Michael's Candy Colored Halloween

I bet a lot of you have been to Michael's over the past few months. Yesterday was my first time there this season, so I have no idea what they had for Halloween before this! Well, maybe I had a slight clue because of the Michael's commercials on TV. Maybe you saw the one with those creepy twins. One twin bought all white decorations and the other bought all black decorations. I saw a bit of the ghostly white collection, but I'll get to that later.

I'll start with what I'll call the pink collection. I have always loved pink and black together. This skeleton was fuzzy to the touch.

Bubblegum pink is so cute for Halloween. I've seen some pastel Halloween stuff this year, but I prefer the bright pink. My grade school self would have been going wild for this collection. Actually, my grade school self would have been thrilled to see this much Halloween stuff in stores, period.

"Yikes"

How great is this retro font?

This feels retro too. It's probably a take on "Feelin' Groovy", especially with those flowers. 🌸

I think I can call these ombre, even though they're not the same color fading from light to dark. I have that rat, by the way, just in plain rat bone color. This rat is nearly the size of the cat next to him, so I guess he has nothing to worry about!

Even a buzzard looks cheerful in these colors.

I actually thought this was for Christmas, until I saw the bat on top. There are so many non-traditional colors for holidays now that it's hard to tell. And now there are trees for several holidays too.

A better look at the bat:

There was a matching wreath:

Michael's still had a number of bright Halloween wreaths left. See the little Beetlejuice spirals in this one?

Giant pompoms:

These were fuzzy decorative shapes with beaded ropes attached. It's hard to explain, unless you've seen them. You probably hang them off something. I just looked on the Michael's web site, and they're calling these "wall decor". So I guess what you hang them off of is the wall. I think they'd look good as part of a wreath.

OK, so back to what I was talking about before - The ghostly white collection. On first glance, this looks like Shabby Chic. If a person had a light Shabby Chic look going already, this could be a subtle Halloween addition to it. 

See what I mean? It looks like Shabby Chic until you get up close. I didn't catch what was going on in that cathedral window at first. 

It says "Welcome to our Haunted Manor" on that sign.

Michael's had a few nontraditional critters, like this scorpion. There were actually a few different scorpion decorations. They had Venus Fly Traps and just funky looking carnivorous plants. I wasn't fond of most of them because they looked too real. But cake anything in silver glitter and I will suddenly find it cool.

There was a little bit of traditional Halloween left. There were tons of spools of ribbon. Looking at this pic, I'm wanting to go back for all three of these. But what would I do with them? All I can ever think of for decorative ribbon is garlands and wreaths. And I don't need more garlands or wreaths! 

These tall signs seem to be everywhere this year, but I thought that one in the middle was a little different. 

This spooky cat eye is part of the magnifying glass.

I always seem to end my Halloween shopping posts with a Day of the Dead picture or two. My thinking is that the holiday comes just after Halloween so that's where the pics go! Isn't this a fun pillow? I have a feeling that Michael's had a lot of great Day of the Dead items but I missed them. 

So, did you guys buy any items from these collections? I may go back after Halloween and see what is left, although I suspect not much will be. I can always make an excuse to get more Halloween picks, because those can go anywhere. Some of those fuzzy beaded rope things could be worked in here and there and I love the colors. If I have an After Halloween Haul, you know I'll post it here!

My favorite leaf photos from this autumn

Over the last several months, I have seen a lot of beautiful autumn leaves. If I happened to have my camera with me at the time, I'd photograph them. This amounted to a lot of leaf photos! Out of those many photos, these are my favorites. We'll start out with some stained glass leaves, at least that's what I call them. I just googled "stained glass leaves" and got some really pretty results. I am probably sending someone down a shopping rabbit hole with that search suggestion!

I feel like I can almost see the process of the leaves turning colors here. Red at top, yellow at middle, and green at bottom. I'm reminded of traffic lights.

 

These leaves are from an Ash tree:

How cool are these neon green shapes in the middle? I love when this happens. I don't know if it has something to do with a sudden shift in weather or if some Maple trees just have this color formation.

Refreshing green.

 

How perfect is this blue sky with the colors of this tree?

Ginkgo leaves soon after it rained:

 

 

Even the dry leaves on the ground are looking interesting. The ground in a local park was covered with these. Actually, it feels like every piece of ground around here is covered in dry leaves lately.

I had to display this red and black beauty somewhere it would show up. The other "leaves" around the bottom of the pumpkin are actually fake ones that are on a garland.

This is another photo taken in the park. What are the chances that there would be so many colors in one bunch? These were all low growing shrubs or vines. I think the red leaves in the middle were part of a wild grape vine.

Here's another one with bright green veins. The next several pics were other lucky finds with this pattern.

 

I saw a lot of Oak leaves this fall, yet I realized I didn't take many photos of them. These red ones seem unusual. There have been tons of brown Oak leaves around.

I'm not sure what this little saw-tooth leaf was.

This was a funny one to photograph, because each time I took a picture, the wind would flip it around. I felt like the leaf was saying "Get my good side" 😄 Isn't it interesting how this curvy leaf makes a perfect, circular shadow?

One thing I like about dry leaves is that they sometimes take on a leathery look. I thought this leathery leaf looked just right on a brick path.

I carried this whole leaf bouquet home.

 

This might be my favorite leaf vein photo I've ever taken. It looks like a map, like the kind you might see if you looked at the satellite view (from a far distance) on Google Maps. It also reminds me of the view from out the window of a plane. The more I stare at this, the more I see pieces of land. It helps that the leaf is green.

I took many photos through leaves that were stuck in the grass. It's a great way to capture the light going through them without having to hold the leaf.

I still remember which hill I was walking up when I saw this. I looked down and saw what looked like a spotlight on the leaves. There must have been some shadows from the trees. I couldn't get my camera out fast enough.

I'll end with some "Squirrel Vision" through a super vibrant leaf. I took a walk through this same park today and it was actually teeming with squirrels. They were leaping around in the leaves and jumping around in the trees. It was surround sound leaf crinkling and squirrel chirping.

Were any of these leaves new to you? I know there are some people who read this blog that aren't in my area of the U.S. or in the U.S. at all. I wonder how this time of year is looking for people outside my state. I know that we are lucky in the Midwest as far as colorful fall leaves go and I'm aware that there are some Eastern states that are lucky with this too. In fact, I heard recently that some Eastern states are having issues with too many people traveling there to take selfies with the leaves. These people are clogging up traffic, etc. I guess we're doubly lucky here then - all the great leaves without those pesky people in the way of them! 😉 We just have so many squirrels...