At Home Halloween

Do you guys have an At Home store? We got one recently and I think it's great! If you're not familiar with At Home, they carry mostly housewares. No matter what your decorating style is, I bet they carry it. They have stuff for people who are into rustic, country, modern, glitter, and glamour. They also have their Halloween stuff out! And strangely enough, Christmas. But we're not ready for Christmas yet, are we?

Nope.

Here are some photos of my favorite Halloween items from At Home...

The headless trick-or-treater? That's kind of weird when you think about it - "Just put the candy in my head". But this pumpkin pail reminds me of the one I used to trick-or-treat with.

Meow! This is my first time seeing a black skeleton critter. And how about that eye! I was considering maybe spray painting some of the (plastic) skeleton animals I've picked up lately. I don't think I'd go with black, though. They could even look cool in bright colors.

A close up of a cool spiderweb design on a lantern:

Creeping out of the ground!

A little floral design inspiration:

They had a lot of decorations with eyes. I thought that was pretty cool and mystical.

This eye has an Ancient Egyptian look to me. Like something on the wall of an Egyptian tomb. That's how I'm imagining it. And how cool is that spider hourglass next to it?

These eyes are on springs and stake into the ground. They'd be fun sticking out of the bushes or a large plant.

Cutesy pumpkins with eyes:

In further pastel pumpkins, donut pumpkins!

How about this creeper? Sometimes the simplest things are the most scary.

That's another creature's hand, by the way.

On a nearby shelf was this... ghost? doll? Whatever it was, it was walking the disturbing line for me. The more you stare at this, the more it stares back.

Here's something cute to clean that last one out of your brain:

More cuteness, in the form of vintage cat inspired trays:

I just noticed the heart-shaped eyes on this cat.

There was a sort of graveyard/party type display up. That's where I found these next three creatures. How cool are the hands on this pumpkin creature?

My favorite skulls, starting with an energized looking skull bust:

It might be hard to see what's going on here, but this is a skeleton spider with a pumpkin body, holding a monocle. How often do you see that?

A side view:

Not your average garden gnomes:

I love this pillow design!

They had several amazing pillows, like this one that looks inspired by a vintage postcard. I'm noticing now that it was postmarked as departing Transylvania on October 31.

And these pillows look like tickets to a haunted house, again on October 31. 😃

I'm going to end with the big inflatables. For the most part these were new to me. I had seen this Jaws last year, actually in someone's yard. You guys might remember the photos. This shark actually thrashes back and forth and his eyes glow red!

If you guys would like to see the At Home Halloween selection for yourselves, here's a link: If you've got it, haunt it

I have plenty of photos from Michaels to share next time!

Meet The Cross Orbweaver

I was happy to see this little Cross Orbweaver out near the garden, because orbweavers (also known as garden spiders) are great little helpers as far as taking care of plant pests.

I'd assumed this spider was a garden spider because of its striped legs, but it's much smaller than the one I'd seen in years past. It seems that instead of the one big garden spider, this year there are a bunch of these little guys.

If you're wondering where the "cross" part of its name comes from, check out the white pattern on the top of the spider's back.

Isn't that amazing? It's like someone painted that cross on the spider. Here's a far away shot, to show its size (relative to a web anyway).

And here's a side view. The spider doesn't have a funky looking head. I think that dark blob near its head is the spider's dinner being wrapped up.

For those who'd like to read a little more about Cross Orbweavers:

Identifying a Cross Orbweaver

I'm seeing these spiders all over! I'd photographed this web a few days ago, not knowing what kind of spider it belonged to. But today I saw another Cross Orbweaver on it.

I was watering some plants and accidentally got the web with the hose. I learned that spiderwebs are even stronger than I realized, and that they dry super quickly. I actually had to sprinkle it with water again, because it dried in the time I went inside to grab my camera.

Now, this web belongs to a different type of spider. This is a sheet web, which you might remember seeing in a previous blog post. When I shared a pic of a sheet web before, it was in a tree. This web is much denser than the one above.

I didn't see a spider around the grass when I took these photos. But looking online, I learned that these are the work of Sheet-Web Weavers. According to what I've read, it would be really uncommon for me to see one of these spiders. They're small spiders, and usually hiding between layers of webbing!

It's funny, maybe a week ago, when the bugs started becoming a bigger and bigger problem on the vegetables, I thought "I wish I had a whole troop of spiders to come in and help with this". Looks like my wish came true. I really am seeing less garden pests around!

I'm going to end with an awesome video I ran across. Here you can watch a spider create its web in fast motion, and listen to some rockin' music in the process:

And for those who receive my blog posts in email form, here's a link to it:

Spiderweb time lapse

Isn't nature amazing? That a little critter like this could make something so intricate. Not that spiders work as fast as in the video, but I'm still amazed at how fast they work. I put a garden flag out yesterday and was surprised to find a massive web on it by the end of the day! And on that web was another orbweaver. :)

The Best of August and into September

Hope you all had a nice August! I don't think I checked in to blogger all last month, I've been so busy. So I thought it would be fun to do one of those "best of" the month posts with some photos from August and the first few days of September to show a little of what I've been up to. I'll stick with the generally spooky stuff.

So, the first thing I want to share is a series of photos from our local park. There's a nighttime concert series there in the summer and I brought my camera along to it.

 

That bridge pic is one of the spookier ones I think I took. You can't help thinking something is waiting down there. It's even a little spooky in the daylight because there's so much space under the bridge and plants growing under it. It's a bog type area.

These photos were taken into the woods that surround the park. I was randomly snapping pics while walking, so I wasn't even sure what I got. The camera had better eyesight than I did since I was using the flash. I half expected some animal to be looking back at me when I took a closer look, but I don't see any.

 At the bottom there, a bug?

I can't help thinking there's an animal in these woods, I just can't see it.

A little pond area that looks like a black hole

This is a park's waterfall in the dark. Don't those rocks on the walls behind it look like skulls? I never saw it that way in the daylight.

I also got a bat shot at the park! I know it's blurry, but it's hard for me to capture a bat. So this still feels like a success. They were dipping around so fast that probably the blurriness was caused by me trying to follow it.

Out of the park now... These next photos also felt like a success to me. I often hear crows but rarely see them when I have a camera handy. These crows nicely stayed put for me.

The garden spider was back again this year.

I was happy to get a pic of its web. Like bats and crows, spider webs are hard to catch at just the right time. The little droplets of water were a nice touch too.

Another little garden find was...

... an Ambush Bug! I learned that in the process of writing this blog post. This bug is much smaller than pictured, which is maybe why I never noticed one before.

So, what is an Ambush Bug you ask? Well, they earned their name by sitting and waiting for prey to come by and then ambushing it. I'm guessing they're usually better camouflaged than this one who is on a sunflower. Not that it's holding him back; he's snacking on an ant in this pic.

Also, it turns out that "Ambush Bug" is a comic book character I'd never heard of.

I took some more night shots during August. Those of you who follow me on Twitter might have seen these.

It's pretty dark around here, even with the street lights.

I was calling this "the evil cat eye moon". There's a even a "pupil" for the eye caused by a cloud that was passing by.

Besides walking around in the dark and observing creepy crawlies, the main thing that's been keeping me busy recently is genealogy research. I don't think obsession is too strong a word. I've been having a lot of success with it lately. It helps that our library lets us use Ancestry.com for free now! If anyone wants to talk genealogy, let me know in the comments.