Happy Halloween!

We're crazy busy here trying to get everything set up but for now enjoy Essie frolicking in her costume.

Also, if you haven't already downloaded it, to celebrate All Hallows Read my book is free. FREE!

Free.

One More Sleep til Halloween

And we're getting busy here in Dungeon Introverted.

Against our normal plans of hording everything until the night of this year I decided to start putting some things out early in case I one again get sick on Halloween and have to force myself to set up.

But how's it look at night with my new blue light?

I also got up some of the skeletons and draped them in spider webs. I call this one my Orlesian.

To go with the decor I also took a fancier picture of my Tom Servo as a witch.

This weekend I also finished a skull tree painting.

And finally finished my Tentacle ornament

Finally, if you need a last minute costume idea for a baby why not dress her up as a companion cube.

Just click and save and then follow my old directions to make it.

Halloween Wars - Week Four

We made it. Past the corpulent clowns, the ravenous vampire bears and the Jeff Goldbulms hanging in subwy bathrooms. We're finally here, at the battle to end all battles once and for good.

Let the War begin!

Halloween Wars - Week 3

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into the ocean beside the dreamy summertime camp..in space!

AAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*deep breath*HHHHHHHHHHHHH*checks watch*HHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH*rolls hands*HHHhhhhhh...

First Painting for FatherWizard

After taking a pathetic fall onto frozen ground and completely fucking up my hand two weeks ago, I finally told the pain to piss off and buckled down to making a painting for the first donor to help FatherWizard.

She wanted something fallish, treeish, and off I went with this idea:

It was about 2 hours or so of making tiny lines slowly turn into a tree. Then some leaves, then some more tree again, then back to leaves.

I've already passed the donation on and should get this bad boy out soon (assuming this wet weather will stop).

If you like the tree above or want a challenge for me I'll still work with whatever you're wiling to donate to help him out. I've got lots of wacky ideas.

So if you want your own little (or big) tree painting/sketch/tattoo and to help out a wonderful man click the button below.

Halloween Wars - Week 2

Okay, *wipes blood off chin* we managed to make it past the giant Oompa Loompa with a butter fetish and the deep fryer, set aflame the shrieking harpy already doused in alcohol, and avoid the moaning pit of the damned ex-Food Network Star winners.

Only a few more feet and we should...

Shit!

If you don't think he just chopped off his own hand and is about to try it on the other, you haven't been paying attention.

That's right, it's time for this weeks edition of Halloween Wars - why does everything Food Network touch get destroyed?

Zombie Teeth

Last Night was our Halloween club's Monster dance. Much dancing and monstering was had by all.

I went as an ice mage, which involved a lot of white and blue makeup.

But I'm not here to talk about that.

My husband went as a Revenant. A sort of proto-zombie/vampire with a revenge fantasy.

I'd like to draw your attention to the teeth on the side of his face. I made that appliance in a day and with a few supplies you too can make your own creepy zombie teeth.

All you need is polymer clay, latex, kleenex, and acrylic paint.

First put down some tin foil and roll the clay about as flat as you can. Fold the clay over top itself, that nice fold makes for the perfect tooth edge. I cut off small chicklet sized pieces and used the pressure of my fingers to roll up the sides to make a tooth shape.

I also pressed down on the edge to super flatten it out to join each tooth together.

Bake that for 30 minutes at 250. Let it cool. Then I added a few coats of white and since these aren't supposed to be pristine teeth I added some tan and darker brown spots on the edges.

I finally finished with a glossy clear coat of acrylic for that creepy shiny teeth look.

Got your teeth painted a nice and creepy zombie shade?

Dredge a kleenex in the latex and put it down on the tin foil, to that add your teeth and position them.

Tear off another strip of kleenex and again put that through the latex, pucker and rip the sides up to create the torn skin. Wrinkles are actually fairly helpful so don't worry too much if it doesn't lay flat.

Let that all dry. If you want you can always go back later to add more layers of torn flesh.

Here I try out the unpainted and dry teeth.

As you can guess the final stag is painting. Carefully add some red and black to the torn muscle part and whatever flesh color you want it to be to the outside.

The night of, pull out a crap ton of spirit gum, flesh latex, and makeup to blend and you have zombie teeth!

Once you're done feasting upon the flesh of the dead, just pull it off and save for next year.

Iranian Beef Stew

I don't like stew.

It's chunks of parboiled beef floating in a flotsam of grains and lightly flavored water. Occasionally an old vegetable tries to claw its way out.

It's a hate/hate relationship.

So I'm coming to this Persian (if that makes you feel better) Stew recipe from a completely different angle. If like me, you're not wild about stew or want to try something different give this sucker a try.

The cool thing is that assuming you do a bit of baking and/or occasional Indian cooking you'll already have all the spices. Nothing's outside what you'd find in a regular grocery store but the combinations are deliciously exotic.

I found the recipe here.

Ingredients

• 1/4 cup olive oil
• 2 medium onions, chopped
• 2 cloves garlic, minced
• 2 pounds lean beef, cut into 1-inch cubes
• 2 medium tomatoes, seeded and chopped (or a 14 ounce can of diced tomatoes)
• 1/3 cup fresh cilantro, chopped
• to taste, salt
• 2 cups beef broth
• 1 package (16 ounces) frozen cut green beans
• 2 tablespoons ground cumin
• 2 tablespoons freshly ground black pepper
• 1 tablespoon ground coriander
• 1 tablespoon ground cloves
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cardamom
• 1-1 1/2 teaspoons nutmeg (freshly ground)
• pinch of ground cinnamon

 It calls to mix together the cumin, pepper, coriander, cloves, cardamom, nutmeg and cinnamon and to only use 1 tablespoon in the pot. I wasn't certain if I was going to like this at all so rather than waste spices I cut everything down by an eighth.

Saute the onions and garlic in the oil until they're nice and fragrant and the onions do that onion thing.

Add the beef and brown it on all sides. This'll take around 5-7 minutes.

Dump in the tomatoes (I didn't bother draining the can because it's stew), cilantro (I also didn't add cilantro. I am neither for nor against the stuff, I just didn't have any), the spice mixture (1 tablespoon if you made the mix, a tiny amount of each if you didn't), and a bit of salt.

Mix all that together for about a minute.

Add the broth, bring to a boil and then let simmer for an hour and a half.

Add the green beans and then let it go another half hour.

Now you have Persian Beef Stew. I served it over rice which was a nice way to cut some of the spicy and also soak up the stewey goodness.

You may have noticed that your kitchen is rather fragrant as all the spices combined into one giant super spice (like Voltron). It will also make your hair smell delicious.

It isn't easy to explain just what this stew tastes like in English. We confuse spicy with hot. This isn't a throbbing drum beat to the tongue like peppers are. It's more like a cacophony, an orchestral hit to the tongue as all the spices fight together to be heard over the horde.

And that's what I love about it. It takes a little while to train the tongue to get used to the noise but once you do...oh Mamma!

Halloween Wars - Week 1

*cough cough*

I, I think I'm alive. Let me clear some of this dirt off my glasses. There. Did anyone else feel that spindly hand clutching at their leg before being wrenched down and down into this early grave?

No, just me?

Well, we best work our way out. I think I see a light up ahead and it's...

OH GOD NO! NOT AGAIN! RUN!

Just when you thought it was safe to go back into Halloween, Food Network is back to suck out your soul, spin it in the blender, coat it in butter and deep fry it.

Please, god, no more travel shows with Next Star rejects!

For Fatherwizard!

Hello everyone,

I'm writing to you today because I have a small proposition. See, our good friend FatherWizard and his family are in a bit of a pickle. An unexpected car unexpectedly doing unexpected things has caused it to die. Probably with a really sad death scene too.

I want to help, and I thought "Ah ha!" I'm pretty good at making trees. Trees people like. Such as the trees below.

And many more in various shades of colors, sizes, gnarledness.

Ah but the deal. The deal is this, you donate whatever you can spare to help Fatherwizard and I'll make you a tree, or something comparable if you don't like trees (philistine). How complicated and awesome it gets will depend upon the size of the donation.

Anything under $5 will run in the adorable palm sized on paper.

$10-$20 in the full sheet of paper big kahuna tree.

And if someone wants to kick in $50 I'll roll out the canvas!

After paying shipping on all those pretty paintings I'll donate the rest to FatherWizard. Cross my heart.

So if you want your own little (or big) tree painting/sketch/tattoo and to help out a wonderful man click the button below.

I'll get in contact with you about what kind of tree and what not you'd like, or I'll make you something nice if you can't decide.

Thanks for your time.