A Box of Chocolates!

It was our turn to host our quarterly wine tasting dinner party this evening (err…last night) and this was one of the hostess gifts given to us. They taste as wonderful as they look.

Though too pretty to eat, we didn’t let that stop us! Didn’t know this Artisan Chocolatier has a shop practically around the corner from where we live...but I do now!

A close up...

and this was dessert...

(which I didn't make). Happy Spring Forward!

Belated Post – Halloween Dinner Party Decorations

[I wrote this post on November 2 but never got around to posting it.]

My husband and I love to entertain and throw dinner parties. He loves to cook, is good at it and he even does the food shopping! Since I love all things Halloween I’ve wanted to throw a Halloween party for some time, but it’s hard when you have children who want to trick-or-treat or when Halloween falls on a school night. This year, with Halloween on a Friday night, we decided to have a post-Halloween dinner party. I showed the handmade invitation, which I was really pleased with, in an earlier post. Since I’m essentially a kid at heart when it comes to Halloween, I decked out the dinning table to my heart’s content. I was so pleased with the overall effect that I decided to post some photos.

I got a visual image for my table when I spied this Martha Stewart white spider lace table runner and these wonderfully cute Halloween-themed busts and headstones made of resin (for .50 each!) all on sale at Michaels.

So I popped next door to Joann Fabrics and snagged 3½ yards of a black satiny-like fabric for just under $11. (Who could tell in the candle light that it wasn’t hemmed?) Here’s a photo of the fabric and the table in progress from early in the day.

My 12 year old son helped pull the spider webbing across the dinning room picture window and added some MS spiders, again on sale---I love these sales! It looks great at night (and who had to know that I initially did it to cover the fact that I have yet to clean my windows!).

At AC Moore I found some black flowers…

Photos of the final table setting.

This glass tubular candle holder was a gift from a friend and I filled it with Halloween colored (orange, black, green and purple) mini ornaments (again on sale at Michaels) and some glitter spiders and skeleton heads I had from last year. I think my friend was really pleased with the look and to see it in use.

The skull votives were also a steal at Michaels… so I bought a baker‘s half-dozen. The temperature was too warm to light a fire in the living room so I placed an antique looking mirror, some candle holders and more skulls (facing backwards towards the mirror) in the fireplace to create an eerie looking effect.

I also love the look achieved in the guest bathroom using bones, skulls and some skeletons to jazz it up.

This is what was hanging on my front door. I used boa's and I think I got the idea from Michaels.

Thanks for indulging me!