Life’s in Fall Swing

“Autumn is a second spring where every leaf is a flower” (Albert Camus)

As many north of here are dealing with horrific Hurricane Sandy (or post tropical cyclone as she’s now classified), fall is in full swing in Charlotte. Nature is sporting her beautiful dress of red, yellow, ochre and orange and I get to sport my cute fall outfits. Yay boots!

Pumpkins are everywhere! We’ve already carved pumpkins (and they’ve already rotted nicely and are decomposing somewhere on a landfill now). Zee boyfriend masterfully carved his college letter and I free-styled that pretty cute pumpkin face y’all can see on the left. After all that hard work we sure deserved that pumpkin ale! Prost!

Speaking of pumpkins, a handful of my girlfriends and Zee BF and I went to a local fall fest and got lost in walked through the corn maze and took a tractor ride to a pumpkin patch. Was a great backdrop for fall photos and we succeeded in protecting our tasty ciders from those evil yellow jackets. NASTY BEASTS!

So we had premature pumpkins and alas an early Halloween party seemed appropriate. I had received a very kind invitation to attend a swanky houseparty uptown. The decoration was awesome and appropriately creepy for a a horror movie producer. Babies in jars! Eeeeek! Giant spider chasing a cute caterpillar! Eeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeek!!!!

My costume of choice this year was the Pretzel Wench, which I suggest to include in a future installment of 50 shades of grey (still haven’t read the 1st). Artsy-crafty jewelry maker that I am, I made the accessories myself. And here is how:

Easy-Peasy Edible Pretzel Jewelry Tutorial
Find a piece of string that is long enough to tie around your neck (Advanced: find string in a color that matches your outfit and is long enough).

Select an uneven number of pretzels that have not expired yet (Evil: use expired ones and feed them to someone you dislike. Muahaha) (don’t try this at home!). 5 are pretty but 3 work, too. Don’t use chocolate covered pretzels – they’ll melt!

OK now the secret to make it look awesome and not stupid: String the string through one loop of the pretzel and then out again through the other loop. Weave the other pretzels on in the same manner. Much prettier than stacking them (if you anticipate raging appetite at the end of the night you may want to go with the stupid stacked pretzel version for practicality).

As for the earrings I used looped earring wire that I have from my jewelry making projects. However, if you have any kind of loop earrings they should work just fine. Plop a pretzel on each and bam, you’ve made yourself some pretzel earrings! Now wasn’t that fun?!