves that I found last year that have bones on them but you could use the same technique as the rest of the body if you want to. The best part is that I can peel the contact paper off after Halloween and use the pants and T-shirt again.

I think he’s going to look pretty cute.

What’s your easy last minute costume idea???

Time to move on...

Flip the page on the calendar. It’s November. Time to get ready for Thanksgiving. As much as I love Halloween, I also hold a pretty soft spot in my heart for Thanksgiving.

It’s a no pressure holiday. You don’t need to buy a special outfit or get a gift that someone will only return or stick in a drawer to be forgotten. You come together with friends and family and share a meal. You spend time thinking about what is important to you and the things that you are grateful for.

Some good food. A little wine. A slice of pumpkin pie.

Better start getting ready.




The big spider has been taken down.




The little spiders have been chased away.

All the bones have been collected.

Jack-o-lanterns and sculls are accounted for.

No more haunted house. The ghosts will have to go away until next year.

It’s turkey time.

It’s time to pull on a sweater and heat up some cider.

It’s time to pull out the cookbooks and gather the recipe cards.

Can you smell all the yummy food??

Gobble gobble