My First Ever Jack O'Lantern (at age 38)

Okay, so at 38 years old I had never, EVER carved a pumpkin for Halloween. My excuse? Well when I was a kid in the UK, pumpkins weren't available in the stores. I do remember that my parents carved out turnips (or swedes) for Jack O' Lanterns when I was young but since I struggle trying to cut a turnip for cooking I never bothered to attempt carving one for halloween.

Well, this year I'm going to be in the USA for Halloween and my fiance decided to get a pumpin for me to carve. It's a little bit early yet but we figured I may need a practice run, lol. So, on Saturday afternoon I made my first attempt......

We bought a pumpkin carving kit with design templates - cheating a little but I figured that that was allowedfor a first attempt. It took a couple of hours to do even though it was a simple design, and boy did my hands ache when it was done!! I'm quite proud of it though - for a practice run.

Do you love Vampires?

Ever since I was a kid I loved horror movies. Way back when I was around 5 years old, my sister and I used to get up in the middle of the night to watch the 'Hammer House of Horror' double bills and anything else horror related. As I grew up, 'The Lost Boys' was one of my favourite movies - I developed a crush on the late Corey Haim whilst my older sister fell for Jason Patric. 'Bram Stoker's Dracula' the 1992 movie was a bit of a let down on the acting front, it could have been so great with a slightly different cast. The movie of 'Buffy the Vampire Slayer' was completely cringeworthy, but embarassingly, I became hooked on the television series and was also a devout follower of the spin-off series 'Angel'. Interview with a Vampire' (the movie) came out the year after I graduated University and that got me started on reading all of the Anne Rice novels. I watched the first Twilight movie and skipped the rest - I guess I'm too old for that teenage stuff nowadays, lol, but I am hooked on 'True Blood' (it could do with a little less on the explicit sexual content though; yes, I am a prude).

'Say it... Vampire' Shirt by everOctober	Victoria the Vampire by ButtermilkBiscuits
Vampire Love by clonecire	Vampires Coffin T Shirt by HalloweenTees
"Hunger Pains" Mousepad by strangeling	Home Sweet Home Vampire Fantasy by gothictoggs
Vampire Army gothic Bumper Sticker by gothictoggs	Halloween Vampire Panda Bear Cartoon by Animatastic
Halloween Vampire Panda Bear by Animatastic	Nosferatu! by HeydayGraphix

You may also be interested in the article The Origins of Vampires in Gothic Horror Fiction.

Zombie Invasion

I came across this somewhere online, a paper detailing the mathematical modelling of a zombie invasion by Jarett Diamond.  Very amusing (in my mind at least), here's an extract:

"The Zombie Invasion scenario has been a common trope in American popular culture for
decades. In one version, the outbreak begins with a mutant virus introduced to a small
population of humans. The virus kills those whom it infects, and after a period of time, causes
them to rise from the dead with an insatiable hunger for human flesh. Decaying mockeries of
human life, these walking undead are insensible to cold, heat, fatigue, or fear. Mindless, they
possess only the most basic instinct to feed upon the living."

Read the whole paper here.

Considering my recent sleeping problems, I kinda feel like a zombie myself, lol.

IN THE EVENT OF ZOMBIE ATTACK	ZOMBIE MUG $12.95	greenzombie - Customized
Zombie Dance Crew T-Shirt	Zombie Apostles Motivational	Zombie Hunter T-Shirt

Random is as Random Does

I sat up until 3am this morning working, latest I've done in a while, but I started on something and wanted to get it finished before going to bed, so 3am it was, lol.

Unfortunately, the local council's refuse collection department had their Garden Waste Collection scheduled today so I was awoken at 8.30am by the garbage truck, wheely bins being dragged around and the resulting 'dog chorus' from the 6 or so neighbourhood dogs barking like crazy. As soon as it happened I thought of 'dog chorus' which led to 'frog chorus' and from that point I had the Paul McCartney song from my childhood stuck in my head - argh! So it was time to get up and distract myself, lol.

Too Cool Daisy Frog by LaureFCarlisle	Lilly Pad Frogs Mousepad by fuzzbuttcafe	Frog Prince - Kiss Me Tee by mrssocolov
Certified Dog Lover Dark by MenagerieMayhem	Stubborn Dachshund Tricks by dachshund_designs	Pipa Poodle Short Story Card by Animatastic

I got a shock looking into domain names last night. The one I particularly wanted to purchase is parked and being offered at $1,000!!!! Quite ridiculous that people/companies can do that!! A similar thing is done in the UK with 'private' car registration numbers. I bought a second hand car once that already had a private plate on it. Apparently, the husband had bought the plate for his wife's car and when the two were splitting up, she decided to leave the registration with the car when selling it to spite him. It's normal in the UK for a car to keep the same number for it's whole lifetime, no matter how often it changes hands. But, I didn't particularly want a registration number that read "H4 RFC" since RFC stands for "Rangers Footbal Club". For one thing I just don't like football (soccer) and for another, I was actually told of someone with a "CFC" (Celtic Football Club) registration number having their car vandalised because of the plate. Because my registration was still the standard format (letter, number, letters) it wasn't too valuable but I did sell it for £250 and got a new, basic registration for around £40, a nice £210 towards the cost of the car.

Cars Lightning McQueen Smiling Disney by disney

Volunteer Fire Truck Firefighter by art1st

Horn Broken Bumper Sticker by Method77

A Little Lighthearted fun, because I feel the need.

And here is some lighthearted stuff from zazzle, who currently have 15% off t-shirts. Enter coupon code BTSRULESHIRT runs until Friday.

fish in 3D by eworks
Browse other prints & posters at zazzle.com

Skull Fairy by creampufart
Design a custom t shirt with zazzle.com

Party Chick - Cool & Fun Ladies T-shirt by Animatastic
Make a custom t shirt on zazzle

Why only 24 hours in a day??

I've been spending so much time adding designs to and trying to promote my Animatastic store on zazzle and the associated website I set up that I haven't had time for anything else recently. My ArtformTheHeart store desperately needs reorganising and I desperately need a life, so I was wondering why there are so few hours in the day - I think I need an extra 10!!! lol

I know the length of a day is determined by the earth's rotation around the sun and that it really doesn't matter if there are 24 hours in a day, or 12 hours that are twice as long (following?) but who decided on 24 as the number of hours? Apparently, or so the theory goes, it was the ancient Egyptians who began the process (clever people huh?). They divided their nights into twelve segments based upon different star patterns that appeared throughout the night. Later in time the Greeks formalised the system by dividing daylight hours into twelve segments also. The 24 segments became known as equinoctial hours (based upon there being  12 hours of daylight and 12 hours of darkness on days of  equinoxes).

Sun Sticker by ggbythebay	Passion of the Suns Art Print by wayart
Kashmir by Graham_Conrad	Crystal Planet by Perlyyyy

Retro Memories - Part 1

I grew up in the UK in the 1970's-1980's, these are a few of the things (good and bad) I remember from the 'old days'.

THE GOOD

1. Chelsea Whoppers. A delicious chocolately fudge-type confectionary dusted with cocoa powder. They came in 'sheets' that you could tear into strips of 10 and cost a penny a strip. I was addicted to them, but sadly they disappeared. A couple of years ago though I went to my local corner shop and there were Chelsea Whoppers!!! Apparently someone had re-discovered the old recipe and was producing them again, and travelling around selling them to small retail stores. Chelsea Whoppers can now be found on a number of online retro sweets stores but sadly they are no longer 1p, infact, I have read several forum posts of people having to pay £12.20 (inc. postage) for 60 whoppers!! They were good, but not THAT good. If you remember Chelsea Whoppers, you may also remember Cremola Foam, a frothy sherberty type drink mix that may also be making a comeback soon after an original can of product was discovered and the recipe recreated.

2. Why Don't You...? A kids television show who's full title was: "Why Don't You Just Switch Off Your Television Set And Go Out And Do Something Less Boring Instead?" I loved it, my sister hated it. The show started in the early 1970's and actually ran up until the 1990's. It featured groups of kids from different UK regions giving suggestions on hobbies and crafts, jokes etc and initially ran during school summer holidays. It was always kind of ironic that a tv show was telling us to switch off our tv, lol. Along the same lines, I used to love 'Rainy Day Cards', a box of cards of different colours with craft and games suggestions on them, but, I always seemed to find that there was something required for a particular project that we just didn't have in the house, ah well.

THE BAD

1. 'Tartan' denim. I remember around about 1980 or so having a pair of jeans that were a pale, pastel tartan colour. Pinks and yellows and faded denim blue. I guess that I liked them at the time because I sure wore them a lot with a pair of pastel pink shoes, but I cringe at the memory of them now. As if the naff 'tartan' wasn't bad enough, my particular pair of jeans had tapering legs with zippers at the bottom and were about an inch above my ankle (by design). Thankfully, no photographs survive of me this horrendous fashion faux pas :)

2. Deputy Dawg. Although it ended in 1972 (the year I was born) it was shown for many years after in the UK at least and it's one of the shows I grew up with. I guess it wasnt all that bad since I watched it, but it sure wasn't Hong Kong Phooey!

I Love the 70's by magarmor See other Retro T-Shirts

1970 Funky Retro Birthday by birthdaypresent Shop for a card on Zazzle

Coffee Tree by ArtformTheHeart