A quiet week

This always happens after LOAD.

After manically scrapping every day for a whole month, I suddenly stop. And that usually means a total STOP. No scrapping of any sort for weeks and weeks and weeks!

So this week, I woke up on Monday morning and thought, "Oh, no layout today." And went on to enjoy our day. The same happened on Tuesday and most of Wednesday.

And then I decided to pick up the paper trimmer again and see if I could be creative!

I had a commission for The Scrapbook Magazine to do and spent some time pulling it together. I think it's so pretty, full of a lot of gorgeous product. Of course, I can't share the whole thing with you, but how about a little sneak peek?

Surprisingly for me, this appears to have given my another small kick-start and I've done another two layouts  trying to use up some of the numerous kits I have lying around. My new kit arrived this week and I still have 8 unfinished ones that ought to be used up before I start the new one. Now I know that won't happen but I grabbed one and have done two cute Chance kids layouts. The light is too bad to photograph them but will upload them next week sometime.

The only other exciting thing to happen round here was Halloween last Sunday night. I've written before about how this is something new and unknown here in Germany and we like to celebrate it, but to the "delight" of my Germany family - well, at least I like to believe that it's to their delight :-) !

I won't upload all the photos I took but I have to share a few.

I am especially proud of my very special carved pumpkin. I'm not known for anything fancy and usually just do the standard lopsided face so I decided to step up to the mark and find out on the internet how the fantastic carved pumpkins you see on the internet from USA are done. I downloaded a template and read up on what I should be doing. I didn't have the right tools but I think I managed quite well! I used my paper piercer (scrapbooking to the rescue!) to highlight the shape to cut out and then I scraped off the skin to give the two tone effect. 

Ta laaaa:

We made sure that our communal staircase was Halloweened up and apparently, the orange light shone out into the night and could be seen from far and wide! (I think all our neighbours think we are ever so slightly mad!)

The mantlepiece looked just as lovely as I had hoped and the atmosphere was wonderful with all the candles and the eerie pumpkins peeking through the window.

And me? I spent a bit of time on my costume and made myself into Frankenstein's Monster's Bride using lots and lots of black tulle which was a lot of fun although a bit of a fire hazard! I got the idea of the makeup on the Martha Stewart website and it was done using the theatrical white makeup we have and a doily. I thought the effect was really interesting!