My Best Halloween Tip

I happen to have a fair amount of training in theater make-up and as a result, own a lot of theater make-up. I've painted faces for Halloween for many years now and I want to share my best secret of making all your hard work stay in place.

The secret is loose face powder.

My son, below, has been a tiger for his third (non-consecutive) year now and this tip has yet to fail us. (in fact, my daughter has has some white swirls on her face since Saturday that I had forgotten about due to her hair covering them up. Yikes!) Here's how it's done.

You take your loose powder and shake it on to a non-fluffy powder puff in excess. You press that powder on to the make-up firmly without smearing. Get it on every whisker, patch, scar, whatever. (unless you're making a ghost or vampire, you're going to want the powder to be skin colored)

Next, you'll need a powder brush. You'll want one dedicated to this because the last thing you want is remenants of grease paint getting onto your own skin later because you used your expensive brush set. Just dust the powder off with the brush and you're done. The make-up will stay all through the school day and trick or treating. Even if you're just doing a little puppy dog nose on your baby, you'll want something to set that black eye-liner of yours or he just won't look complete for pictures. :)

--C

Routing Wood

I posted about my new router a couple of weeks ago, but it came to my attention that I should tell a little more about routing wood. Keep in mind I am no expert, so if you would like a little more info, you could check out Wikipedia.

I bought my router because I wanted to make decorative edges on wood. I used it to make these photo blocks. I would also like to make my own picture frames some day... another project on my list. To make the groove in the back of the wood for the glass to fit into, you need a router. Basically a router has several different bits. Here is a picture of some of the designs that you can make with a router.

My brother also made it to use some shelves... he needed to make a groove in the wood for the bead board to slip into. It has come in quite handy around here.

So, here is the router that I bought at Home Depot. The rep for the company happened to be in the store that day and he helped me pick out the right router. I was just going to buy the router, but he suggested I get the table... I don't know how I would have been able to route the wood without the table. Basically a router has a bit in it similar to a drill bit..... it turns around and as it turns, it cuts the wood. With the table, you just slide the piece of wood along the router bit... and the table has guides to keep it straight. It is very easy to use..... and very messy. My husband showed me how to hook up the shop vac to it so that it sucks up the sawdust as you're routing... very loud, but much less messy.

It is very quick and very easy to use. I would recommend this router/table combo to anyone. I hope I answered any questions that you may have...stay tuned for my cake platter that I made with my router as well. -Anisa

Arrange-a-frame

12 screws. 6 frames. A big wall. One woman. Thanks to some random home decorating show on TLC (not one I was familiar with) and Pottery Barn's catalog (my home decor study guide), I have a very nice arrangement of our recent family pictures. The pictures are cute and the frames are satisfactory, but how do you hang SIX pictures to form a nice arrangement and keep everything aligned properly?? Let me show you.... First, trace the frames on some paper and cut out --do this for each frame you'll hang. (While you are tracing you can also make marks so you know where to pound in your hardware.) Using painters tape, hang them on your chosen wall and now you have a template! Once your arrangement looks the way you want, drill your screws or pound your nails right on top of the paper like so: Next, rip the paper off and hang your pictures. Here is my final product: Now if I could just figure what to put on either side on my new grouping.....