Halloween Evening

Just a little bit after 5 o'clock now, and I'm hearing some thunder out there. Today was such a pretty day, so I hope this evening's weather doesn't ruin the night for the kids who have planned to go out trick-or-treating. Clear Lake City and Houston gives kids about two hours for their trick-or-treat fun..... from 6:30 till 8:30, I think it is. I hope the weather gods keep the rain up in the clouds tonight till at least nine o'clock.

I went to one of the local gift shops this afternoon.... one of the more price-y ones. They have lovely things, and most of their inventory isn't found in the other shops. But the owner loves her items dearly, and prices them accordingly. I usually look around her shop before a holiday, then go back right after the holiday to buy what I want at a more reasonable price.

Being that I was up at the fabric store looking for wide ribbons with a Thanksgiving design, I decided to pop into the gift shop to see if the Halloween inventory was on sale yet. I've been keeping an eye on these designer dolls.... wrinkled witches in beautiful Halloween-y gowns. I love these dolls... they have handpainted old-crone faces, but they're wearing cosmetics as if they're young spring chickens. The witches have red hair that's twirled into the most outlandish styles and embellished with tiny pearls and black spiders. They're wearing flowing robes of gold and black, high-heeled shoes with rhinestones on their toes, and the expressions on their faces seem to say "Am I the most beautiful witch in the world or am I not?!" Actually, I think they're called fairy-witches, because they have wings on their backs.... black wings in the shape of bat-wings.

I was going to buy these witches last year, but I didn't get to the shop till the week after Halloween and they were all gone. When I went there today, they weren't marked down yet, but I asked the owner if she was going to mark them down any time soon. She knows that I go in there a lot, and I guess she doesn't mind that I buy her sale and clearance items, because she sold me the two remaining witches at her after-Halloween price.

I just love them..... they're designed by Mark Roberts, and they sell for way too much money, but being that the sale price was so good, I bought both the small 14" one, and the larger 24" one. I'm guessing at the heights of these, but that's about right. They will surely be the hit of next year's Halloween party, and of course I'll use them for decorations and/or centerpieces for every Halloween party we have from now on. The witches have flexible limbs, so you can pose them any way you'd like. I have one sitting on a doll-size chair on the dining room buffet right now, and the other one is draped along the top of our largest music box... she looks like a vamp.... and she's perfectly adorable for a wrinkled-up old witch.

We turned the clocks back one hour this weekend...... I hate it that it gets dark so early now. One more reason to love the summer months--- longer days. I can hear the wind kicking up right now, and there's a sprinkling of raindrops hitting against my sitting room windows. As my friend B would say: "Dang it all! The rain is going to flat-out spoil the fun!"