I showed off my Halloween tree the other day, but today I bring you….the rest of the top of the buffet! I’ve been having fun switching out the stuff on top of the buffet seasonally…it’s such a big surface, and I never really knew what to do with it before; having permission to get all theme-y with it makes it easier.

I don’t think I ever posted a picture of the whole summer display after I added Brass Hound, so let’s revisit that first, shall we?

And now it’s like this!

Left to right, we have my halloween tree with tiny banner and the first of several dollar store crows (we’re pretending they’re ravens, though). Then some candles that I bought and used in last year’s Thanksgiving centerpiece.

The spooky books (bookended by Brass Hound) are Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, Frankenstein, and a collection of Sherlock Holmes stories.

And next up we have the fun with printables parts.

(the black lacy thing is from the Dollar Tree, btw).

I’ve had these “apothecary-inspired” labels from Country Living in mind since Brooklyn Limestone linked to them last Halloween. So I knew I’d be printing some out this year and started looking for some bottles to go with them a little while back. The widest bottle is from some real life whisky that Dave bought at some point in the past. I told him to save the bottle, even though I didn’t remember at the time why I wanted it. Go me. Then I found a little Anchor Hocking bottle for a dollar at the thrift store, and that’s holding my curare now. Then I ran out of time for thrifting bottles and picked up the last one for $5 at Hobby Lobby.

The instructions on Country Living say to print the labels out on sticker painter, but I decided to try regular paper and spray adhesive instead to save some money. And it worked great!

The “poisons” are apple cider vinegar and water mixed with a little vanilla. I didn’t put anything in the big one since I had neglected to save the lid for it. I guess someone already drank all the belladonna.

And then I printed out these two pictures:

Two gold thrift store frames. For the first one, I just googled images of Edgar Allan Poe and found one that was big enough to look good printed out as an 8 by 10. The raven is from The Biodiversity Heritage Library. They’re my go to source for free printables, assuming it’s a printable of an animal that I want, which it usually is. It can be hard to find things on there; the easiest way I’ve found is to go to their Flickr stream: https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/ ….if you use the search window, there should be a menu that shows up under it so that you can search just within biodiversity library’s stream. And here’s a direct link to my raven: https://www.flickr.com/photos/biodivlibrary/6898652204/

Don’t need a raven? Perhaps you could incorporate some spiders into your Halloween decor:

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