The Bow Belle

It's finally here!  My mom's favorite holiday, and admittedly one of my favorites as well.  I've had a lot of nice bows to wear for Halloween, but for the actual day I wanted something over the top.  Etsy shop is CherylsBowtasticBows , and they did not disappoint. Nothing much to say today, 'cause I've said everything I possibly can about Halloween over the past month.  May your Halloween be a safe one and a fun one! Trick or treat, RagingMoon1987

I'm taking a quick breather from Halloween bows to celebrate another birthday, the birthday of someone I never knew but thought was cool.  Tomorrow would've been Bob Ross's birthday, but tomorrow is Sunday and I rarely have reason to wear a hair bow on Sundays.  Some of y'all may have heard of Bob Ross, the soft-spoken painter on PBS with a gravity-defying hairstyle who threw together painted landscapes in half an hour.  Believe it or not, I have a bow dedicated to him. Etsy shop is RoxysBowtiqueShop , the same shop that did my Beatles and Led Zeppelin bows ( May 26th and August 19th , respectively).  Why they chose to put together a bow devoted to Bob Ross I'll never know, but I won't knock it.  Mr. Ross has been dead since the mid-nineties, but I think every now and then PBS still shows his program.  The calming subject matter and Mr. Ross's soft voice make for a very soothing watch, but I'll admit that like all PBS shows it's not for everyone.  M

Presenting the one and only!  Etsy shop is AbbeysAlley . Dumbo was released around this time in 1941, and oh, do I freaking love Dumbo .  My family loved Disney movies, and as I've mentioned before my dad loved elephants, so Dumbo was kinda special for all of us.  I also loved the idea of a huge animal like an elephant flying, absurd as it was.  Hey, in the Land of Make-Believe anything is possible!  Like a great many Disney movies Dumbo can make one weep great tears of sorrow, but that makes his triumph in the end all the more delicious.  I love it. Wouldn't y'all know, my two favorite parts of the movie " Song of the Roustabouts " and " When I See an Elephant Fly " are nowadays perceived as racist.  I think the public's main beef with "Roustabouts" is at the very end of the song when a hypothetical shirker is called "you hairy ape," which I think is kinda dumb.  To me it's no worse (or better) than calling someone a moron

As Halloween approaches, my bows get more over-the-top.  Which is what I wanted, LOL. This bow makes me giggle for another reason, as the green parts are almost the exact same color as the green screen that actors and meteorologists work with.  When bad weather is afoot Mama and I turn to YouTube meteorologist Ryan Hall and...I think he calls his bunch the Y'all Squad.  One of the squad's members is a guy named Andy Hill (LOL, Hall and Hill).  Andy has a small gay pride flag on his desk behind him, and I don't know if he's ever been told this, but the green stripe on the flag acts as a tiny green screen!  It's hilarious to watch.  Anyway, now you know why your local meteorologist never wears green.  No secret, really, and probably just about everyone already knows, but I needed something to talk about! There was one year when my family's jack o'lanterns glowed green, LOL.  It had been very dry, so instead of lighting our jack o'lanterns with candles Dadd

A few weeks ago I ordered a trio of bows from AbbeysAlley , one of which will make its debut in a few days' time.  When I opened up the package I found not three bows, but four.  This is the extra bow. Black cats!  LOL, I've extolled the virtues of black cats before, but all I had on that day was a plain black bow .  Now I've got a bow that actually has black cats on it!  It's sadly one that I can only drag out during Halloween, but I'm still glad to have it! This morning Mama and I learned that Sammy, the little black cat that was hanging around our place earlier in the fall, does not belong to our neighbors or anyone.  For a refresher, this is him. He's a sweet cat, but he didn't like my horde of cats at all.  Mama has three cats who are all laid-back seniors, so if Sammy comes around before Halloween she's gonna take care of him.  Black cats are not safe during Halloween.  No cat is, really, but black cats are REALLY not safe.  So if we can catch Samm

Halloween is now one (1) week away.  I reckon it's time to step up the kid-friendly horror a bit. This bow fills in one of the few voids I had in my bow collection.  I have bows that light up, and I have a bow that glows under blacklight, but this is the first one I've owned that glows under regular darkness.  Gotta have my daily dose of radium, y'know.  Ardent readers of my doll blog will know that I love things that glow in the dark. My family is religious, as I've spoken of in the past, and my mother implies that the existence of ghosts flies in the face of the concepts of Heaven and hell.  And yet...and yet we both seem to believe in them.  I've never seen a ghost that I know of, but my grandfather reported seeing...seeing something in his house when Mama was about thirty.  Twice he saw a black lady, dressed in old-timey clothes.  The first time she was sizing up the T.V., trying to figure out what it was.  The second time she was standing at the foot of Grandp

Bridge Day isn't really a holiday of sorts, but for West Virginians it's a big deal.  The event is a festival held on the third Saturday of October , and people come from far and wide to celebrate New River Gorge Bridge .  Oh my word, it's a beautiful area out there, and the bridge is pretty too.  I like arch bridges. At one time New River Gorge Bridge was the world's longest single-span arch bridge, and it's still the longest one here in the U.S.  It's also the third highest bridge in the country, behind only Royal Gorge Bridge (located in Colorado), and Mike O'Callaghan-Pat Tillman Memorial Bridge (Arizona-Nevada border).  During Bridge Day road traffic is closed and pedestrians are allowed onto the bridge.  It is legal to BASE jump and rappel from the bridge during the festival, though you'd never catch me dead doing either one.  The more rural Tunney Hunsaker Bridge also sees a lot of foot traffic during the festival, for those who hate heights or

Y'all know what that means! I think I've worn and shown this bow before (shop name is CherylsBowtasticBows ), but it's one of my favorites because SLOTHS, that's why!  I don't think I ever showed y'all my earrings, though. Those also came from Etsy (shop name is JMDesignsbyUS ), and they're made of wood.  JMDesigns is located in Sedalia, so usually when I order from them I get my item(s) toot sweet.  I never have been to Sedalia, by the way.  They seem to be a tornado magnet, having been hit in 1952, 1973, 1977, and 1980, so maybe I'd best NOT go.  The tornado in 1952 hit the Missouri State Fair, by the way.  Normally it's a bad thing for a tornado to hit during the night, but in that case it was a very good thing, as the fairgrounds were fairly empty.  Indeed, the only fatality in the 1952 storm was in a mobile home, not on the fairgrounds.  But enuff of that; this is supposed to be about sloths, not tornadoes!  If you've read my doll blog thoro

It's only now occurring to me that I wore a purple bow yesterday.  Oh well! I have a buddy on Failbook that loves spiders more than just about anything.  When I wore my last spider bow she dern near had a cow, declaring that bow as the most beautiful thing I'd ever worn.  I'll bet money that she'll like this one too. As I said in that last spider post, my feelings about spiders have mellowed as I've aged, but I still hate the feeling of walking through a spider web...or worse, REACHING into one without knowing it was there!  I don't want to get bitten by a spider frightened and irate at the destruction of its home, and I don't like destroying its home!  Oh yeah, and I hate picking that stuff out of my rather ample eyebrows, as is the case when I walk through a web. Spider's webs are part of the thing that helped me respect spiders more, believe it or not.  They have eight skinny little legs with no toes or grappling hooks, and yet they mince about on th

I've had many a quarrel with this bow in the past.  The witch's hat keeps falling apart, but with the help of some super glue that problem should be about solved. Super glue is your friend, kids.  Just like Dr. Steel.  Sigh...I tried to like Dr. Steel's music; when one dabbles in steampunk one is kinda obligated to give him a go.  But his music isn't my style.  I like him, though.  I love the mad scientist persona! Sweeping change of subject...oh, what was it?  Oh yeah, witches.  LOL, I used to play "witch" a lot when I was a kid.  I'd run around with a cast-off broom between my legs and my hair flying loose, waving my arms and chanting gibberish as I cast my "spells."  Mama and Daddy played along, giving me trinkets to hang on my broom and ideas for "potions."  Basically my potions were just rainwater in a bucket, with dirt, leaves, pebbles, moss, and God-knows-what-else thrown in.  Good times, man.  Good times. Believe it or not, my p

Thirty-four years ago tonight my mother was bathing two-year-old me, and my daddy was preparing to watch the third game of the World Series.  If you're baseball fans or disaster buffs then y'all can probably see where this is going.  Mama heard Daddy go "Awww, man," as the feed from San Francisco cut out, followed immediately by "Oh, they've had an earthquake!"  I don't remember any of that, but I do remember what Mama and Daddy told me.  LOL, hopefully today we won't have any shakers; living on the New Madrid fault makes that a real possibility, but hopefully we won't.  My bow today does not pertain to earthquakes or to baseball, but rather (once again) to Halloween. Y'all know how I'm always talking about the Wrong Box ?  Well, this one came in the Right Box.  Mama ordered one with a Thanksgiving theme, one with a lemon theme, and this one, but she got a huge box with a ton of stuff for another little kid.  That particular shop, Ado

Yep, today we celebrate the humble, delicious, sometimes deadly dangerous mushroom.  Today is...no, actually TOMORROW is National Mushroom Day, but either way my bow is perfect for both the day and the season.  This is NOT the bow I'd planned on wearing, but...oh well, that can't be helped.  The black parts are really navy blue, LOL.  This one was another gift, so I don't know which Etsy shop it came from, but it's comfortable. Mushrooms are some of my favorite living organisms.  I do enjoy eating them from time to time, but I also like to watch them grow.  There are so many different types, so many of them look different, and yet they all serve the same purpose.  My favorites to find are puffballs (they're fun to squeeze) and those little brown mushrooms that drive mycology students nuts.  Ornithologists have " little brown jobs ," botanists have " damned yellow composites ," and mycologists have to deal with " little brown mushrooms ."

Today is National M&M's Day, and I had a whole post planned, but I couldn't find the bow!  So y'all are getting something a little more holiday-appropriate. My family loves Charlie Brown.  The Halloween and Christmas specials were events that we'd plan our days around, since at the time we didn't have 'em on VHS.  Yes, I'm VHS old, LOL.  But yeah, I lived for both programs.  Snoopy usually stole the show, and indeed I spent both programs laughing at the bipedal beagle's antics.  I especially love the piano scene from Great Pumpkin , where Snoopy reacts appropriately to the upbeat and melancholy tunes Schroder is playing.  Then there's " I got a rock ," which is a catchphrase among my online friends.  Mama always wondered why Charlie Brown didn't just throw the rock at the offending house, LOL again. Charles Schulz was a fall baby, so y'all will see another Peanuts -themed bow before the season is out. Cheers, RagingMoon1987

Ah, Thursday!  I used to live for Thursday nights, because that was when TLC would air two of my favorite TV shows.  Medical Detectives was a fairly graphic program about how forensics solved crimes and medical mysteries (the program later went under the name Forensic Files ), while Without Warning offered brief rundowns of disasters that usually killed someone and always taught a lesson.  Kinda like an extremely abbreviated version of Seconds From Disaster .  On top of all that, the program that came on before those shows was Trauma:  Life in the E.R. , which was also pretty graphic.  Yeah, while my buddies were tuning in for All That or whatever Cartoon Network ran around that time, I was watching people die in a brutal murder, or in a car crash, or in a collapse at some hotel or some bridge that seemed a world away at the time.  Tonight I may watch a couple of episodes of Forensic Files later for old time's sake; "Without a Trace," " Core Evidence ," an

I don't usually take part in pride events, largely because I have absolutely NOTHING in common with that community.  I am staunchly religious and moderately right-wing and most of them are not, and they can be pretty vitriolic towards differing opinions (if their behavior on FailBook is any clue) so I stay away.  Sort of a "you leave me be and I'll leave you be" thing.  But today...well, today I guess I'll make an exception.  The bow comes from GillyJeanCrafts , which has nice things for people both on and off the rainbow spectrum (though the shop specializes in stuff for those ON the spectrum).  Anyway, here's the bow; it's a medium-sized cheer-style bow. An asexual pride bow, referred to hereafter as an ace bow.  I'm asexual.  I've known ever since I was about twenty-two, but I've kept it more or less hidden until recently.  It started with a vow of abstinence when I was thirteen.  I had a casual boyfriend and was learning about the health ri

My bow today has something that I was afraid of and fascinated by for a looooooong time.  This one made its debut on April 11th, but I'm only now wearing it.  I used to hate spiders.  Etsy shop is SweetAngelDreamBows . My earrings also have spiders on them.  Etsy shop here is FullCircleGift . Yes, I used to be TERRIFIED of spiders, and I still...when I first typed this up I hated brown recluses with a passion, but now I feel sorry for them.  But for awhile if I saw ANY spider it died, plain and simple.  The Who summed up my opinions in " Boris the Spider ." There he is wrapped in a ball Doesn't seem to move at all Perhaps he's dead, I'll just make sure Pick this book up off the floor I wonder if it hurt John Entwistle's throat to growl like that?  I know it would mine.  I wonder if John Entwistle was afraid of spiders?  He was the one who wrote "Boris the Spider," and it kinda sounds like he didn't like spiders much.  But anyway, my vitriol t

I'm thirty-six today, and my birthday calls for something colorful. I love rainbow anything, especially hair bows, and this one was a gift (from my mom, of course) so it's extra special.  I've always loved rainbows and the holy covenant that they symbolize.  I also love how all rainbows are the same colors and are formed in the same way, but no two are ever quite alike.  One of my favorite hobbies is sky photography, and I'm always looking for rainbows when the conditions are right.  I captured this one on August 28th, 2020, for example.  The sun was partly hidden by clouds and was still fairly high, so there was only a single, partial bow.  The colors were glorious, though! On October 12th, 2022 I captured this spectacular double rainbow shortly after sunrise.  Because the sun has just risen the bow had  a ruddy tint , and because the sky to the east was relatively clear both bows were full. That rainbow and the resulting pictures are very dear to me, because of the ra

No two are ever the same!  Unless they're the printed kind. Etsy shop this time is littlechiccollection , and I think that shop specializes in Halloween because I ordered this bow back on April 14th and there was nothing BUT Halloween stuff!  Not that that's a bad thing, of course!  Yes, mass-produced jack o'lanterns tend to look the same, but the real deal...oh gosh, folks can go hog-wild!  In my family Daddy was always in charge of carving the jack o'lanterns, and usually we'd have three:  one with a design Mama picked, one that Sister and I had to agree on (I usually let her pick since I liked all the designs), and one that had a cat on it.  Daddy always had to make at least one cat, and one year we had three cats because we all picked a different cat pattern!  Another year Daddy was asked to cut jack o'lanterns for our church's Halloween shindig.  Daddy rose to the challenge with several Christian-themed designs that greatly pleased churchgoers and trick

And yet here I have it on my bow.  This one is a new-to-me bow, one that I bought pre-used off of eBay.  I don't usually like pre-used bows because you never know what kind of cooties they might be carrying, but in this case I made an exception.   This one is one of my few bows that lights up.  I used to have more that lit up like this, but the batteries went blooey and they're sadly the irreplaceable kind.  The candy corn lights up in three colors, but it's such a quick shift that I could only photograph the one color. No, I never have liked candy corn.  I like the aesthetic of it, and obviously I like jewelry and trinkets that have it on them, but the candy itself is too sweet for me.  Mama loves the stuff.  The more power to her; at least she doesn't have to share, LOL!  Every year around this time I re-watch Gordon Ramsay's schtick on Jimmy Kimmel Live about five treats NOT to give out on Halloween and I giggle, partly because I think Gordon Ramsay is hilariou

The first workday in October is when I start trotting out the creepy bows, regardless of what day it falls on.  Some of my bows are legit creepy (see here ), and then some are just fun, like this one. BOO!  LOL, flip sequins aren't all the rage like they were a few years ago, but every so often I do still find a bow that has them.  This one can be orange or black or both, and I usually choose both because it reminds me of tigers.  My mama's high school mascot was a tiger, so that drawn-out association makes me think of her.  My mama loved being a Clearwater Tiger , by the way; her family moved from Piedmont after she graduated, so she's the only member of my immediate family who did NOT graduate from Malden High School.  In a sea of Greenwave alumni, she's the lone Tiger and she loves it.  Mama's side of the family moved back to Malden in...1971, I think it was, but she still calls Piedmont "home." My mom loves Halloween, by the way.  Daddy's favorite