I'm Back

I'm still feeling pained by the loss of Fahris. Her funeral was this Sunday and gosh, it was a toughie. I just cannot imagine losing one of my children. No matter how crazy they make me, I will try to be grateful for those moments... all those normal, everyday regular moments because I am lucky to have them. Thank you Deborah and Amber for your kind words.

Here are the Halloween costumes from this year.... Ethan was a pirate skeleton. We re-used parts of Hudson's pirate costume form a few years ago and added the skeleton parts. On Halloween morning I realized that he had no skeleton shirt to wear so I whipped out the freezer paper and stenciled him up nice set of rib bones.

Hudson was a beast, re-using the beast parts I made for my Dad to use for a church talent show. I made him some fuzzy pants, a tattered shirt and we added a dollar mask from Walmart.

Alex was Velma Kelly (from Chicago). I made her a little flapper dress (man- fringe is pain) and a garter, added fishnet stockings, a wig and my mom's ancient rabbit fur coat. Oh, and she's wearing my shoes. They were probably small on her.

So, that was Halloween 2008. We had a busy day... the elementary school had their traditional costume parade, then we ran home so Alex could get dressed, ran over to our Church trunk-or-treat event, then out trick-or-treating, and finally took Alex to a party.

And just so don't forget...go vote! Here is Ethan's pick...

Candy Corn Bean Bags **UPDATED

I am in charge of coming up with a few games for our Trunk-or-Treat. The event is only an hour long so I'm not getting too crazy with my ideas.... just keeping it simple. One game I think would be fun for he kiddos and easy to put together is a bean bag toss. I wanted to make some Halloween themed bean bags, but I was just too tired to go to the fabric store yesterday for cute Halloween fabric, so I went through my stash and came up with this idea.... Candy Corn! I had some yellow flannel, orange fleece and some black and some white cotton something-or-other (I am so limited in my knowledge of what material is called). I started by sewing together strips of the orange, yellow and white. Then I laid out the black and colored pieces right sides facing, and laid an additional white piece on top. This piece will be the lining. Then, taking a trick I learned from Bend the Rules Sewing back in my bib making days, I sewed then cut the material. SO much easier this way. Then I turned the bag right side out, filled them with 1/2 cup split peas and top-stitched them shut. It is sort of hard to top stitch a bean bag when it is already filled with beans, so some of the stitching is a little wonky, but who cares? They are only bean bags!It wasn't until I was all done and got out a few real candy corns that I realized that the orange should go in the middle. Oh well. If I were to do this again I would have used a brighter/darker yellow as well, but I was just using what I had on hand. (Sorry for the lousy photos... its a grey day here today.)

Now I just need to figure out what to toss them into??? My friend offered up a plastic black cauldron. That could work. Maybe a cut-out of a trick-or-treat bag? Any suggestions???

**UPDATE: I went with a big cat. Thanks for the suggestion Amber! He's a little freaky looking, but o-well.

Ethan gave it a trial run when he got home from school. Celia (who I babysit for) confirmed it's creepiness.

Rave Reviews....

We have to give a great review to Dawn Rice and her little guy over at Artist Reborne for the Halloween game they came up with. (We found it via The Crafty Crow ...which I just love by the way! So many awesome ideas every day!) She even included pdf downloads, so it was a snap to put together.

We had most of the needed supplies here at home.. and what we didn't have, we just substituted with something we did have. For example, we used some blocks for the bases of the playing pieces. Instead of painting the die, I colored some white stickers and just stuck them on the sides of another block. The drawings are adorable. And though I intended this to be a kid project, I ended up doing most of the coloring on the board... my youngest did help out a little.

We made the game this afternoon and have already played it twice. Thumbs up all around. The boys said, "It's like a cooler version of Candy Land!" And my husband said, with a smile, "Yeah, just shorter!" (Is it just us? Or does it always seem to take 2 hours to play Candy Land???)

Halloween Tree

A few years ago I made a Halloween tree. I used the branches of the Harry Lauder's Walking Stick from my parent's yard. First I spray painted them black, leaving a few of the dried leaves on for added creepiness. Then I mixed up some wood putty (the powdered kind you mix with water) and poured it into a tin bucket. When it started to set up I stuck the branches in and once dried the putty held them tight and made a nice heavy base so the tree won't tip over. To disguise the putty I stuck some decorative moss on the top. A few years ago I made a teeny-tiny paper chain out of green, orange and black construction paper. I also downloaded some vintage Halloween images from The Vintage Gallery to make some hanging ornaments. I need to make some more. Maybe some tiny ghosts?


This is how we had it set up when I first brought it out this year. We added the gravestone candles, Ethan's paper-bag pumpkin from nursery school and our little spooky house (a bird house actually), which we got from Michael's last year and painted in Halloween colors.

Then I found our little grave yard. The fence is shared with the Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations as well, so the graveyard is removable. The base is a painted piece of cardboard. The graves are painted cardboard hot-glued to the base, and we stuck the gravestone candles in there as well as some mummy candles left over from Hudson's spooky birthday party last year. There are also some cute little wooden pumpkins that I keep out for Thanksgiving tucked in there.

Last is my tiny Boo! box made from a match box and some decorative paper, felt, ribbon and a button... and the skeleton guys we made a few years ago. They are made from A wooden ball (I guess.. I am suffering from a brain freeze right now and cannot think of what theheck it is called!). It had a hole in the bottom already. I painted it white and added the facial "features". I stuck half of a chop stick in bottom of the ball (the cheap kind I grab for free when we get chinese food at the grocery store, wrapped the stick in wire and made wire arms and legs as well. then I covered the whole thing in masking tape and drew on the "bones". They are bending and the kids like to re-arrange them. I think that one of them had a black suit when we first made them becasue he was supposed to look like Jack Skellington.

BOO!

Inspired by Two Straight Lines I put together our Boo packages today for delivery tonight. Here's a peek...I included: hot chocolate mix, mini-marshmallows (I wanted the ghost shaped ones but they didn't have them at my grocery store) popcorn, a votive and a few pieces of candy. I added to the note that the contents would help make a great family movie night and included the date/time for the airing of the classic Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown. Oh, and I added the super cute skeleton from sewing stars. The instruction sheet came from Organized Christmas.

The kids are super excited about this!! Tonight should be fun!