One Little Pumpkin Sitting in The Rain

Monogrammed pumpkins. A simple and easy alternative to the traditional carved pumpkin!

Halloween: DIY Bloody Hand prints

Someone, PLEASE save me from the madhouse I live in!

Door knocker from Le Dollar Store

My husband gave me the weirdest look when I began making these handprints. And I was all, "what? You don't think these bloody handprints perfectly complement the rest of our house?" Then, as I was applying them to our front door (while wearing my pajamas, no less) our new neighbours and their kids happened to walk by. I'm great at first impressions...nothing says "I'm a normal, sane neighbour" like bloody handprints!

But you can't tell me these don't look cool! And the best part is that they are deceptively easy to make.

All you need are:

White school glue
Red paint
Plastic wrap or a ziploc bag
A hand

You just mix red paint into the white glue until you get your desired blood colour. Then, weigh down your plastic wrap or ziploc bag (I used a ziploc bag because it was thicker and all I had). Then, dip your hand in the blood mixture (or spread it on with a spoon) and press your hand onto the plastic wrap.

For a thinner/paler handprint (like the bottom one in my picture) only do one thin layer. For a thicker print you can spread more "blood" on your hand or do a second/third layer after the first has dried.

Once these are dry you peel them off the plastic wrap, being careful not to tear them. I actually ripped off a finger or two on my thin one but it was easily repairable by wetting it with a tiny bit of water.

To attach these to my window I pressed them on and then used my finger and a bit of water to wet the edges. These should just peel off when you're tired of them. Or you could leave them up forever and make your neighbours really question your sanity.

For extra ghoulishness you can write out cheery phrases like, "help me", "save me", "beware", or "we have two kids...enter at your own risk". Some drippy blood splatters are the perfect final touch, too.

The best part about these are that since I put them up we've had no door-to-door people pay us any visits. Coincidence? I think not.

Halloween!

Halloween is one of my favourite holidays, and not just because of all the candy. It's one of the few holidays where I feel I can really go crazy with my decorating and there are just so many options for what you can do.

The past few days I've started decorating the inside of our house with Toddler Bee and today we also started on decorating the outside (that can be a post for another day, I think).

So, without further ado, here are some pictures of our Halloween decorations so far!

White streamers and black paper cut-outs make for a very nice Mummy door!

Streamers for the hair, tape for the mouth, and paper plates for the eyes! This is Frankendoor!

Little mice are scurrying about our home...

These potions are my favourite part of our decorations. I collected jars in different sizes and then made my own labels. We have:

 -a Love Potion, which contains red glitter, dried flower petals, a lock of (fake) hair, a name on a piece of paper, nail clippings, and some seeds.

-Heartbreak Teardrops, which are actually a small bottle of pina colada mix.

-Pearls of wisdom, which re foam balls painted silver with glitter

-Sleeping Draught, which is simply some sprigs of rosemary, some coffee grounds in water, a branch of thorns from our rose bush, and some other random plants.

-Moonseed Mixture is a collection of whatever seeds I could find.

-And, Angels Trumpet Draught, which is made from more diluted coffee, garlic and onion peels, rose of Sharon seedpods, thorn branches, and some other random plants.

The longer they sit to fester, the better they look!

Then, I simply hot glued coffee filters onto the lids, wrapped with twine, and melted some crayons in spots to make a wax seal. 

For the rest of the display:

Candles: I held a crayon in the flame from a lighter and let it drip onto a candle (that's my bloody red one). For the other, I lit a brown candle and poured the wax over (much easier)

The cobwebs are made using a hot glue gun. You just let it heat up, add small dots of glue to spots and trail the residual "glue hair" along your props.

The other props are flowers from my garden, some rosemary, pine needles I collected and tied together, and  some fake black roses.

More and more lately it seems people don't really decorate for the holidays, which is baffling to me because it makes things so much more FUN! There are several ways to decorate for Halloween, on the cheap, too and decorations are easy to make! Happy Halloweening!

DIY Sheriff Woody Costume

Halloween is slowly approaching and that means it's time to start thinking about what your little one(s) are going to dress as for trick or treating. After much debate, Toddler Bee has decided he wants to be Sheriff Woody from one of his favourite movies, Toy Story. Awesome! It's a pretty simple costume and I'm sure it will be easy to find one.

So, we headed out to some stores to look for a Woody costume. Walmart was the only store that had one and it was $25 for a one-piece jumpsuit with hat. What the what?! I was standing there looking at this costume and thinking, "I could totally make that, and for a heck of a lot cheaper." And so the idea was born!

I'm a pretty crafty person but sewing is not at all my area of expertise. So, I wanted to make this as simple as possible.

I braved my local thrift store and happened to find the perfect yellow long-sleeve shirt for $4. Bargain.

After that, I bought a roll of white foam from the dollarstore for $1.50.

And, the dollarstore even had cowboy hats! I've never seen them there before, so it must have been a sign. The hat cost $2.

The rest of supplies I had at home: a red Sharpie, brown paint, gold paint, black sharpie, a straight edge, red paint, yellow paint, hot glue gun, patience. (Ok, so I was lacking a little on that last one)

The Steps:

I started by drawing red lines on the shirt to make it match Woody's (this is where you use your red Sharpie and straight edge).

Then, I cut two vest shapes from the white foam and drew on cowprint with a black Sharpie. The vest was hot glued onto the shirt.

Out of my white foam I made: the belt, belt buckle, and gun holster. I drew my bull's head onto a piece of foam, cut it out and glued it onto the oval for the buckle. I made a ribbon for the front of the holster out of the foam, too.

Make a badge out of your foam, paint it gold and write "Sheriff Woody" on it. That gets glued onto the vest.

Then, I decided to be ambitious and make boots. I grabbed my son's winter boots and wrapped them in white foam. It was a little tricky to get the boots totally wrapped but by this point I wasn't worried about perfection and didn't think he would really care if some blue sole was showing through. This part was a bit like assembling a puzzle; I had to cut, turn, shape and glue the pieces down to make it resemble a boot. But, mainly, I cut a piece long and tall enough to wrap around the boot just above the toe, made a semi-circle for the toe and filled in the bottom parts with more foam (confusing, no?). Then, I painted it brown, made some spurs from foam and cardboard and glued those on, too. None of the foam is actually glued to the boot, so these won't be forever cowboy boots.

Now, all that's left is to tie a red bandanna around his neck and add a string and loop to his back for the pull-string.

I am quite please with the outcome of this, especially since it's my first foray into costume making and it only cost about $8!