I am in too much pain and far too tired, mostly due to being unable to sleep due to, you guessed it, pain, to worry about creating another Grimoire exercise here today.

So, I will tell you what the youngest and I have been watching far far too many DIY Halloween decoration creation videos — not to mention, DIY bakes and snacks.

This means buying pool noodle-type things, thankfully Dollar Tree carries the exact ones we need. We have different colors of spray paint. We need to get some fake fall flowers and fake fall leaves. You basically cut the pool noodle (just a single one) down to create as many candles as you like. The video showed three candles being cut out of one pool noodle. They spray-painted the noodle. Next, they used hot glue to glue all the now-candles together–and hot glued a piece of rope around the now-candles to make them look tied together. I am not sure what they used as wicks…if they even did. They again used hot glue to attach the fall foliage all around the candles.

They used it to make a display where the candles sat upon a skull as a sort of crown. It could also be used as a table centerpiece. Or it could be something you do with your kid to spend time together and to make the kid happy. Hand it to the kid once completed and let the kid figure out what to do with it.

Now, where do we find nice-sized and cheap plastic skulls for other artsy-craftsy experiments…

Also, I went searching, online, for different weeks sized notebooks and journals. I found quite a few. Etsy has some dazzlingly beautiful ones. I cannot in good conscience bring myself to buy them since I have the skills and the materials to make my own. Plus, I have two different journals, a soft-cover A5 and a soft-cover B6, that I have already marked in order to cut them down to size. I am waiting until — and I mean this seriously — my cats are not interested in what I am up to and don’t stick their noses into and under the blade or my hands or anywhere close by when I am cutting.

My cats, Steve in particular, are why I have to pick my time to use my guillotine cutter. Some days, with his intense need to know everything that is going on, I am shocked he has ears left after wanting to know what I am up to when I am cutting paper. The gingers might lose their tales, at least the tips, from thwacking at the cutter while I am working with it. It’s always fun around here.

I cannot wait until I pull out my sewing machine in the next couple of weeks to start making myself some blouses and slacks for Halloween. If I am lucky, we will hit a good sale at Joann Fabrics so we can stock up on the spooky fabric for my youngest and for myself. Plus, my son is pushing me to make HIM a journal cover because he loves mine. The last time we went to Joann, I let him pick out some fabrics for his journal, while I picked up two yards of Day Of The Dead Girls fabric; it was on sale and I love this pattern. It’s more than enough to make a blouse, but what I really want are pants. We’ll see what happens when I pull out my machine come September.

What about you? What have you been up to? What have you been planning for the upcoming Spooky Season? What’s going on in your world?