Inspire Bohemia

My brother, doing his best to freak out the trick-or-treaters in his homemade costume...

My sister, cleverly disguised as a witch, hahaha... this was before it got dark...

And our amazing Boxer, Kimbo, on full alert at the sound of little kids shrieking...

...Speaking of shrieking, that crazy red wall has my mom and I doing our fair share! Don't ask what we were thinking (over 10 years ago), just know that the perpetrator was some funky divided roller with a rolling tray for two paint colors that my aunt gave us and raved about. My mother has lived with this design crime ever since and I am determined to fix it for her. So I'll be back one day soon with the paint brainstorming/plans and the before and after images of that area. I want to get it done before Thanksgiving so I can show you images of our buffet and tablescape decor without that hideous red wall ruining everything, LOL!

And now for a few images on the food and decor at the family dinner...

The dinner was like most of our friends and family dinners at my aunt's house, a buffet style serve yourself table full of goodies! It wasn't a Halloween dinner party, just a small get together/reunion for some special family friends that were in town. My aunt made a simple centerpiece using tree branches and Spanish moss from her yard arranged in a vase with some black river rocks and a decorative figurine. She added a crystal pillar candle holder and a few other tea lights and decorative accessories to complete the look... By the way, aren't those ceramic wall flowers to die for?

My mother made a delicious Sock-It-To-Me cake with plenty of nuts and Cointreau spiked glaze...mmm...

I really loved the decorative sterling silver cheese pins used to adorn the various blocks of cheese on the fruit and cheese platter....

The nibbling mouse...

....perfectly staged with a crumb of actual cheese on his nose for humor...

The goat, which serves to label the cheese that it's in as a Goat Cheese! :)

And here is a cow for the other cheeses...

(All images in this post are my personal photographs, please do not use them without contacting me first at InspireBohemia(at)blogspot(dot)com - thank you!)

Our Halloween Decor: Outside

2011-10-31T16:10:00.002-04:00

Hey there, I'm back with more pictures of my outdoor Halloween decorations and a DIY wreath! My mother and I were inspired by my wreath posts from last week and we decided to give it a go... Luckily, the idea came to fruition when I spotted some fake black roses with embedded spiders and a wicker wreath frame at the dollar store! With some pain in the butt fake spiderweb (apart from the fact that it gets everywhere they just don't make that stuff the same anymore, darn those wavy ripples!), some branches from a former gift bouquet, orange shimmery ribbon (from the dollar store - duh!) and some hot glue we went to work and this is what we made!

Here are the links to all of my 2011 Halloween posts so far:
Our Halloween Decor: Inside
Happy Halloween!
Halloween Pumpkins Galore

Have an awesome night and be safe, I'll be back tomorrow with pictures of my Wicked Witch costume and whatever evils transpire, muahahaha... just kidding... about the evils that is! Happy Halloween!!

Here is the wreath that inspired us from this post last week......

This was the first phase of our wreath making.... I would have stopped at this point because I liked it like that, but my mother insisted that we charge on.....

To start we spray painted the wreath with some oil rubbed bronze spray paint... Once it was dry we strung the roses through the gaps in the wreath, arranged them how we wanted and hot glued them down. Once the glue dried we clipped the long stems with some wire cutters and curled them. By the way, these curled metal tips later came in handy while stretching the spiderweb as little hooks for the web to grab onto!.... :)

Here's the finished product....

We love it!

I love these shots because I love our door knocker :)

Ah yes, my mother's trusty plastic pumpkins.... Although I would prefer that all the pumpkins be real, after years of carving for us kids I can see how my mom finally gave up and got fake ones... They're not so bad!

Ever since I snagged this stone gargoyle at a dollar store years ago, he has been lingering around our yard and doorstep! Just like the Halloween decor inside the house (seen in this post from earlier today), all of this decor was done with things we already owned, apart from the candy, spiderweb, spiders and materials for the wreath which were purchased at the Dollar Tree and the pumpkins at Publix (my local grocery store), they were $0.99-2.99 depending on size....

I love this photo.... the fall colors from the wood house and pumpkins along with that rusted gorgeous little metal scroll table is just so pleasing to the eye! :)

(All images in this post are my personal photographs. If you would like to use any of my images please contact me first at InspireBohemia(dot)blogspot(dot)com - thank you!)

Our Halloween Decor: Inside

2011-10-31T14:10:00.001-04:00

Hello hello....

Better late than never - but I should have done this post over the weekend, however I kept changing the decor and all the little vignettes on and around this console table in my mother's foyer/entry. Maybe I have some readers who sympathize with me though...? I can't be the only one who goes nuts trying to decide what incorporation of items looks better, because they all look so darn good? Hmmm.... hehe :)

It's important to note that apart from the spiderweb and plastic spiders, black silhouette paper cutouts, real pumpkins and candy I decorated this space entirely from items around the house. The owls, ceramic stools, ceramic pumpkins, candles, witch, etc were all items we already had. Everything else I mentioned was purchased at the dollar store, except for the pumpkins which were $0.99-$2.99 each depending on the size. All of this is to say that I created some great Halloween decor on a budget along with lots of creativity - that's really all you need. Take a good look around your house to see what you can use in your holiday decor vignettes, you might be surprised at what you find!

So anyway, since I changed up my decor so many times and every time it looked good in a different kinda way I decided that I'd share all the version with you my dear readers! Feel free to tell me which version you like best! I'll be back in an hour or two with a post on our outdoor decor, including our DIY wreath inspired by some of the wreaths in my posts from last week, check out all my 2011 Halloween posts below, enjoy!

Halloween decorating: Phase I.....

Let's start with all these great black silhouette figures.... NO I did not make them myself, believe it or not I found these paper cutouts at the dollar store (Dollar Tree)! There were many different kinds, owls, bats, rats, spiders, ravens/crows and black cats. Suffice it to say I bought them all! I was really excited to find these at the dollar store because it was one of the decor features in some of the images I shared last week that I loved the most, for example the white piano with the black rat silhouettes skipping along the keys in this post. Later you'll see the rats in action when I post pictures of how I used them for the outdoor decor!decorating, I had the sudden idea to tape some of the ravens/crows like they were perched on the edge of the console table... Then, when I glimpsed candy corn out of the corner of my eye int he owl bowl I thought to scatter some pieces on the table near the beak so it would look like that's what they were pecking at. I love the way it looks, don't you? :)

I think this shot below is sooooo cool!!!....

How do you like my creation there on the right? I filled that baby up with lots of goodies, including some black and white decorative spheres we already had, candy corn, plastic spiders, a black rose leftover from our wreath project (more to come on that later today in the outdoor decor post) and black rocks.... The bow and plastic roach on the lid were a great afterthought....

I love this shot.... the owls eyes, the colors and the combination of items along with the angle of the photo....

Plastic black skeletons from the dollar store....

I got this adorable little white own bowl from Homegoods a few weeks ago, I also bought my mother the large one. They were $3.99 and $7.99, not bad! It immediately found a purpose in my Halloween vignette as a candy dish :)

I love this picture because of the fade to darkness on the right, the shadow makes everything look kinda spooky...

This awesome silver spider has been around for a looooong time....

I created the bleeding effect on the white candlesticks by lighting up a red candlestick from a dollar store pack and carefully and strategically letting it drip around the wick and over the edges of the candle in order to run down the sides.... so easy and I'm lovin' it!

I love this orange owl, so vibrant....

Halloween decorating: Phase II occurred after I hit up my local grocery store for a bunch of mini pumpkins and consequently moved a bunch of stuff around to accommodate them.... Also, I took one of my mom's decorative plastic green apples and spray painted it black for a creepy effect and placed it on top of the owl's head... definitely an improvement!

Oooooh nice shadows....

This crazy witch in the rocking chair has eyes that light up green when she cackles.... scares the crap out of our dog Kimbo, we've had to keep him from mangling her quite a few times now! LOL!

And now, the third and final phase of decorating occurred when I realized that I had left out an awesome piece of decor that my aunt had bought me a month or two ago, a brown ceramic owl stool! So I added that where the white ceramic stool had been and moved the white one to the other side of the console table near the door - the better for tricker-treaters to see (my dear)! Muhahahaha... haha... I'm gonna have fun tonight!!

Here are some great after dark shots with dim overhead lighting, I love it!....

And now, let there be night!... hehe....

(All images in this post are my own personal photographs. If you would like to use any of my personal images please contact me first at InspireBohemia(at)gmail(dot)com - thank you!)

Happy Halloween!

2011-10-31T11:03:00.001-04:00

Happy Halloween!!

How was your weekend? Any parties? I actually went to a family dinner party on Saturday and it was fun times. I know I didn't post like I said I would and I'm sorry, I tried, I really did! But there were so many distractions! We finally finished our wreath and I went insane decorating and redecorating the entrance/foyer in my mom's house! I'll be right back with a post showing our DIY Halloween wreath and indoor and outdoor decorations...

What are your plans for tonight? Have an awesome Halloween!

Here are the links to all of my 2011 Halloween posts so far:
Pumpkins Galore!

(All images in this post were sourced via Pinterest)

Halloween Pumpkins Galore!

2011-10-28T20:33:00.001-04:00

Hi!

Holy cow, I feel like I ran a mental marathon last night through today! My paper was on the politics of development and modernization from a global perspective, the class is Race, Gender and Sexuality. At just over eight pages it certainly wasn't the longest paper I've done in my college career, however the senior level of the course demands a very particular array of information jammed into those eight pages so it was a challenge... I'm feeling good about it, we'll see! I earned a 95/100 on the first exam (yay!) in this same class, and we still have one more written exam and a research paper due. Hi-ho... hi-ho...it's off to work I go!

But for now it's the weekend and I'm feeling so relieved, I've been takin' it easy since getting home at three. I spent some time in the garden checkin' out my plants (I promise I'll be back with the remaining and new garden updates discussed recently here, here, here, here and here) and spreading succulent and cactus cuttings and propagating leaves throughout the yard and planters... I love seeing the progress out there

I've decided to be The Wicked Witch of the West for Halloween this year, a nice break from the repetitive hippie and grim reaper costumes of the past. Although, hehe, I will be wearing that black grim reaper gown for my witch outfit - I'll just leave the hood down and put on a witch hat, ooooh I can't wait to paint my face green!! I should watch the Wizard of Oz (for the billionth time) to prepare for my role huh? I don't have any plans so far, but I'm perfectly content to get dressed up and hand out treats/scare the dickens outta some kids and take my sister trick-or-treating like last year.

I still have a few things on my Halloween to-do list, I have not had the time to get a pumpkin and get creative with the carving, especially given all this inspiration I've been posting - I'm chompin' at the bit to get one! My mother and I still have our Halloween wreath to finish as well, inspired by one seen in this wreath post, you'll see! Oh, and I decorated her foyer and outside the front door, it came out AWESOME! Also, I wasn't expecting to find one of the pieces of Halloween decor that I loved the most from my Halloween home decor posts of the other day (here and here) when I went to the Dollar Tree the other day! I can't wait for you to see, I'll snap some pics of everything in the morning light and post tomorrow! There's lots to do, now where's my broom stick?? :)

Here are the links to all of my 2011 Halloween posts so far: