Happy Halloween

I love this time of year! Halloween kicks off the holiday season with a bang! I get so excited to decorate the house, I might have put up my decorations a week or two ago. Maybe :)

Here are some of my past posts for Halloween:

Halloween Wreath

While I was checking one of my favorite blogs I saw this wreath and knew that I had to make one! It ended up being really simple to make. My pictures don't do it justice, but I am happy with the finished product. I decided that it would be more fun to create with friends to make these. Everyone made a different color/ holiday wreath using this technique, it was fun to see all the combos. Only one of them finished theirs completely before having to go home, and her wreath was stunning! She used a sage green for the tulle. Embellishing with white flowers, pine cones, a glittery cardinal, and berries it was beautiful! I should have snapped a picture! 

Pumpkin Jars

The other day the kiddos were begging to do a craft, so I looked in my craft cupboard and found the supplies to make these pumpkins.

You need:

clean empty baby food jars
mod podge
orange tissue paper
a permanent marker
green ribbon
paint brush
scissors

We started by cutting up the tissue paper into small squares. Then we used our Mod Podge to glue the orange squares all over the outside of the jar. My three year old enjoyed doing this, there is no perfect way to this step. Just cover the jar. After it is all dry we used the permanent markers to draw faces on our pumpkins and finished it off with a green ribbon on the top. If you have a votive candle you can put it inside the jar to illuminate it.

Ghost Swaps

We had a Girl Scout camp out this last weekend. Our troop made these ghost swaps to give to the other girls there. 

They were super easy to make. We used 1/2 of a safety tip cotton swab per a ghost (found at the dollar store). We covered that with a 3 x 3 inch piece of white fabric and tied a piece of yarn around the top to form the head. The girls had fun using permanent markers to customize their ghosts' faces. 

Halloween Pillow

I just finished finished this Halloween Pillow during the weekend. I love how it turned out. It is super huge and festive. The pattern is by Crabapple Hill and the pattern can be found here. I changed how to finish it though. I stuffed the pillow, instead of making it a pillow case for a separate pillow inside like the pattern suggests. This fun and simple pattern is a fun quick project!

Happy Halloween!

Halloween Cupcakes

I love to make cupcakes for my kid's school. This year I went the simple route and stuck to chocolate cupcakes with a buttercream frosting. I made the little spider picks by cutting out spiders on my Cricut and gluing two spiders together with the toothpick in between.

Halloween Treats

For our girl scout troop we love to go all out on treats for Halloween! Here are some pictures of our Halloween goodies.

Chocolate skeleton cookies.

Mummy hot dogs.

My husband is a podiatrist so I had to make some feet cookies too.

Heart made from raspberry jello, green bugs made from jello and sliced almonds, and eyeballs made from homemade buckeyes.

Dirt from the graveyard.

Punch with icy brains. Grape kool-aid for the big brain and cherry for the little brains.

Here is a link to our post from last year.

Stained Glass Pumpkin

For this craft I cut out the outline of a pumpkin from black construction paper. Next I cut out a piece of clear contact like paper and adhered it to the pumpkin outline making sure that the contact paper didn't go past the pumpkin outline. This left a big sticky and clear space in the middle. I covered the entire sticky side with pieces of orange and yellow tissue paper.

I ended up doing this craft with my Daisy Girl Scouts and it was a hit. As a leader I loved it because it didn't leave a mess behind. Before the girls came I prepped but cutting out all the pumpkins and adhering the contact paper to them and covered the sticky side with the backing from the contact paper. So when the girls arrived I just had to pull off the contact paper backing and they were ready to put their tissue paper on.

Ghost

These cute ghosts were made with my son's handprints. Some googley eyes did just the trick to turn them into some friendly ghosts.

Going Batty

I love the fall, the air is crisp the trees are vibrant in color and the holidays begin! Last year I made spiders from painted egg cartons and pipe cleaners. This year I thought our house could use some bats. Being on a shoestring budget nothing is better than a FREE craft. First I cut my egg carton to make separate each cup. Then painted them black. After that I hot glued two cups together for the body. The wings are made up from cut out card stock which is hot glued to the body. I hung my bats from my chandelier with monofilament thread.

A simple and free/recycled craft.

Five Little Pumpkins

This week I finished up my five little pumpkins quilt. The quilt top has been in a pile for quiet awhile awaiting to be sent to be machine quilted. Well, I finally got up the guts to just quilt it on my own.

I am happy with how it turned out. My wonderful sister-in-law gave me the idea to put spiderwebs in between the pumpkins and I LOVE how that part turned out. I am still working on my free motion quilting, so I am kinda glad you can't see it in the border :) One thing that did help me a lot in quilting this quilt was sketching out my design before sewing it. I wish I had saved my sketches for the border. But at least here are the spider webs.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN

Mad Scientists at Work

Today we decided to do some experiments on some of the kid's halloween candy. I got this idea from an article in Family Fun magazine. The kids each picked out some candy and we covered each candy with either water or vinegar in separate glasses. We looked to see if they floated or sank, and just what they looked like after soaking. One of my favorites was seeing how the "S" on each skittle would come off and float to the top of the water. The kids got really into it and we had to keep pulling out more and more glasses so they could try just one more. I think this might just become a tradition! 

My little mad scientists.

Costumes

My daughter wanted to be a banana this year so I kinda winged it. I used felt and first sewed some batting to the wrong side (or would become the wrong side) of the fabric. I used an oblong piece for the front and kind of a crescent shaped piece for each side. I stuffed the top and bottom and left room in the back for her to be able to just slip it on.

My son this year wanted to be an eyeball this year so I sewed his out of felt as well. I cut four panels the shape of what a globe would look like if it was taken apart. On the front panel I sewed the iris and pupil which I made by making a compass with a string and a pencil to make each circle. The string was the length of the radius of the size circle which I wanted. I held the string down on the fabric and with my other hand held the pencil and string together and went around and it made my circle. Then I sewed each panel together. On the inside of the eyeball I sewed a tube which was attached to the bottom and then went over his shoulders. Then we stuffed the costume with grocery sacks which were crumpled up in between the eyeball layer of fabric and the tube layer.

Here are all the kiddos. My youngest two are wearing costumes I made for the older ones when they were that little. I used a pattern for those but I can't remember who puts it out. The felt costumes helped keep my little ones warm considering we had a chill Halloween night.

Halloween Treats

Our Girl Scout Troop had our annual Halloween party. We love spooky treats!

These creepy spiders are made of a marshmallow with chow-mien noodles stuck in the sides for legs. Next I melted some chocolate in a ziploc baggie and cut off the corner of the bag once the chocolate was all melted. (I put the chocolate in a bag, put it in the microwave for 20 seconds at a time and repeat until all the chocolate is melted) I drizzled chocolate over the marshmallows and then put mini m&m's on for eyes. 

My co-leader made these. The Eyeballs are made just like buckeye candies and then she put a mini m&m on top and made the blood vessels out of frosting.

These gruesome fingers are made from my regular roll recipe. Then I rolled the dough like when you made snakes out of play dough. Next I took a sharp knife to make a couple of slits in the middle for knuckle marks. Then I brushed the dough with an egg wash and put a slivered almond on the end to look like a fingernail.

These worms were definitely my favorite. I got the idea and recipe here.

We had regular fruit punch but we had a brain in it. The brain was made out of pink lemonade in a mold.