A Halloween horror story

Walk with me, if you dare, through the cemetery and I will tell you my story.


Stick close together as we go. You never know what may jump out from behind the head stones.

The day began just like any other Friday, nothing out of the ordinary. I woke early and headed off to work. All was going well until I returned home. The plan was to spend a peaceful night at home enjoying my favorite blogs. I poured myself a cup of coffee and settled in for a night of entertainment. Then it happened. It started out faint, just a whisper, mind you. A sound that was barely audible. The more time passed the louder it got. I couldn't take it any longer. Though fear was rising in me, I had to investigate. I had to know.

Are you sure you want me to go on? I don't know if I can bear to repeat it.

If I must.

As I was saying I had to investigate, I had to know. I walked quietly down the steps. The kitchen was dark except for a dim light that shone above the stove. I looked around but could see nothing out of the ordinary. Still the sound grew. Something was telling me to look in the cupboard. I had an odd feeling that the answer to my question could be found there. I ever so carefully opened the door and peeked inside. Oh the horror of it all. I couldn't believe my eyes.








Someone ate my last Reese's. Now the noise from my stomach grumbling in anticipation of that yummy chocolate and peanut butter confection will never stop.

Happy Halloween everyone. Do any of you have a Reese's by chance?

So much to tell, such little time

Oh my yes, I have so many things to tell you about today. I'll wait if you want to grab a cup of coffee and maybe make a pit stop before I begin.

(Pause for effect) la dee da dee da

OK are we ready now? Alright.
First off, I AM A WINNER!!! I'm so excited I never win anything. But this was my lucky day because I won the giveaway over at The Queen Speaks I received a personal email this morning from Queen Katherine herself. I feel so special. I was hand picked by the princess as the winner. YEAH ME! As I told Katherine I was really excited about this because I entered a giveaway once and even though I was the only one who entered I still didn't win. The drawing date came and went and the blogger just gave up and never awarded the prize. So Thank you Katherine. You guys should really keep an eye out on her blog because I hear that there's going to be another giveaway coming up. In the meantime just be entertained by all her other posts.

Second item of the day is an announcement about a brand new Entrecard blogger. I have to tell you that she is one crafty lady. The things she comes up with are fantastic. You'll see yummy desserts, awesome scrapbook layouts and super cute hybrid projects. So how do I know all this about her? Well because she's my sister. I finally talked her into trying out Entrecard and she listened. (Yep there's a first time for everything isn't there) So when you are done here, hop on over and check her out.


Last item for the evening In keeping with the Halloween theme I've been going with this week, have you ever noticed how many bugs you see.
For example, check out this guy. He was sitting on the table ever so still. I think he was trying to convince me that he was plastic. I wasn't buying it, I kept my eye on him.


Not all bugs are scary though. Some are kind of on the cute side. Just like this little bug celebrating her first birthday.



I think she may have some kind of magical power though. Here she is displaying her skills of lighting the candle with her finger.

It's all in the angle folks....lol I cracked up when I got this one on the computer and got a better look at it.

And so ends another post. I'm off in search of some more Halloween related pictures from the files.

Your fright for the night

With Halloween getting so close I guess I'm just in the mood for the scary stuff. (OK so maybe it's not that scary)

Would you just look at this poor guy. He aint got no body. Awww.



I think that maybe he's going to need a hand. Anyone want to help him out?

Oh look, here's a helping hand for him. I wonder who that belongs to.

That's it for today. Short but sweet?

I dare you.

Would you dare to travel down route 666?



If you are brave enough to have answered yes...

Aren't

You

Afraid

of

running

into

this guy?



Or maybe even worse?

It's time for "that reminds me"

Remember last Sunday when I posted a picture and told you how it reminded me of one of YOU? Well, it's time for another one. Bet you thought I forgot about it didn't you? I used several combinations of your numbers that you gave me last time until I finally found a picture that jumped out and said "Hey, that reminds me of..."
This weeks picture reminds me of Kat from Candles crafts and whatnot.

Out of sheer boredom one day I took the picture of this building. When I came across it in the files and noticed the sign it reminded of the post Kat did about her chiropractor visit. You can read that post here if you missed it. Hopefully she has her computer problems taken care of and she'll catch this post.

WAIT! don't go away yet. There's more. Yesterday I showed you the fun I was having playing with the halftone pattern and said that I would put together a download for you. Believe it or not, I actually managed to get it done. I'm still feeling a little soggy from my life as a fire hydrant but that's no excuse to let you down. So here it is. I've include 2 papers and one overlay.


Go ahead and grab that download right HERE

So that's all there is for today. Have a wonderful Sunday.

Where's my sign

You'll pardon me if I begin this post with a short but much needed rant. I just want to know who stuck the sign on my back that says kick me. I won't go into detail about the drama that I call my life. There's a saying that goes "Some days you're the dog and some days you're the hydrant" I want to know when my turn is to be the dog because this hydrant has had enough.


Alright, I feel better now. OK so maybe I don't but the post must go on.
I just have a few little things to share with you tonight. First is a picture I took while I was on vacation. I popped out on the deck to see what I could capture with my camera and noticed a blue jay flying around. I so wish I had a camera that I could zoom in closer on things. I enlarged the bird so you could get a better look at him.


Deb a.k.a. the scrappincop has been playing around with halftone patterns. She did a little tutorial and I tried it out yesterday. The link for her tut is http://thescrappincop.blogspot.com/2009/10/quick-halftone-tutorial-for-pse.html
I was really having fun with this one. This was a paper I made that I really liked.

I also did a couple of overlays. Maybe tomorrow if I can get my act together I'll whip up a download for you with a few of the things I've made.

Finally, this is an old picture that I pulled out and started playing with. It was taken a couple years ago. Wade and I dressed up for Halloween to pass out candy. He was sitting on the front porch when I took the picture. I layered it on top of one of the many pictures I have of the moon. Then I posterized it a little and gave him the creepy red eyes.

Well that's it for now. Maybe I'll go do some more playing in pse and see if I can adjust my attitude a little.

What I meant to do yesterday

Yesterday I wanted to show you a little of what I had done with my days off. For some reason I was getting an error message when I tried to upload the photos.
So here we go today.
I was in a bit of a crafty mood. If you've been following my blog awhile, you may remember me showing you the frosting containers that I was decorating to use as Christmas presents. Well I did a few of those. I also added coffee cans (the red and green Folgers plastic ones) to the list of things I was saving.
I don't have an actual table or anything to work on. All my craft stuff is pretty much stashed in my computer room. So I got out all my junk and spread it out on the floor and started playing. Here's my mess. I did tidy up just a bit before I took the picture.


So far I've done 7 of the frosting containers. I'll use these to hold either home made candy or maybe some cocoa mix. Or something else, not quite sure yet.



This is a picture of one of the coffee containers. Since it's already green it was pretty easy to do. Just add some fancy ribbon and make a fancy bow for the top. The lid was black which I didn't care for so I painted that with gold metallic paint. The other thing in the picture is a leftover ceramic tile I had from when we did our kitchen floor years ago. I cut up some old Christmas cards and then decoupaged them on to the tile. I'm working on another one of those right now.

Well that was my creative spurt while I was off.
First day back today was a killer. I'm beat....lol

Aww Bummer

Well vacation is over, it's back to work tomorrow. Big time bummer. I've been enjoying the stay at home thing way too much.

I had pictures to show you of what I've been doing but blogger is not letting me upload them tonight. I guess I'll tell you all about that tomorrow.

About yesterday's post. That may be the one and only time I let Duke fill in for me. It seem that all that reminiscing he was doing brought on some bad habits. I walked into the kitchen today and found him taking a nap. Doesn't sound so bad does it? Well it is when he's curled up (like a cat) on the place mat that's on the dining room table. And can you guess what else?

MOM WAS NOT HAPPY BOUT THAT!

Catdog

(image taken from Wikipedia)

This post is brought to you by Duke the catdog


Hey everyone. I'm so excited I get to do a post fur mom.



First let me tell you that when I first came to live with mom and pop I had a big brother who's name was Pringle. Mom says he was a cat. Pringle taught me some really cool stuff. He showed me all the best places to take a nap. My favorite is the back of the couch. He also taught me that if you want to get a really good look out the window you have to get up on the end table. I don't know why mom doesn't think that's a good idea. Must be she doesn't know what a great view you get.
Once, Pringle even showed me how to get up on the big table that Mom and Pop put their food dishes on. Mom was not happy bout that one. I only tried it two times and both times she got really mad.

My brother doesn't live here any more. Last year after Christmas he snuck out to take a walk and never came back. I still remember all the cool stuff he taught me though.

Boy I sure do miss my brother sometimes.
Here's a picture of me thinkin bout him





This bloggin stuff sure makes me tired. I'm gonna take a nap now, just like my brother showed me.

That reminds me of....

I have something new to mix it up a bit today. I randomly chose a picture out of my files and after careful consideration I decided which one YOU, my wonderful blog friends, it reminded me of.

So here is my random picture. (Wade would be so happy about this NOT)

Here you have the (UN)common Loon. While the common Loon can be spotted mainly in the water, the uncommon variety perches among the branches of trees.

He can easily be identified by the saw that is under his hand (I mean wing)

So who does this remind me of?

Why none other than Ratty the Everyday Adventurer. Ratty is always posting pictures from his adventures and he just showed some great robin pictures the other day. I wonder what he will think of my Loon sighting.

So who will be next?

If you leave a comment please throw in a random number and that's how I will choose my next picture.

Have a great day everyone.

Wrong impressions

It seems I may have given some of you the wrong impression with my last post. While I appreciate all of your sympathy, I'm afraid that I just don't deserve it. At least not this time. Hold on to it though because in the future I may be asking for some of it...lol
No the true meaning behind my last post is really a little more silly than anything else. I was doing my drops and was reading a post on someones blog and it mentioned farts. Yes, I said farts! Well, farts of course remind me of that lovely little poem that you usually see scrawled on public restroom walls. You know the one. Here I sit all broken hearted, came to sh%*t but only farted. Since my blog is rated G I couldn't very well use the sh%*t word and without it fart just didn't fit in....lol I had that stuck in my head though so I went in search of a picture of a stool and another picture of a heart, combined them and made the image I posted and then my bloggy version of the poem. I'm so weird sometimes. Must be why my kids love me so :)

So today the first picture I posted is a picture of my Duke and on top of that I placed a picture of my long lost Pringle. I embossed the picture of the cat and changed the blending mode to soft light. So there you have a cat impression over a dog (wrong impression)

On a more serious note. While I was at it I got to thinking about that public service ad you used to always hear. The one that said "Friends don't let friends drive drunk" In my opinion, the sad truth is that "YES, friends DO let friends drive drunk." And far too often I might ad. How many times have you been at a party, or perhaps at a bar after work having a few drinks with a friend? You're finally ready to leave and in a bit of a rush to get home. You know without a doubt that your friend has had way more than you have but he/she swears they are OK and don't worry about them. So you go on your way.
When your friend finally thinks they have had enough, they get in their car and head for home. The only problem is that while they are driving, they too have the wrong impression. They think they are in control, that they are safe to drive. Truth is that the image below very well could be how they are seeing the road.

I doubt that serious subjects have much of a future here but this was one that I feel very strongly about. I did this image last night and wanted to share it with you.
Have a safe and happy weekend everyone.

Broken Hearted

Here I sit all broken hearted

Came to blog

But...

Couldn't get started.

This is a combination of 2 images that I found at Morgue File. Day one is just about over with and I've done nothing. Well except that edit above. I couldn't even come up with anything better for a post.

Give me 5

Give me five.

High five.

Take five.

Five for fighting.

It's gotta be 5:00 somewhere.

Five and dime

5 o clock shadow

LOL I'm running out of them.

You must be wondering by now what the obsession with 5 is.

Just happy because I have the next 5 days off from work.

Note worthy

Yesterday I went with a friend to a place called Shaker Woods. They had Christmas in the woods which was a huge craft show, all set up in the woods. It was a bit chilly but the cold didn't stop us from spending 4 hours walking around browsing at all the wonderful things. It was of course mostly Christmas items but there were a lot of other great craft items as well. Believe it or not the only thing I came home with was a package of dip mix and the most delicious bottle of steak sauce that I have ever had. Debbie was trying to get ideas for gifts that she could make for Christmas and was taking notes on the things she liked the best. I probably should have been doing the same but I always think I'm going to be able to remember these things once I get home. I did see several things that I would have loved to have bought, unfortunately they were all out of my price range. (Have I ever told you how cheap I am?) Maybe that could be another blog post....lol

So this is what it's looking like in my neck of the woods these days. You can see there is a definite look of autumn around us. The clouds aren't real in this picture, I did some playing around with it. It might have looked better had I left the leaves a brighter color but I liked it a bit more muted.


And finally to finish my post off for the day, that first picture up there at the top, turned into this.

I just started messing around with different things and before I knew it this was staring back at me from the monitor. I liked it so I kept it.

And that wraps it up for the night. Have a great night and a greater day tomorrow.

What happened?

Where did the weekend go? Last I knew it was Friday. I only blinked a couple times and already it's Sunday night. I had several things that I wanted to blog about but never got around to them.

I had fun with the game I posted for you the other day so I thought I would do another. This one is a little different. I have 2 pictures here and there are 6 differences in the pictures. I'm thinking that it's going to be pretty hard to see them with it this small. You'll probably need to click the picture to enlarge it. See if you can find them all.


Instead of making you wait a day for the answers I'm giving them to you today at the end of the post.
Now I have to put a little filler in between them so I'll just tell you what I did with my weekend.
Friday Wade and I decided to go out to eat after work. We had to make a couple stops and neither one of us felt like cooking when we got back home. We chose to go to Ponderosa. Bad choice. I should have known better because the last time we went there my food was luke warm and not the best. Well we paid for our meals and Wade headed to the buffet, which he got with his. Finally they brought our food out (this was around 4:30 so it wasn't very busy) I took one bite of the sirloin tips and guess what? Yep, cold. Ok how about a french fry. Nope, that was cold too. Then the mushroom, they were cold too and SUPER salty. The girl that had our table comes over and asks if everything is alright. I don't think she was expecting my answer....lol What I said was "Well it would probably be a lot better if it was hot" She said I'm sorry twice and then walked away. OK, then Wade stopped another girl and asked her if we could have our money back for my meal because I was not going to eat it. She said no problem walked away and never came back. I saw her talking to one of the cooks but then she just went about her business. Finally the first girl came back and asked if I wanted another drink. I said no. So she asked if I wanted to talk to a manager. Why yes, I do. :) The manager came out and I told her the food was cold and it was the second time it had happened to me. She said there was no reason for that with all the people they had working. Then she cheerfully refunded all our money minus the cost of the drinks. Oh well I wasn't all that hungry anyway.
Well since I made that such a long story I'll just give you the answers now and tell you what I did today on another post.

So did you find them all?

Stolen

Hey Guess what? One year ago today I wrote my very first post for Ann's snap edit scrap. Yes, that's right it's my blogoversary. One whole year. To celebrate I decided to steal something from Jenn's blog at http://www.mykidsaremyworld.com/

So here it is. 33 things you probably never wanted to know about me...lol

1. What was the last thing you put in your mouth?
that would have been a ritz cracker
2. Where was your profile picture taken?
in my living room
3. Can you play Guitar Hero?
I don't know, I've never tried
4. Name someone who made you laugh today.
believe it or not, I can't remember laughing about anything today. Now how sad is that?
5. How late did you stay up last night and why?
I'm such a wild and crazy kind of person I stayed up till 9:00 p.m. (I get up at 4:20 so during the week I'm in bed early)
6. If you could move somewhere else where would you and why?
I don't know exactly where, but it would definitely be somewhere with a much warmer climate
7. Ever been kissed under fireworks?
Not that I recall unless you mean the fireworks caused by the kiss....lol
8. Which of your friends lives closest to you?
um, friends? you mean other than bloggy ones? do people really have those?
9. Do you believe ex's can be friends? With benefits?
I suppose they can be yes, but if you wanted the benefits from them then why are they an ex?
10. Do you like Dr. Pepper?
Not a big Dr. Pepper fan, I'm a diet coke with lime kinda girl
11. When was the last time you cried really hard?
Oh for heavens sake, I cry all the time.
12. Who took your profile picture?
Oh that was taken by an exceptionally talented photographer, she's very well known. OK that's a lie, it's a self portrait.
13. Who was the last person you took a picture of?
I think everyone who follows my blog can answer that one since I posted all those wedding pics that I took
14. Was yesterday better than today? Why?
Heck no, yesterday was only Thursday and today is FRIDAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!
15. Can you live a day without TV?
You bet I can. Five years ago, maybe not but I don't watch much tv at all any more
16. Are you upset about anything now?
right at this very moment, no, I'm calm, cool, collected and settling in to enjoy my weekend
17. Do you think relationships are ever really worth it?
Worth what?
18. Are you a bad influence?
I would like to think so....lol no just kidding, I don't think I've ever been a bad influence
19. Night out or night in?
I'm a boring old home body, never been much of a party animal.
20. What items could you not go without during the day?
then only thing I don't think I could go without would be my computer, I'm too attached to it.
21. Who was the last person you visited in the hospital?
That would be my father in law
22. What does the last text message in your inbox say?
I think it said something like "isn't that crap".....lol My daughter ordered a cake from Walmart and it was horrible, she took a pic with her phone and sent it to me.
23. How do you feel about your life right now?
It could be better but it could be a whole lot worse. I would say I consider myself to be pretty lucky to be where I am right now in life
24. Do you hate anyone?
Hate is a very strong word. (that's what my dad used to say) He always told me, "You may not like them very much but you should never hate anyone" So no I don't hate anyone, but there sure are some people I don't like very much :)
25. If we were to look in your Facebook inbox, what would we find?
I have no idea, I have a facebook account but I never go there.
26. Say you were given a drug test right now, would you pass?
as long as caffeine isn't considered a drug, yes I most certainly would
27. Has anyone ever called you perfect before?
Does it count if it was me calling myself perfect? Don't recall anyone else ever saying it unless they were being sarcastic
28. What song is stuck in your head?
It's still "The climb"
29. Someone knocks on your window at 2 a.m., whom do you want it to be?
I don't want anyone knocking on my window at 2 a.m. Are they nuts? Do they know what kind of mood I'm in when I wake up?
30. Do you (or did you) want to have grandkids before you’re 50?
I sure do.
31. Tell us your Saturday night.
Pretty darn boring. Sitting at home usually in front of the HP
32. Do you think too much or too little?
A little of both. Sometimes my brain just won't quit. Then of course there are times that I don't think enough before words come spewing out of my mouth.
33. Do you smile a lot?


Actually no I don't. I really hate my smile so I try not to. Could explain why everyone always thinks I'm so grumpy....lol








Well have a great weekend everyone. Hope I didn't bore you too much.

The climb

If you aren't familiar with the song "The Climb" by Miley Cyrus I strongly recommend that you listen to it. I absolutely love the song and I think in a way it almost sums up my life in some ways. I wanted to post a you tube video of the song but I'm afraid that I just can not figure out how to do it. So if anyone wants to take pity on a poor middle aged scrappy blogger and give me a clue I would be forever in your debt....lol

Now, if you'll pardon me while I softly hum the song, I'll continue with the rest of today's post. I actually have another freebie for you. This is a quick layout I put together. I just threw the picture in since it was the first fall looking picture I could find.

I started with the embossed papers that I made a while back. You can find those at this post http://annssnapeditscrap.blogspot.com/2009/09/fall-is-in-air.html
Then I made the wreath and the happy harvest wood sign. I added a bow that was an extraction from a picture I took. I also made the tape frame. I saw something like that somewhere else and liked the way it looked. Any way, I put it all together and made a quick page for you. I also threw in the wreath, a happy harvest sign as well as a blank one and the tape frame. If you want the papers and haven't gotten them you can go to the link above. If you like this little freebie you can get it right HERE
One thing I want to mention before I go. I know there are some of you who don't do scrapbooking and so you may think that you wouldn't have any use for these freebies. They may be more useful than you think. Any of the elements can be used just like you would use any clip art you may have. Have you ever made a greeting card on your computer? Well you can use digital scrapbooking stuff to make your cards with. Really anything that you do with other clip art you can also do with this stuff. Just some food for thought.
Well it's off to do some dropping before I call it a night. Have a good one everyone.

Answers

Had I been thinking (a strange occurrence for me) I would have typed this post up yesterday and then just published it this morning before I went to work. That would have been the nice thing to do. I never claimed to be a nice person though...lol
I had a few other things I was going to post today but wanted to get this up. The rest will just have to wait until tomorrow.

Find it (post 2 for the day)

I have a little game for you today. There are 5 hidden pictures in the image below
1 a cemetery scene
2 my dog Duke
3 a leaf
4 a burning candle
5 a scarecrow


Can you find all 5?
I don't think it should be all that difficult. They seem to pop right off the page at me, but then again I know exactly where they are too. Just in case you can't find them all I will post the answer tomorrow.
If you enjoy this maybe I'll do more of these, I had fun putting it together.

Did you say Free?

I started doing my drops this morning and came across a post that I had to share with you. It's so important that I dropped the dropping to write this post.
The post I'm referring to was on Cornyman's Money Blog. The title of the post was EntreCard: Do you want FREE advertising for your blog? Well who wouldn't like free advertising? So I read on. You should go check out the post. It led me to a site called dropaholics

You may or may not have noticed the new widget on my sidebar. As of today, the top 10 droppers have a spot on my blog giving them free advertising. The way I see it, if you are dropping on me, it's only right that I should show my appreciation. Rather than doing the top ten for the last month, I chose to set it to the current top droppers, therefore how long your ad runs in the widget depends on how often you visit.

Top 10 droppers for September

Well here they are, the top 10 for September. I can't believe the month is over already. Geesh where did it go?


Dropper
# of drops
The Ad Master
31
Fresh 'N' Marine Aquarium Blog
31
Beyond Left Field
31
Just My Two Cents
31
Parent Times
31
Blogging Circle
31
Picture to People
31
Computer Aid
31
Everyday Living
31
Rambling stuff
31

If you notice every single one of these had 31 drops. WOW, thanks so much. And to each and every one of you who have been stopping by, reading or even just dropping and moving on, thank you very much.

It's been ages

How long has it been anyway since I offered you a freebie? I'm afraid to look back and see when the last time was.
I started this the other day as a distraction from the pictures when I was getting frustrated. Tonight, since there is nothing else to do I put it all together for you. I made the dot overlay first. Then I put a plain color underneath, added a contrasting color to just the dots, used blending modes, duplicated the dot layer, rotated it then played with the blending modes again. I finally ended up with the paper you see in the preview.


What I'm giving you today is the dot overlay and the paper. You can use the paper or see what kind of combinations you can come up with using the overlay. Have fun be creative. You can grab the download right HERE

I can hardly wait till the weekend, which does officially start tomorrow at 2:30. I've got all this time on my hands now. What will I do?

Just a note before I go. When I was doing my drops tonight I had a problem trying to get to a few blogs. There were 3 of them and I don't remember which ones other than one was Grampy's. When I clicked on the widgets it kept going to a search results page. Did anyone else have this problem? I tried several times to go back and always got the same thing. I even tried going to Grampy's blog through the comment section on mine. Still same thing. All the other ones worked fine though. Sure would like to know what was going on with that.

I don't have time tonight, but tomorrow I'll be bringing you my top ten droppers for September.
Have a great night.