Spray-painting candles doesn't work.

I went to the local yard sales yesterday morning. Now that the tree debris is just about complete (except for the huge tree trunks that will need special cranes) life in the town is getting back to normal. And normal for Saturday morning means yard sales, every month of the year.

At the first yard sale I stopped at, young Miss C was there-- she beat me by three minutes, she said. C bought herself some arts and crafts supplies, then asked me if she could drive to the other sales with me. So we left her car parked where it was, and off we went to see what sales were in the neighborhood.

One of the local churches was having a huge outdoor sale, with scores of tables filled with all sorts of odds and ends, and it took us half an hour to wander around and look at everything. C found still more arts and crafts things, and I found two white wrought iron candlesticks. With a little spray-paint and imagination, I knew those candlesticks could be very Halloween-ish.

The candlesticks (each about 15" tall) are now spray-painted black, and with the flat-eraser tip of a pencil, I used orange paint to make happy polka-dots all over the black paint. They look very Mary Engelbreit-y. Now I have to find orange candles for them. I did find some in Pottery Ridge yesterday afternoon while we were out, but when I got to the front of the store to pay for them, there were 357 people on line, so I left the candles right there and walked out of the store. Do these stores realize that they are wasting your time when they don't hire enough help? (Or is there not enough help for them to hire?)

I have a box of ivory candles in my closet (from yet another yard sale) and I took my can of orange spray-paint this afternoon and tried to change two of those ivory candles into orange ones-- it doesn't work. The spray-paint doesn't stick to the candles and all you get is a gloppy mess. Into the trash they went. I refuse to wait 45 minutes on a line at Pottery Ridge for a three-dollar package of orange candles. I'll peek into Walgreens this week and see if they have some orange tapers.

C is still deciding on what kind of costume to make for the Halloween party. She came up with two very creative ideas, both of which would be fun to do, but she still has to decide which one she wants to wear for the whole night. In addition to coming to our Halloween party, C will be hosting her own party on Halloween night-- she has invited her friends to come to her house in costume, and they'll eat snacks and watch scary movies. C and her friends are all high school seniors, and it's nice that sweet snacks and scary movies are "frightful" enough for them on Halloween night.