Halloween 2012

MUAHHH HA HA HA!!! It is that time of year again! 

Sorry I've been doing such a good ghost impression here on the blog lately!! We are eye balls deep in permits and blueprints and elevations, etc.... at ParkView. Lots of work, but not a lot of exciting blog content. And with all that work there hasn't been much of anything happening back here at home, besides getting a little ghoulish. I am just happy Sean gets home tomorrow after being away for the last week, so I can finally finish up a few blog posts that have been on the back burner. Being a full time mom/renovator/housekeeper is not easy alone, so I had to drop Blogger from my job description for the last few days.

But back to the REAL scary stuff! Wren and I had a blast getting into the Halloween groove this year. She is at a great age to help decorate now that she knows what is happening and what to look forward too (she has been practicing her "trick or treat" lines nightly!}.

 

Our decorating strategy this year centered around 'the Birds' again. We already had quite a murder of crows last year but we added a few more.

Last year I got all my crows at Michael's but I was insanely excited to discover a hoard of goodies at the Dollar Store lately. All of these spooky creatures were $2 or less at Dollarama, and I also loaded up on black cheese cloth (only $1!) to cover dressers, tables, and lamps around the house.

Here is a little glimpse into our temporarily Haunted House:

Check out my previous Halloween ideas here!

Halloween 2011

So we had a raging good time on Friday night! We have about 12 toddlers running rampant around the house and fun was had by all of them. But most of the fun started for me earlier in the week when I started decorating for the big night.

I have been pulling together the rest of the house now that the kitchen is finally done, and a new addition has been an antique plate display in the dining room. To add a dark touch to the floral and pink plates I threw some re-stickable halloween decals from Michael's. Fast, cheap (I think they were $5 or $6 for 8), and really fun. I actually had 2 or 3 friends confess later on that they thought that I hand painted the plates because they look so good!

Next week they will just peel off, talk about easy clean up!

Another super fast and easy spooky touch was throwing bed sheets over arm chairs. Not only did it look cool, but it saved me any worries over dirty little hands mucking up my newly washed slipcovers!

A little ruffle on the sheet kept it pretty enough for me.

Yet another decal, and a small murder of crows.

The most fun I had in decorating was actually our front door because I had help from Wren and her best friend Hailey. Pumpkins were rolling everywhere and giggles were flowing freely! And I totally know my ugly light is upside down, we were in the midst of changing it here but I felt like just tossing the thing... but I have to patiently wait until next year to tackle our exterior.

Thanks so my Aunt Carol for the antique milk crate! She recently moved and hauled over a pile of fun accessories for me that she didn't want to take.

The birds are watching!

You might remember these plates from last years halloween craft fest!

To keep all the little people entertained I transformed the dining room table into a treat and toy station. Everything from play dough to stickers to candy, there was no shortage of fun.

How are you Halloween preparations coming? I am already looking forward to next year when I can really get back to business and crafting!

Belated Happy Halloween

I can't believe it is already November! This past weekend we had a fantastically spooky Halloween and hope you did as well.

My day didn't start with a treat, but a real tricky little lady. Seems someone knows where mommy hides the art supplies now! She loves doing her make up and seemed to be in the spirit of the day by finding the only black marker.

After a full facial scrub down she donned her Walrus costume to hit both her Grandma's and Aunt's houses.

My mom says we picked out a "boyish" costume and I intended to add a little bow to her head to make it obvious she was a girl walrus, but she didn't keep the hood on for more that 10 minutes so thank goodness I didn't waste the effort.

The night before we went to an adult only party and had a pretty exciting night. We aren't on facebook and missed out on the invite until just a few days before hand so we were far from the most creative party go-ers. I was a 50's housewife and my sister (who actually did spend some time and effort on her costume) was Link from The Legend of Zelda.

All in all a really great Halloween. And I can hardly believe it, but Wren has been in her new bed for a whole week already. I should have some photos for you tomorrow!

Some Petti things

Feeling both spooky and girly, Wren and I rocked our petti coats today.

We were also feeling TRES tired. I had one of the worst sleeps I can remember, and as soon as I finally drifted off to the land of nod this little bird decided to pull a kamakazi and hit the floor. We all jumped out of bed and couldn't seem to settle back in.

(Wren's shirt, tutu, leggings: Gymboree)

Wren doesn't appear to hold any grudges over the matter, but I cannot say the same for myself.

On Thursday mornings my mom comes over and picks Wren up to go to Gymboree classes so I had a few hours to myself. If it wasn't for those few hours I am highly doubtful that I would have even changed out of my PJs.

But we had planned a rare trip to Costco for Halloween candy with my sister, so I decided to take my fashion cues from Wren's outfit. Some days I go a little dressy and do a blazer, like this one.

(blazer: Gucci ; shirt: American Apparel ; petti coat: Whippy Cake ; leggings: Gap)

But most days I throw on a denim jacket to keep it casual. It is a great excuse to feel like a girl and while I get the rare blank stare, so many people stop and say how much they love it.

(denim jacket: Hollister)

When I wear it to our dance class on Fridays all the little girls flock to me and try to hold my hand or sit in my lap. If for that reason alone, it is my favorite piece of clothing.

And speaking of girly, I have a fun project and some furniture tomorrow that will bring out the little girl in all of us.

Halloween Crafts: the good, the bad and the ugly.

Our week of Haunted Mansion makeovers continues! I took some cheese cloth to our ghost lamps (instructions on how to make your own are here) and placed a cute haunted house/tea light holder I found at Marshall's years and years back on the dresser below, along with another bird. I swear, black cheese cloth is the best find for halloween decorating!

Besides cheese clothing every light fixture in sight we decided to get creative and attempt some crafting.

Warning: Keep in mind that we didn't find these crafts in magazines or online, and purely came up with them as we went along. Which you will see can turn out badly! But with some trial and error you can always come out with something unique.

All right, let's get going.

Our first craft is Creepy Crawly Bug Plates

I originally wanted to find some plates to spray paint black (purely for decorative purposes, not to eat off!). So obviously it didn't matter if there was an ugly design on the plates, and if you've been thrift shopping you already know that the ugliest plates have the tiniest price tags. So here's what I dug up for a couple bucks.
After digging through all the stamp and halloween aisles at Michaels I decided to use transfers on the plates. It seemed much easier and faster than printing anything and decoupaging it to the plates like I originally planned.

But obviously black transfers would hardly appear on black paint.... so I improvised and painted some areas white, others black. And it pretty much went downhill from there.
As evidenced here in exhibit a.

Never one to back down from a challenge, I went back to the drawing board and sprayed the remaining plates in glossy white.
After playing around with the placement of the bugs, then transferring them on to the plates here is what we ended up with.

Much better, right? Maybe even cute? I got a few plates out of it and have tons of transfers left over for future projects, but would estimate the total cost to be in the $7 range. Time invested? let's not dwell on that...

Our second attempt at Halloween crafting originated with an idea I had to make mini-graveyards in our house plants.
I started with grey construction paper, and folded it in half to trace our my gravestones.

With some stamps and rubbing ink on the edges the graves look old, then we mounted them to popsicle sticks with hot glue. *keep in mind I have lost the N stamp and had to resort to using a sideways z*

I still really like the idea, but mine totally bombed. With a bit more effort and without a 21 month old tugging at your leg to play with the stamps it may just turn out!

But I decided to give it another shot and just make a cute little sign for another plant with antique colored paper, some pleated crepe paper glued around the edge and again mounted on a popsicle stick.

I think it is cuter, but still not a home run... maybe next year when I can dig up an N.

My third and final craft for the night was a banner to place in one of the Raven's mouths.

This one was SUPER fast and easy, requiring only a little paper, some crepe paper I crimped up and glued on and then a utility knife to make a slit in the birds plastic mouth.

So as you can see, we all have our good projects as well as our bad ones. But I wanted to share in the event you can take the concept and make it fabulous ( I know the potential is there people!!), especially if you want to get your kids involved~

Hope you're having a perfectly haunted day!