Halloween: Pumpkin Inferno at Upper Canada Village

A year ago, my visit to Pumpkin Inferno was what brought my views up to this crazy level that took me about another 6 months to break.  Word of mouth is a crazy and awesome thing, just my boyfriend’s coworker sharing it on their Facebook page and boom! My views were crazy.  If you’d like to see that post, check it out HERE!

This year, I went with not only my boyfriend but 6 other friends including fellow blogger Day’s. Earlier than last year, so that it wouldn’t be as cold.  This past weekend was the first weekend of its launch (if I’m not mistaken) and man, was it ever crowded at the beginning of the trail.

Compared to last year, they had similar pumpkin carvings but they did change the trail and modify how certain exhibits looked and then they added one new exhibit called The House of Horoscopes.

Under the Sea

Tiki Island

Chinese Water Dragon

Egypt

Pirates

Evolution and Time

Musical scene

Musical scene

Canada

Candyland

Carved Pumpkins

Beehives

House of Horoscopes

Aries

House of Horoscopes

Just Buried

Garden

A quick look at the better pictures that I took for Pumpkin Inferno! 🙂

It was still very fun.  Plus, the crowd spread out once we got into the wider area where the actual trail spreads out to both sides.  Going earlier this year also gave us a warmer weather.  If you do go, dress warm.  I felt comfortable with jeans, tank top, t-shirt and sweater (layers do miracles) and then even added a scarf once the sun completely went down.

Its definitely a great experience! I still had lots of fun. The creativity behind this entire event is so awesome!

The House of Horoscopes was my favorite as if there wasn’t that many people, the best way was to lie down on the grass and admire the details, just like you would if you were looking up at the stars and searching constellations.  By the way, there are certain areas in the path where its darker and if you lift your head, you see a sky full of stars.  We took in a bit of that rare scene.  Living in the big city has that disadvantage.  We’re lucky if we even see a star in the sky, let alone a sky dotted with them just sparkling away!

If you are close to Upper Canada Village, its well worth it.  Our drive was about an hour and 40 minutes each way and it wasn’t long and tiring either.  Nothing really ever replaces fun times with friends 🙂

Valentine’s Day Crafts: Ball of Hearts

Valentine’s is about 2 weeks away.  I have no idea at all what I’m going to do for it. Usually my boyfriend and I don’t do much.  We don’t believe in the whole consumerism scam, so maybe we’ll stay in watch a few movies and eat a nice meal, but we still have time to figure that out.

However, since yesterday I couldn’t bake..more that my mom baked the other day and we still had some dessert left, I didn’t get a chance to bake yet. But I do know what I’m making next to start off some Valentine’s Day baking.  I should get to that soon.

Today, we are here not for all that ramble but rather to see my little crafty trial at making an origami Ball of Hearts.

 

I had a bit of technical difficulties with this one. The ball is actually looking much like one on the other side.  But I will figure it out.  I think its because instead of origami paper I should have used construction paper. However, my construction paper seems to have vanished…

But regardless isn’t it cute? I think it matches perfectly with the coming occasion.

So I’m here to show a little love with lots of hearts!

 

Nifty stuff, right? I’d have doodled a valentine or something but it would resemble stick figures or figures with over huge hands.  Never actually grew out of doing that since I was a kid.  Drawing just isn’t really my thing.

Oh right, if you do want a Valentine’s card or this little ball of hearts or even good old fashioned letter through snail mail. I’ll be glad to send you some love.  My way to show how much I appreciate you all for always hanging around and giving me all those wonderful suggestions to de-stress and just being awesome like you all are!  All you have to do is drop me an email at kim.tranquildreams@gmail.com!

Have a fantastic Saturday!

 

Petalled Cat Collar!

Halloween party is tonight for us.  We have our costumes pretty much done.  Since we’re leaving our little kitty, Flea at home, I had this fantastic idea to mash up crafts and a little something for her.

I got inspired by Martha Stewart to make a Petalled Collar.  Flea is going to be a little red flower for Halloween!

I know she doesn’t like collars much except for her own. So I just kept her in it for 5 minutes to take some quick pictures.  I’m actually glad she was still, very  much less sitting up.  Still, I think it was a fun project.

So some of the things I used and the final product looked like this:

I used black and green thread, red wool felt, purple ribbon.  You don’t see it here but I also used velcro as the fasteners

Not too bad, right? I used the ribbon to imitate the idea of having it around something so it’d curve up a bit as well.  I think its pretty nice for a first attempt.  I had a few road bumps along the way and I had to make some finishing touches today to make up for the mistake I made.

Here’s how Flea looked in it.  Of course, this was an extremely short photo shoot so I didn’t get to take too many and a lot of them were a bit blurry.

Pretty cute, right?

If you have a cat that is a bit more still than her, then this will work perfectly.  At least she won’t try to rip it off..this is what happened as a cue to stop.

If you want to know how to make this, check it at this link on Martha Stewart’s site: http://www.marthastewart.com/852543/petaled-collar-costume

I did this one over a course of a month or so.  From buying the materials from arts and crafts supplies store and Walmart. Then  another day, using the template to cut out the petals and sewing it to look like petals. These last two days have been intensive on sewing it onto the ribbon.  I thought it still turned out okay.  It will get better once I get the hang of sewing for starters.

Hopefully, I will get a few more crafts done by the end of the year.

Cross-stitch: Listen to Your Heart

Cross-stitching was a short fad when I was around 8 years old or so.  Although I have a slight memory that it could have been needlepoint.  Either way, I am slowly going to explore a bit of the crafts.  So regardless, after 6 months later of finally putting this down after working on it intensely, I finished it! Hooray!

I did learn one valuable lesson through this.  That is to never put down crafts for too long because then you end up missing parts, in this case, it was the thread.  I was missing a few so I ended up having to change some colors around. Still, I think it turned out pretty nice, no?

 

Its still a bit rusty, but I’m picking up on it.  Its my first cross-stitch embroidery kits that I bought.  I was missing the yellow thread so I couldn’t even replace that.  On top of that, I had lost the instructions sheet on how to do the stitching techniques so I could only research the ones for the petals.  I didn’t know how to do the little pollen part in the middle.  It was altogether a different technique so I had to just leave it.

I still have one more that I bought before but I’ve been looking around for more of these kits and they are not available in Walmart anymore so I’m looking up for other stores that might have it.

Anyone know any reliable online sites for cross-stitch kits? Or stores in Canada with them or stores in US that ship to Canada?

Craft#1: Felt Butterfly Satchet

Its been almost 3 months into 2012 and I’ve done movie reviews, crazy amounts of baking and even more photography than I had expected.  I even had random spontaneous posts.  Who would’ve thought crafts was the hardest to put my mind to doing?  I realized that to do crafts, I need to commit more time and pre-schedule a post for it.

After a month of having this idea for my boyfriend’s mom’s birthday gift, I’ve finally gotten around to doing it.  This is where I got the idea: http://www.marthastewart.com/271737/felt-butterfly-sachet

I decided to add a little lavender potpourri inside a little satchet to destress and help calm her body and soul.  I must say that it was pretty simple.

Here’s how it turned out:

I still would have wanted to decorate the surface of the satchet a bit.  Thanks to my mom who helped refresh my memory on how to set up the sewing machine.  Lets hope this gift will be a success and that my boyfriend’s mom will like it!