My Trader Joe’s Guy

It’s that time of the year again–the scarecrows have invaded Forest Park. I finally finished mine last week–Trader Joe’s Guy is now standing in front of my house, startling me every time I look out the window.

Here he is with the REAL deal. Naoto got a kick out of him. I was pretty proud of my bag of groceries, which was made from leftover packaging of things we ate that week. I secured everything with packing tape, so hopefully we don’t create a trash issue on our block!

There are so many great scarecrows around Forest Park. You can find a map here (the link will only be available for October.) I’ve share a few on Instagram already, but I’m hoping to get out this weekend to see some more. This weekend is the Casket Races and it’s supposed to be in the 70s, so I’m looking forward to a last hurrah of nice weather in my charming little Halloween village.

Hauntsegawa 2021

I’m a little bit late for a Halloween recap, and yet, here we are. My laptop died in October and it really threw me for a loop. I do so much on my phone, I didn’t think it would really matter. But writing blog posts and taking care of community garden stuff is much easier on a computer. So I finally gave in and bought one.

I’m still getting settled. Speaking of getting settled…

Decorating in the new house was fun! We still haven’t finished hanging all of our everyday art but I am committed to holiday decorations. I finally hung my tenugui (the “towel” on the left above.) I have a new one for most seasons, so I will change it out as needed. This is the Halloween one, but now the fall one is up. The skeleton is on the door to my office.

My usual TagTeamTompkins art went on the entry table this year, along with the glitter skull and some other tiny Halloween things. The picture is an old snapshot of a girl dressed as a witch.

The stair railings were a challenge. I didn’t love the group of garlands on them. The black cats and bats didn’t show up enough. But I also didn’t hate it enough to move anything. I figure I’ll try something else next year. (By the way, Presley doesn’t love these bat wings…but she tolerates them enough for a photo.)

These are old Martha Stewart crow cut-outs my parents found at a thrift shop. I love them!

The candy station which we filled with Take 5s, green tea Kit Kats, and Twix just for us. This was our first year of actual trick-or-treaters! We had 141 kids!

I was most excited to break out these mice. I cut them out soooo many years ago–an idea from an old Martha Stewart Living Magazine. (Martha went on to sell pre-cut ones like my crows.) I used to place them throughout our past apartments, but they really are so much cuter on stairs.

Now Halloween is all put away and there are a few fall/Thanksgiving things out, but in my mind, I’m already thinking about Christmas. It’s nice to have a little reprieve before that all has to begin.

Are you in Christmas mode, or enjoying the last of fall? This is a judgment-free zone!

Mr. Zip Is My Boyfriend

There is an Invasion of the Scarecrows happening in Forest Park for Halloween. It’s a fundraiser for the Historical Society and the Arts Alliance and I was so excited to participate. It didn’t take me long to land on Mr. Zip for our scarecrow. His cartoony face and his simple blue suit wouldn’t be too complicated to make for someone like me who has zero drawing skills.

We picked up our kits in August and this is what it came with–a simple wooden cross base, the fabric sewn and ready to design for the head and some other crafting things that I didn’t use. I pulled everything out of the garage on Monday night to get started. (The scarecrow was “due” on October 1st…) I got the rest of the stuff–a simple blue t-shirt and sweatpants, loads of felt, and some blue fabric–online throughout September while I marinated on his construction.

I decided to use felt for his face because I am terrible with fabric paint. I freehanded his eyes, nose, and mouth while looking at his pictures online. It’s not a perfect depiction, but as my dad likes to say, “Close enough for a town this size.” The hat was fashioned with swear words, magic, blue fabric, and yellow and black felt. I doubt it will last through a rain storm to be honest.

And I just cut some buttons out of black felt for his “jacket” and sort of safety pinned everything together. He has a little wire running through him to help his arms hold their shape. I made him a little bag and a letter out of felt and called it a day.

The actual putting him together was the least fun part–I don’t know how I was thinking it would work–but I think an engineering degree would have come in handy.

If you’re local, there’s a map on the Historical Society of Forest Park’s website and the idea is meant to get people out around town to check everyone’s out. There’s a contest, too, for the most artistic, most historical, Forest Park Pride, and people’s choice. I think the competition is going to be fierce! I hope to get out to get some pictures of other scarecrows soon and I’ll share them here. In the meantime, please enjoy these pictures of Presley. She’s made a bed of the excess felt in my stash and I guess it’s all hers now.

Halloween Snow

It snowed on Halloween this year and we had to break out our winter coats already. I wasn’t ready!!! I am still not ready! The snow started on Wednesday and I walked through Austin Gardens on my way to work. It was really pretty with the snow falling on the brightly colored trees. However, tree branches were falling like crazy all day because of the weight of the heavy, wet snow on the leafy branches. Thankfully, I made it through the park unscathed. The snow is all melted now and temperatures are back to fall-like levels. And the fall colors are still pretty vibrant. Halloween is always pretty low-key at our place since we don’t get trick-or-treaters. I’m recovering from a cold (again!) so I spent most of the day reading scary stories and hanging out with Presley, who really enjoyed her costume…

Such a good sport, that old cat.

 

Halloween Mail

I have been very behind in my correspondence–I was responding to letters from June, so it felt good to catch up with some of my pen friends. I think I like Halloween mail more than Christmas mail…maybe it’s just that it feels like there’s more time to attend to Halloween mail. At the last stamp show, I tried to collect some “scary” stamps. I was so excited to score the ten cent Legend of Sleepy Hollow ones, and I also picked up the Movie Monsters, Pharmacy, and Houdinis. I had the Alfred Hitchcock stamps leftover from a few years ago. Usually when I use vintage stamps, I leave the rest of the envelope blank so the stamps really pop, but I also bought a ton of great Halloween washi tape in Japan last year, so I was excited to use some of that too. Everything is still relatively simple…In my Halloween stash, I also found some unused decorated envelopes from one of Donovan’s mail art parties.I pulled this one out because it was basic enough to add vintage postage without too much distraction. The bats are from a torn napkin, so I slid the envelope into a plastic card sleeve (leftover from a birthday card I sent) and put the address on some vintage gummed tape that has the texture of bandages. (So spooky!)

In spite of my many, many stamps, I had Naoto pick up a few sheets of the latest USPS Halloween stamps. Have you seen them in person? They look fine on the website, but they have a bit of metallic shine that is very impressive in person. I’m looking forward to finishing out the month with those!

 

All I’ve Been Doing is Reading

The title is true. Other than work, a few custom card orders, writing letters, and watching my way through Schitt’s Creek and The Office, I’ve been doing a lot of reading. Our apartment is a mess, Naoto has been doing 95% of the cooking, and I’ve been neglecting my emails, but man, I’m really enjoying books lately.

What Diantha Did by Charlotte Perkins Gilman

We read this for book club in January. I picked it because we all loved “The Yellow Wallpaper” and it’s always fun revisiting authors we’ve enjoyed in the past. Diantha’s marriage to the man she loves keeps getting pushed back because he can not afford to provide for her and his mother and his unmarried sisters. So Diantha takes control and starts her own cleaning business which takes off like crazy until she rules over a cleaning empire. The book really makes you think about the value of women’s work and the roles of women at home during the 20s. Diantha’s fiancé has a very difficult time understanding why she works and can’t come to terms with her role as a provider. The ending felt a little rushed but in general, I liked it a lot.

The Odd Women by George Gissing

Have I mentioned here how much I love a good spinster novel? (I need to write a blog post about the book that started my infatuation with these books!) This one really fit the bill. The title comes from the fact that there were about one million more women than men in England at the end of the 19th century. The “odd women” were the unmarried women. The book explores five women: two “early feminists,” unmarried by choice, two by happenstance (their parents died and they had little family money,) and one woman who marries for financial security, which ends up being a terrible mistake. It shows the limited options for women back at the turn of the century, especially women without family money. I’ve never read Gissing before but now I’m curious about some of his other titles.

A Room with a View by E.M. Forster

I can’t believe I haven’t read this before. Lucy Honeychurch falls in love on vacation in Italy but ends up engaged to another man back in England. She has to decide between following her social class and the old rules of Victorian society or following her own heart. I loved the main story, but all of the supporting characters made this book such a fun read. (There were spinsters!) We read Forster’s A Passage to India in book club, and now I want to read Howard’s End and Maurice.

“Afterward” by Edith Wharton

This was recommended a few years ago during our book club Halloween reads and I never finished it. At Christmastime, I picked it up again and finally set out to read it last month. I’m annoyed that I waited because it’s so good, such a well-crafted short story. Pick it up at Halloween, or at Christmas, because apparently reading creepy books at Christmas is a thing?

The Folded Leaf by William Maxwell 

This was our book for February’s book club. We read Maxwell’s They Came Like Swallows a few summers ago and everyone loved it. Maxwell’s writing it so beautiful and there are a lot of autobiographical details in his books. The Folded Leaf is a coming of age story about two boys in Chicago: Spud, strong and confident, and Lymie, weak and thoughtful. The book follows the two friends from grade school to college and gives a wonderful glimpse into life in Chicago and Illinois in the 1920s. In book club, we had a good debate at book club about whether it’s a friendship novel, or a love story.

Asleep by Banana Yoshimoto

I read Yoshimoto’s Kitchen last fall after reading The Convenience Store Woman. I loved Kitchen, and its companion short story, “Moonlight Shadow” so much. Both just were so emotional and magical. I had high hopes for Asleep and it fell short for me. It was actually three separate stories, all having to do with sleep and death and mourning and ghosts…similar themes to Kitchen, but just not executed as well (to me.)

So Long, See You Tomorrow by William Maxwell 

Ugh…this one was killer. The narrator is looking back on a small town murder that happened fifty years earlier. The murder happened after an affair was discovered between two neighboring families. The story of the murder is slowly woven into the coming-of-age story of the narrator, who ends up moving away and seeing his old friend years later in Chicago. (Oh yes, it’s another Illinois story by Maxwell.) This book is only 135 pages, but again, like The Folded Leaf, Maxwell does such a masterful job getting you to feel his regret and sadness, all those years later.

Hardboiled & Hard Luck by Banana Yoshimoto

Again, nothing beats Kitchen…”Hardboiled” was interesting, about a women who is celebrating the anniversary of her ex-lover’s death. Again, there is a lot of sadness and a little bit of a mystical aspect happening… And “Hard Luck” is about a woman whose sister is dying and she’s falling in love with someone new. So, a little bit of loss and a little bit of promise…I’m taking a break from Banana Yoshimoto.

Unpunished by Charlotte Perkins Gilman 

This one wasn’t printed until well after Gilman’s death but it’s fantastic! It’s a detective story that had me thinking about The Thin Man movies. Of course, since it’s Gilman, there are a lot of feminist themes throughout the book. The detectives are a husband and wife team and the murder victim has been killed five times, five different ways (but you’re not sorry for him because he was a controlling, abusive jerk.) There are some great twists and some great symbolism but it’s still a light, fun read.

Since I started this post, I finished another book, but I’ll save that for my next book report. I’m starting a book by another Japanese author tonight (I think!) My reading is going to have to start slowing down though so I can get some projects done and get ready for my first craft show of the year next month. It’s been so nice though…I guess I just need to give up some other things so I have more time to read…

I’d love to hear what you’re reading!

Mister Donut Museum

One of the sillier things we did on this trip to Osaka was visit the Mister Donut Museum. It was…odd, but a lot of fun.  Located on the first floor of the Duskin* office building in the suburbs of Osaka, the Mister Donut Museum is not easy to find. Naoto and I left the train station and walked and walked and walked and ended up in what reminded me of an American industrial park but there were also houses and other office buildings. When we got there, we were all, “This is it?” It reminded me of the McDonald’s Museum at Hamburger University in Oakbrook…it’s really offices with a mini-museum of the company.  The museum covers Mister Donut from its American roots all the way to modern-day shops in Japan. Nothing in the museum is in English so Naoto patiently translated all of the displays for me. I love learning about the history of my favorite companies and seeing the way the menus and logos and shop designs have changed over the years. In the last two pictures above, we are standing underneath photographs of every single Mister Donut in Japan.  After you see the history of Misdo, there’s an area to make your own donut holes. (It was me and children doing this activity…I should tell you that we were the only grown-ups without children in the museum…which gave me flashbacks of the Crayola Factory!) There wasn’t a gift shop, which was the biggest disappointment for me. I was so looking forward to sending some Mister Donut postcards! They did sell Mister Donut mugs and cleaning things like sponges and dust cloths.  The highlight of the museum is that the Mister Donut in the building has allllll the donuts. They even had some Halloween donuts that I hadn’t seen in our other shops. We tried a créme brûlée donut and just a regular honey pon de ring.  The crusty sugar top of the creme brûlée donut was amazing. Just as we were leaving, I noticed the very obvious ice cream freezer at the Mister Donut counter. We have never seen a Mister Donut with ice cream in our travels in Japan, so this was new to us. I spied ramune** ice cream and even though I was pretty full, I HAD to try it. It was so refreshing, like a creamy sorbet. The ramune flavor was perfect and there were little bits of…something fizzy in each bite. I spent the rest of our trip looking out for this ice cream, but sadly, I didn’t see any again.

I don’t know that I would recommend the Mister Donut museum to the average tourist to Japan. For me, it was worth the trip out to the suburbs to see some history of my favorite Japanese hangout. But seriously, Mister Donut/Duskin…invest in some good postcards for your gift shop.

 

*Duskin is Mister Donut’s parent company. They started out as a cleaning company and expanded their portfolio over the years. The first floor of the museum was devoted to Mister Donut. The second floor was devoted to cleaning tools.

** I talk about ramune in this blog post. I should do a blog post about the original ramune soda with the marble…

Misdo’s Halloween Donuts

As with every other trip to Japan, this trip included many trips to Mister Donut. We didn’t go every day, but most days. For some reason, “our” Misdo in Sangenjaya didn’t have the Halloween donuts out when we got to Tokyo on October 23rd. I had researched Mister Donut’s seasonal donuts before we left (#priorities,) so I was very much looking forward to them. Thankfully, there was no donut crisis because we found the Halloween specialties when we visited Osaka.There were these cute mummy donut sticks that tasted like black tea with white chocolate on top. This one was definitely cuter than it was tasty…it was a little dry and white chocolate isn’t my favorite. We didn’t try this pink mummy one, but it was filled with apple whipped cream.And we didn’t try the Pon de Mummy, a white chocolate dipped classic pon de ring. This one was my favorite. It was a chocolate donut with chestnut whipped cream inside. Cute and delicious. Naoto refused to partake in the Halloween donuts, so he got a hot dog donut and a black sugar pon de ring…It was sort of a weird Mister Donut because it was a small satellite shop, so the donuts weren’t made in house like most Mister Donuts. It was a fifteen minute walk from our Airbnb so we only went once during our stay. But, I’m glad I got to eat these guys.

mt Halloween Pop-Up at Tokyu Hands

Next week, I’m hoping to finally work on my little “scrapbook” from Japan, so I figured I could start blogging about it as I go through pictures to print and ephemera to paste. It’s going to be weird talking about Halloween in January but, I think we’ll be okay. Halloween has become a pretty big deal in Japan. In fact, thirteen people were arrested in Shibuya celebrating Halloween…it was a huge scandal and all over the news. (We watched from our Airbnb in Osaka.)

But I digress…

I found out about an mt pop-up shop at the Tokyu Hands store in Ikebukuro before we left and Naoto made sure to add it to the stationery tour list. We decided to check it off the list on our first day in Tokyo.   The whole front of the store was “wallpapered” with mt’s Halloween tape and the first floor was mostly devoted to mt. They had all of their limited edition Halloween and fall tapes available and tons of other packs and single rolls set up in bins for easy perusal. In the middle of the shop, there were Halloween patterned streamers hanging down…the picture doesn’t do it justice…we really needed a selfie stick to show off the full effect. They also had a game where you could pay ¥500 and blindly reach into a bin and take out as many washi tape as you could grab in one handful. I decided not to partake because most of the tapes were pretty basic and I have plenty of washi tapes. I sort of went into this trip deciding not to buy too many washi tapes because I already have so many, but that plan flew out of the window when I landed in Japan.I did try to buy just the ones I truly loved……but really, what’s not to love? I ended up getting the Halloween washi tapes (and duplicates for friends,) mt Halloween monsters wrapping paper, Bande Halloween roll stickers, tiny jack-o-lantern stickers, and some other stationery. Oh and Naoto got Presley a cat treat…at this Hands, there was a whole floor devoted to pet supplies along with a cat cafe. I am looking forward to THIS Halloween when I can use some of the things I bought. If you’re in Japan, I’d highly recommend checking out mt’s website and Instagram to see if they have any pop-ups near you. Thanks to Naoto for starting our trip out with a bang.

Cocktail Perfected: Twentieth Century

I’ve been working this week on decorating and pulling out some of my Halloween mail art supplies. I’m hoping to have everything done tonight so I can enjoy the season and maybe make a cheesecloth ghost or something. It was really hot on Wednesday, so I was able to finish the balcony. Temperatures dropped yesterday and leaves are actually falling, so I’m definitely feeling like getting cozy and reading spooky books this weekend.

Ok, so the Twentieth Century is not a true Halloween cocktail, but there is a hint of chocolate so we can consider it grown-up Halloween candy-esque. I had this cocktail for the first time at Fitzgerald’s a few years ago and it’s a favorite classic cocktail of mine. It was created in 1937 as a nod to the Twentieth Century Limited, a train that went between Chicago and New York City from 1902 until the 1960s. You might think it sounds weird with the creme de cacao and the lemon…it is strange but it works. Trust me.

Twentieth Century Cocktail

1 1/2 ounces gin

3/4 ounce Lillet Blanc (We use Cocchi Americano if we have that on hand instead.)

3/4 ounce freshly squeezed lemon juice

1/2 ounce white creme de cacao

Add all ingredients to a shaker filled with ice. Shake until fully chilled and strain into a coupe. Enjoy on a chilly fall night. (Or a warm summer night…it works.)

P.S. Two true Halloween cocktails: Purgatory and Corpse Reviver #2