Ghoulish Goodies - Cookies in a Jar Review

Ghoulish Goodies - Cookies in a Jar

Initial reaction to the picture: What the heck is in the bottom of that jar???? And then I read on to discover: Oh, my gosh! It's cookies in a jar!

With oatmeal, pecans, M&Ms , chocolate chips, and sugar in this container, what's not to love? The seller even offers to mix you a custom batch that doesn't contain nuts, if you're allergic.

But the fun doesn't stop with the yummy goodness that's inside. The outside of the jar is decorated with Halloween fabric displaying ghosts, bats, and pumpkins.

I love the pictures on this item. Not only are there a lot of them, but also they were taken outside with good lighting and a tasteful background.

The polka dot black and orange ribbon against the ghost/pumpkin/bat fabric may have been a tad much though. There's only so much activity that should be happening in one area, and the polka dots push this one over that edge. Might try that fabric with a plain black ribbon for a better effect.

Clear Rubber Cupcake Stamp Review

Handmade Clear Rubber Stamp -cupcake-

After reading over this description, my first thought is "Gift wrap? Where?" The description claims that a buyer can have the stamp gift wrapped, but shows no indication of this in the pictures.

I love how there is a picture of the top of the stamp, the bottom of the stamp, and of the finished product resulting from the stamp. Still, I'm left to wonder about what the offered gift wrap looks like. As we all know, there's gift wrap, and then there's gift wrap.

The cupcake image itself is very cute. It isn't quite symmetrical and yet it is definitely not haphazard, resulting in a subtle charm. I could see this stamp being used on envelopes, greeting cards (think Happy Birthday!), or in scrapbooking.

Dream Pictures on Canvas Review

Dream Pictures On Canvas

My attention was so distracted by the sparkling beauty of this image that at first, I didn't notice the baby curled into the top of the flower in this picture. This picture has an almost magical feel, from a land where babies are small enough to fit on the head of a flower (or perhaps the flowers are just that big ;).

A contrasting color would do nicely for the text. As it is, the text is difficult to read, particularly in the whiter areas. Using a color from the flower for the text definitely ties the picture together effectively. However, because of the contrast issue, I would suggest using one of the brighter colors of pink within the flower.

Halloween Blossom Hair Clip Review

Halloween Hair Blossom

What a stunning hair clip! I love the way that the orange and black chiffon layers appear to flow from one side to the other. This effect appears to be created by placing less of the material on the left than on the right side of the button, so that the flower appears to be leaning to the left. The vintage button adds to the overall effect, looking almost like a flower within the larger flower.

Did I say "appears" enough yet? Pretty soon, I'll have to inform you that you're actually in The Matrix. Would you like the red pill...or the blue pill? But I digress...

I would love to see more pictures of this item, particularly if it were displayed in the hair of a young model. Although the photo currently on this listing is quite fetching, using a human or a mannequin as a model would make it easier to see the size of the hair clip in relation to the average head size.

If I were to purchase this hair clip, I would wear it to a Halloween dance. Placed daintily behind my left ear, this eyecatching hairpiece would accentuate my long black dress as I sailed across the dance floor.

Altogether, this is a beautiful item perfect for that special Halloween occasion. I also notice that shipping on this item is only one dollar within the United States. With the cost of shipping supplies, plus the actual shipping, the seller of this hair clip must be perilously close to losing money on shipping costs. Be careful of the usps demons - they take much more than they give!

Raise Your Hand If You Know What Spalted Means

I was wandering through the Etsy aisles in the woodworking section, when I noticed that I kept seeing the same term over and over again: spalted. Now, says I to myself, what could this word mean? I have a fairly extensive vocabulary; yet these woodworker types seem to know this word that I know not. Because I'm a freakishly curious type, I felt the need to look it up.

However, Webster's remained strangely silent on the term spalted. I tried "spalt" instead, and this is what I discovered: "To split off; to cleave off, as chips from a piece of timber, with an ax." Therefore, this seems to mean that a spalted piece of wood is a piece of wood that has been chopped up. Got it.

So here you go...some spalted items for your viewing pleasure

Spalted Maple Dish




Spalted Birch Pot




Spalted Maple Bowl





Spalted Oak Vessel with Bubinga Finial





Spalted Maple Vase




Seahorse Box

Amityville Horror Remake Review

In my repertoire of random fragments of movies that float around in my mind, leftover from childhood, I remembered the name "Amityville Horror". I couldn't really remember the movie at all, so I decided I should watch it. I mosied on down to one of the various pawn stores hoping to find it, but not really expecting to...and there it was (in the 3 for $10 section - woohoo)!

I rushed home and popped it in the DVD player. Or maybe not. Maybe I actually went and did some grocery shopping or something. Who knows? At any rate, after I managed to get home, I popped it in the DVD player and waited with slightly bated breath. After waiting for what may have been a nanosecond, I went to get food and a drink. By the time I returned, it was to the selection screen.

As the movie started, my initial thought was that the only thing that looked even vaguely familiar about this movie was the house. A man wakes up at 3:15 a.m., grabs a shotgun and proceeds to blow his family's brains out one at a time. It's loud, and I realize that these folks must be related to my family. That is the only explanation for why only one little girl wakes up before they are shot. The name of the little girl in question appears to be Jodi...I make note of this for future reference.

Flash forward. A man and a woman drive into a ritzy neighborhood, apparently house hunting. They stop at what we now know is the Amityville house. There is much gushing, then they determine that they will be able to afford the house. The man does not want the house, but the woman very much does. We all know how that argument ended.

Three children are introduced, and we discover that one parent is a step-parent. A video camera appears out of nowhere to record touching moments for later use as heart-wrenching scenes. Mother is very excited and I predict later rewards of sex for the man. It seems that he does too.

In the next important scene, the man discovers an alarm clock in the basement. The clock is stopped at 3:15. Our ominous bones begin tingling now, and my Yoohoo is gone. I want more, but the movie has its grasp on me, and will not let me go.

Now the man is rewarded with the predicted sex. The woman is a man's fantasy woman, waking him up with groping hands and mounting him. Imagine his surprise when, in the throes of passion, he starts seeing dead children over her shoulder. At the point, he clearly believes that he is hallucinating. Therefore, because he clearly does not have an open relationship with his wife, he refuses to tell her of his vision when she asks what's wrong.

In the clear light of day, the woman is working in the kitchen. She looks over at the refrigerator and sees refrigerator magnets arranged to read something like "catch them, kill them". As you can imagine, this disturbs her and she goes to find the man. However, when she looks again at the refrigerator, the letters are scrambled. Again, the less than solid relationship results in silence about the "hallucination".

Somewhere during this area, the man removes his shirt to chop wood, and my jaw drops. Wow! His chest is unbelievable! He's so buff that he looks like a comic book character. Who would have thought? At this point, I think I wouldn't want to tangle with him.

A babysitter comes to watch the children. She had apparently babysat for the people who were massacred as well. She tells the children what happened to the last family in the house so that she can freak them out and impress the 12-year-old boy who is drooling over her half-naked body. At some point, she manages to piss the ghost of Jodi off. She gets locked into the closet and bad things happen.

The man begins behaving strangely and the woman begins to believe that the house is evil. She discovers that the history of the house includes a psycho who murdered his entire family because he thought he heard voices. We discover that the psycho had killed the family dog a few days before he killed the family. To her credit, the real estate agent who sold them the house had told them about the massacre. They just chose to ignore it...

Moving onward, the man accidentally kills the family dog in the boathouse. It's a reasonable mistake, since he thought it was a demon attacking him. After all, who wouldn't? However, since he's pretty sure he's crazy, he decides not to tell anyone about the little mishap. Nor is he interested in going to counseling for help.

The woman doesn't have these qualms about going for help though. She runs off and finds a preacher to come check out the house. Sadly, the preacher also happens to be a coward who runs away in terror when bugs fly at him in the house. He refuses to come back and help them. However, he does give her the excellent advice to get out of the house.

Meanwhile, unfortunately, the man has discovered the entryway into the hidden rooms in the house where, apparently, a psycho religious fellow had killed a bunch of native americans when the house was fairly new. The fellow religious nut killed himself afterward, in the belief that his spirit would remain in the house, or some such. Our step-father man discovers the religious nut in one of these hidden rooms, and things aren't pretty.

The woman returns to remove her family and the man tries to kill her. Much chasing occurs, during which the ghost of the little girl from the first (Jodi) opens a window so that the family can escape onto the roof. They do so, but then climb down. The man, who has fallen off the roof while pursuing them, was fortunate to land in mud so that he is not injured. He goes after the woman, who knocks him to the ground with a shotgun but refuses to kill him. The man has a moment of clarity and see that if she does not kill him, he will kill her. So she hits him in the head and knocks him out.

The family drags the man into the boathouse, loads him into the boat, and drives away. After they get out on the lake, the man wakes up. He appears to have left the possessed state behind and is his old cheerful self again. Now, we see the ghost of Jodi in the house. She looks sad. Then she disappars into the floor. I think wow, really good acting and graphics for the 80's!

It is only afterward that I discover that the movie that I watched is not the one that I saw as a child. This one is the remake. Also, the original was not from the 80's; it was from the 70's. I also discover that the actor who played the step-father had just come from playing in the movie Blade: Trinity. Well, that explains some things....

Walgreens Diapers Review

So, you look at the pictures and think "yep, looks like diapers." What you fail to realize is that in truth, this is an optical illusion. There are no diapers here!

I went to Walgrens yesterday in search of diapers. I have always stuck with Huggies since the diaper disasters of my first-born. However, I was at Walgreens and saw a magnificent money-saving opportunity. I could buy two jumbo packs of Walgreens diapers for about the same price as one jumbo pack of Huggies! Something deep inside me cautioned against this. It said things like "We've tried other brands before...it was never pleasant." But how could I resist that enticing price? In the end, the money argument won out.

I had my first opportunity to try these diapers out last night directly before bed. Upon opening up a diaper, misgivings arose within myself. The texture was all wrong. The diaper wasn't poofy enough. Little things seemed wrong. But I gave it the benefit of the doubt. Then, this morning when I picked up my son, I noted that his blanket was wet and I thought "Uh-oh...bad diaper, like I predicted." However, having spent the money on these packs of diapers, I convinced myself that this was not the case. Instead, I would rather believe that he simply released an excessive amount of urine overnight...more than any diaper could reasonably be expected to hold. So I changed him into a new Walgreens diaper.

Then, less than an hour ago, I was holding my son in my lap while at the computer. Suddenly, I felt an all-too-familiar wetness running down my leg. Yes, my son peed all over me. And himself. And the chair. Not his fault of course...the diaper is entirely to blame. And if you really want to get down to the nitty gritty of it, I'm to blame. Against all instinct, I bought these diapers. I shan't make him suffer from them anymore, however. It's Huggies from now on!