Of Course! Brainwave!

I'm an idiot!

For the last month I've been wondering how I'm going to manage a fake forest in the bedroom - you have to walk through the bedroom to get to the bathroom, which is going to be Aragog's Lair - and thinking about cutting up big bits of cardboard to make them.

Which completely overlooks the obvious. So bloody obvious!

Artificial christmas trees.

Now I feel so genius, it's ridiculous.

I Love Charity Shops

We did one of my favourite things ever yesterday.

We went to Age UK.

I love charity shops, but none more than the Age UK furniture store in Kiln Farm, mainly because it's a whole warehouse full of second hand goods instead of just a small shop on a high street. I went for one specific thing, which I didn't get (a portable CD player) but I came away with some great other things I hadn't expected!

1. Two huge suitcases. As I mentioned before, outside I want a little display of luggage trolley with cases and an owl perched on top. They had two lovely brown suitcases, exactly what I wanted - only £4 each. I nearly died.

2. A ton of potions flasks. I gave up on having test tubes as bit fiddly and decided to go for potions bottles with shot glasses. We got some great ones, a lovely glass decanter, four small tulip-shaped ones and a couple of long tall ones. They look amazing, and were all £1 or £2 each.

3. A brass chalice. I want to do a display of horcruxes and this'll do for Helga Hufflepuff's cup, though it doesn't have handles.

4. And finally, a long rope of fabric leaves - a glittery gold. They're more Christmassy than anything I guess! But they were just so beautiful, I had to get them. They were only a £1.

So I'm pretty happy. I got far more than I thought I would, and to top things off in the post my flickering LED candles arrived, so we also bought some batteries and fishing wire. Once I have a trial run of what they're going to look like, I'll post a pic. I'm expecting it to be one of the more awesome parts of the whole thing.

Now I need to focus on getting a forbidden forest for upstairs!

Cloaks & Outdoor Fun

Our cloaks turned up!

Well. To be truthful, mine is a cloak and Tel's are more like robes, since his has giant bat-like sleeves (very snape-ish) and mine is just a black column that ties at the neck. But they both look amazing, really cool. I haven't got pictures yet because.... I want to wait till we're properly decked out to put them up, but it was worth getting them!

Bit of a costume breakdown:

Hermione (me) - Cloak £9, Socks £3, Pinafore £3, Tie £4.
Plus I already had a wand from years back! So total - £19

Snape (Tel) - Robes £20.
We're going to dye his hair black, which'll be about a fiver, he's wearing his own black clothes under the robes and I'm bidding on a wand on ebay so I don't know how much that'll be yet. If it goes too high though, I might see if I can just make one for him. There are a metric ton of guides on how to do so online after all.


On to the outdoors segment of this post. I finally worked out what I want to have outside in the front garden - I was originally thinking Quidditch posts but it's not like they'll get used, and I'd like to have something more in tune with the 'platform 9 3/4' look I'm aiming for. So I'm going up in the loft soon to dig out Tel's luggage trolley from his old van driving job, and then I'm going charity-shop hunting for some battered suitcases and an owl cage!

I'm also looking for ways to get some music playing at the start of the path to the house. It's not a long walk but I think it'd be very atmospheric to have Hedwig's Theme playing on a loop so when people get near the house, they can hear it before they actually get inside.

Not sure where to start on that though - I need something that can survive being without mains power and isn't going to be a big loss if it gets nicked.

Homemade Signage

It's been a bit quiet on the Halloween front, not that I haven't been actively scouring eBay for bargains. I'm just in that part of the month that equals stretching the pennies, so I can't be buying much right now.

Instead, I'm seeing what I can make!

For the outside of the house, I want to have a Platform 9 3/4 sign on the bushes at the front of the path leading to the house, with train tracks drawn in chalk up to the door. Originally I was planning to buy a canvas and paint a sign, in the style I've seen people using on sites like Etsy and which look awesome. But then I thought - people are going to spend about two seconds looking at this, that money could be better spent elsewhere.

So yesterday, using Paint of all things, I did this:

I'm ridiculously proud of it, even if the bottom bar is slightly bigger than the rest. The plan is to print it out and fix it a stiff piece of cardboard. Then I can hang it outside!

My only worry is that if it rains, it might run. It's only printer ink so I'm not sure how it'll hold up against the elements. On the other hand, since it's costing pretty much nothing to make, I might print off a spare and put it up beforehand to see how it does.