Halloween is upon us and it is a holiday I'm embracing more and more when it comes to decorating. I don't go all out, over the top, haunted house or anything like that, but I do start layering on the fall and subtle stuff in early to mid-Oct. and by the 3rd week or so get out the spookier stuff.
Last year I saw a Poe/Raven inspired vignette in a magazine that I absolutely loved and even went to far as to start scouting out copies of the Raven, bird cages, and a vintage typewriter (see my failed attempt at finding the books on this thrift store trip post).
I didn't come up with a typewriter on the cheap either, but I did eventually get a few cages and one fancy-bound Poe book at a thrift and dug another Poe anthology and Mary Shelley's Frankenstein off my bookshelves and put them in the Halloween box for this year where they became bases for faux pumpkins on my console and coffee table.
Rather than go full-on Raven, I went somewhat loosely with more of a "things with wings" theme - mainly because I fell in love with bat-themed cocktail napkins and this little vulture guy from Michael's Crafts, who I placed in a little thrift store bird cage lined with river rocks:
and the napkin from Target in a Dollar Tree frame:
I was already planning a purple and green color theme around the Missoni for Target dishes I'd scored in September and had them out along with an old green tablecloth, gold chargers, wooden placemats, and some cranberrish colored candles since the end of September. I layered in glass hurricanes filled with pink beans and votive candles, some spooky white pumpkins on the platter, and some other fake pumpkins from my Halloween stash to complete my tablescape.
As the end of October drew nearer, I styled up my china cabinet (I'm still terrified of the glass shelves and have put off my "final reveal" post because this is really the first I've done anything with it) with my black skull plates (last year from Target), the bat cocktail napkin in a little dollar store frame, various crows including one nesting in a nest of black feathers (a feather boa from a craft store piled into a footed bowl, with initial balls for 'eggs'), some ironstone platters, (which I collect), pumpkins real and fake, a few more glass hurricanes with beans and votives, and a glass cloche with a twig in it (this needs a sparkly moon and an owl or something in it, maybe a mini pumpkin on the ground). The purple bat lights are from Target and I've had them forever - they flash somewhat annoyingly, which you're supposed to be able to make stop, but I never could.
Another great find I picked up in the dollar store were black cut-outs of mice and crows - one buck for a pack of 12 cut-outs, 4 each of 3 designs (mice were one pack, crows a second pack, they had cats too, but they were oddly the same size as the mice). I put them on one of the platters, a mirror, a cheese plate, and inside a lampshade, all to good effect.
I never did post pictures from last Halloween, where I went with a more traditional orange and black color scheme, so just for fun, some of those pictures follow. It is a lot of the same stuff I used this year, just arranged differently. The framed napkins are vintage ones found when we cleaned out my grandparents' house just layered on black fabric and framed in record album frames. I got them out this year but couldn't find a place to hang them without making extra nail holes so they and a few other ideas I had to frame up will wait again until next year, but I do love them.
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