spooky season

My blog may be pretty quiet as of late, but surely I couldn’t let spooky season go by without a themed photoshoot 🕯🍂

I was originally thinking of doing a more specifically themed Halloween shoot (think: turning space buns into two little ghosts on the top of my head), but then I had this ~~crazy~~ amazing idea to craft a crown out of dried leaves (and other organic matter) that I collected outside.

Y’all, it’s give Pinterest witch.

I wasn’t going for the classic bright-colored-leaves-of-autumn look, I wanted it to be more of the natural crunchy nature of autumn. Like a witch climbed out of a pile of leaves.

(I feel like I succeeded in bringing my vision to life)

I topped the crown off with some bittersweet berries, because despite the fact that I despise the horribly invasive plant (I spend hours each spring cutting the new growth off of all my trees before the vine chokes them!), it does produce some picture-worthy berries (that’s no excuse for you to grow it in your yard though).

Anyways, as you can see, my skull collection has grown recently.

Grampa is highly supportive of my little collection (he had one when he was a kid, although his came from the animals he hunted, whereas mine are collected from pre-deceased animals), and has made sure to bring home anything “cool” that he sees on the side of the road.

This deer skull is just about clean and ready to go — it just needs to spend a little more time out in the sun. And in theme with this witchy-shit photoshoot, as soon as I was done taking the photos I went outside to cover a coyote head in compost so that it can be cleaned off by mother nature’s finest little bugs.

Is it as creepy as it sounds? Maybe. But I don’t really care.

Chances are, since we’re moving into the cold months, I won’t see it clean until next spring, but I’m excited to see what it looks like. My plan with both the deer skull and the coyote skull are to paint them with flowers (similar vibes to this mirror), and display them in my room.

I think I’m doing a fine job of honoring the animals after their deaths ✨

I sure have been a busy little bee over here; there will be plenty more that I can share on the blog, if I can put aside the time to write the posts!

I very recently bought a new sewing machine, I’ve made incredible progress on my family’s Christmas quilts (although I won’t be able to post the results of that work until after the holiday), I’ve been working to add a few new things to my shop (like adding a 6″x6″ canvas pet portrait option!), and I recently got back from a little vacation down to the coast (maybe I’ll get around to posting those photos soon).

I’ve also started posting some shorts on my YouTube page, which you can see here!

I posted one short just for fun in support of Riley Mae and her YouTube endeavors, but then I was reminded how much I love making video content.

12 years ago I was writing screenplays and creating “music videos” on YouTube, some of which you can still see on my YouTube page. Taylor says that the videos are the reason why we didn’t have friends when we joined the Interact club in our teen years, but hey, I’m not embarrassed by my creativity, and we had a lot of fun.

A couple years ago I was putting together reels on Instagram (a few random ones went crazy in other countries — I’m still not sure how or why — and watching the views climb was very fun). I’m still sad that I don’t have access to them now that I deactivated my account!

For the time being it looks like I’ll be enjoying making some YouTube shorts. Because, as the plaque on our favorite sitting bench on our favorite hiking trail states: don’t postpone joy.

And who doesn’t want another hobby to add to their [already extensive] list…?

Feel free to subscribe to my channel to stay up to date on anything that makes it onto there before it makes it onto my blog (like Franklin the chipmunk!) ✨