HALLOWEEN QUICK PAGE FREEBIE !!

It's time to get those knives out and carve those pumpkins!  In years gone by my family has hosted carving parties for friends and relatives with real competition for the most elaborate design complete with prizes!  They were always a huge success and loads of fun until it came time for the after-party clean up crew to get to work!  Teehee!  This year we've taken the easy route and just the family gathered to carve; plus we pretty much winged our patterns right from our own minds.  The kids had a blast, and I've not seen that much pumpkin guts flying around for a long time!  Here's my pumpkin, my own free-hand sketch of a Tim Burton design and then our collective effort is below that:

I've decided to accompany my grandchildren on their Trick or Treating adventures which begin tonight with a big Halloween fling in one of our local parks and will end with the collection of candy from good neighborhoods tomorrow night.  It will provide me a great opportunity to have some fun with them and take lots of little goblin pictures to scrap later!  Yeah!  Want to see my costume?  I'm going to be a Punk Rocker "Mimi", and my oldest grandson has already put his seal of approval on my look!  I had a blast surprising him in it already by picking him up from school with it on the day I got it.  Now, the look on his face at that moment was PRICELESS!  And alass, I did not have my camera in hand!  Live and learn!  The mask has horns!

Hope you're in the mood to celebrate the seasons as they come and go!  With that thought in mind, I present you with another FREEBIE for this holiday.  I have a cool QUICK PAGE for you which is a 12 x 12 inch png, 300 dpi.  I left it sort of bare on purpose so you could clutter it up with your own favorite elements and just pop your photos in place.  The download is not too large and coming to you from box.net for ease.  I hope you will enjoy this!  Here's the preview:

DOWNLOAD HERE

I completely forgot to mention in my last post that another reason I was MIA during most of September and October here on the blog was due to my getting involved in the September Birthday Bash at Digital Scrapbooking Studio.  I not only participated in most all of the month-long challenges during the party but entered the layout competition in hopes of landing a spot on their site's layout CT as there were three openings, and the final top three layout artists would be landing those spots.  It was a five-week competition with probably 50-60 digi-scrappers competing in my category.  This went on in addition to the designer competition which was awesome and offered so many free downloads of their new designs as it went along.  My division had to make a layout with a new kit each week, and I made it to the final week before getting cut.  So, I was happy with that!  We got so many wonderful prizes along the way, and it was just so much fun to be involved.  They are one of my most favorite site's to hang out in online, so if you haven't checked them out, you should.  Sign up for their newsletter too, there's always nice freebies in it and good fun stories from The Piggy.  At any rate, I got involved in that competition while having two sets of company during the month of September, so you can just imagine how many late nights I pulled on the computer!  I'll show you some of my layouts from that in posts to come.

For now, I've got to run and prepare the rest of my costume for this evening.  The park shindig begins at 5 o'clock.  I'll hopefully be back tomorrow with another Halloween goodie for you, so do stop back in.

BOO for now!  I mean, bye.

TOOTLES!!

A "38-SPECIAL" FREEBIE FOR YOU!!

There's a pun in that title; isn't that a gun or something!  Teehee!  First, I apologize for going MIA for almost two months, so sorry.  I had that bad cold in September which really drug me down, then two sets of company arrived for Fall visits, so I did a ton of heavy cooking and entertaining.  We had loads of fun, and I was really sorry to see them leave.  During this time I focused on taking pictures and doing personal scrapping late at night rather than trying to design and keep up with blogging.  Please forgive.  I'm back and will try to make it up to you in the coming days and weeks. 

Does everybody like Halloween?  I've shared in running around over this beach looking at costumes for my grandkids and watching them change their little minds in the process.  It makes me recall my own younger days of planning and "making" my kids' costumes.  That's right, I sewed them up from scratch and sometimes put many sleepless nights into getting them finished.  Oh, those were the days!  I'm grateful that they always loved them and never minded that they were homemade!  That saved a ton of money even then.  It also brings to mind how my younger brother loved Halloween better than any other holiday of the year, even Christmas, as he was growing up.  We lived in a great neighborhood where all the residents participating in giving out candy.  The neighborhood was therefore always beseiged with hundreds of children, and back then there were no restrictive hours of Trick and Treating.  Kids would show up at the door before dark and it continued well into the night.  It was a tough choice, even as a kid, whether to dress up and go out and gather the candy or stay home and see the hundreds of kids coming to our door in full costume!  But not for my brother!  He ran as hard as he could, alone or with buddies, to cover the entire town!  His sack would get so heavy he would come home and dump it out and leave again.  He was like a Halloween maniac!  My sister and I couldn't keep up with him, he was out-of-control.  He still loves the whole process even as an adult.  He lives across the country from me now, so I don't get to see his adult version of Halloween in his home, but I'm sure it massive.  We had fun parents too who would dress up in costume to hand out the candy.  My dad was especially fun-loving and took great pride in pulling his own brand of pranks on the little kids as they came up our long sidewalk to the front door.  He would dress up in goulish garb and jump out from behind our shrubs to scare the kids and even their parents as they arrived.  Some took it well, some didn't; you can just imagine.  But my dad would laugh until tears would roll down his cheeks, and then mom would shame him if the children's reaction was bad.  I remember we always had to have loads of candy on hand for the numbers that arrived at our house.  It just seemed to grow larger every year, and my folks are still like little kids themselves, now in their 80's, but having already busted open the massive bags of candy on hand already to "taste test it" to see if it's any good before they give it away!  We always carved a pumpkin from scratch with a huge butcher knife, too!  It was such a glory to put that candle in it and watch it glow through the night.  We always had a light dinner that night, something nourishing but quick so we kids could get started.  What hub-bub, what fun!  We had pumpkin pie often during the fall, we saved the pumpkin seeds, ate some, planted some the following spring.  I even crafted with some way back then.  It seemed nothing went to waste.

In my own adult years with grown children, we have refined our pumpkin carving to a fine art using patterns and mini saws, and even hosting pumpkin carving contest parties.  I haven't used a butcher knife on a pumpkin for many years now!  LOL!  I'll see if I can dig up some photos of our best pumpkins and get them up here for you to see.  Now, this is giving way to me dressing up and going along with my grandchildren to watch them as they have fun.  I did get myself a special "look" for the spooky night, so if anybody thinks to take my picture, I'll get it up here so you can see how groovy this "Mimi" is.

Enough with the walk down memory lane . . .

I've got some goodies coming your way over the next few days, so do Trick or Treat at this blog!  The first FREEBIE for you is a huge pack of Halloween Word Art.  There are 38 png files in all, 5 word stickers in lots of variations to match up with whatever paper colors you may choose as your page backgrounds.  Here's the preview:

DOWNLOAD HERE

Let me know if you like this, I appreciate the comments you take time to leave.  You know love and appreciation spurs us on.

I've made some Halloween Quick Pages and Photo Masks/Mats to give you, so be sure to drop back by in the next few days to snag yours.  I've also made lots of templates and fall papers which will be coming your way as I get back on some type of schedule here.

In the meantime, don't get a toothache from helping your little goblins eat all that candy!  Have lots of fun, and do be careful out there!

TOOTLES!