It's COMING!

The holidays are nearly upon me, kicking of my favorite time of year with Halloween, but this year Halloween will be with me a month or so longer this year since I'm busy making my HalloXmas stockings for a friend's boys. I came up with a work around and a pattern I already had to incorporate the zombie elements. I decided that a Xmas stocking should have something in it about Xmas, so one stocking will have Xmas tree branches, holly and berries, and 3 ornaments hanging from lovely gold hangers, but inside where there were previously winter and holiday scenes will be zombies. I didn't like any of the zombies I found in cross stitch patterns so I have designed zombie elements from things that I think will be scary and yet somehow (I hope) festive. Cross stitch friends are telling me I may have stumbled onto something that will sell. After all, The Nightmare Before Christmas is a very big seller and the merchandising is worth millions, hundreds of millions. I doubt my stockings will be quite that successful, but I can always dream. That's what writers do.

I do have to figure out how to turn my drawings into cross stitch patterns, but I have a program or two for that too. It has been so long since I drew or designed anything, but I'm enjoying the change of artistic realms. I haven't felt much like writing lately, as evidenced by me not writing much here  -- or anywhere. I think about writing and I scribble in my paper journals, but it seems with getting ready for the holidays and work I don't have the time -- I haven't made the time. And so it goes.

This morning I did manage to go to the Papyrus Online website and pick out Halloween cards for my grandkids and a couple of cousins. That was actually fun. I forgot how much I missed picking out cards and choosing who gets which one. I had already sent my 2 youngest granddaughters Halloween costumes, after  a size snafu and reordering them. I wanted to make sure there would be no Disney princesses out trick or treating this year, but real scary, but cute, Halloween children dressed up for a night out with the ghouls. I even sent a makeup kit for the girls. That was fun, not nearly as much fun as making costumes, but I haven't done that in a much longer while. The last costumes I made for Halloween were for my nephews Ants and Cody and they have a whole closet full of costumes I made them and they wore them all the time when they played. Well, what else can you do with pumpkins and dinosaurs and cartoon charcters and Dracula? The cape was especially nice with a blood red satin lining. Ants wore that for years and now he works in a haunted house in London, Ohio as a Killer Klown from Space. No, it wasn't my fault. He was already that way because his mom is that way. Beanie loves the horror.

I do love this time of year and I'm definitely not opposed to mixing things up. I call it shaking up the ant farm. And I feel like one of those ants scrambling around making trails (or cross stitch patterns and drawings) and making new paths and trails. It's what living is all about as far as I am concerned. I like change and having to adapt to new situations -- like xmas stockings with zombies. What could be better?

So, in the spirit of HalloXmas, here's blood in your eye.