Halloween 2012

I can't believe I haven't documented our Halloween yet!  It's never too late to talk about Halloween you know...but I will be dating it back to October so it is in the right archives.  :)

We started out our evening by taking costume pictures, of course.  I honestly would have been happy to just sit there and take pictures of them all afternoon.  But can you believe they actually wanted to stop so they could go trick or treating?  The nerve.

Without further ado, here is K1 as Clark Kent! 

I loved this costume because it cost us nothing.  He just wore his church clothes and he already had a superman shirt.  I know Clark Kent has glasses but I didn't feel like trying to track any down and just conveniently didn't tell him that Clark had any.  :)  Only one person out of a hundred mentioned the lack of glasses so I think we were okay...everyone knew who he was supposed to be without them.

 

K1 lost his top tooth on the Sunday before Halloween (which he made me pull out, the little stinker.  It was very unnerving, but luckily it didn't hurt him) .  I love his new toothless grin!

Next up, K2 as Princess Tiana! (I know...its a stretch...but I made this costume the day before Halloween... we had to improvise).  At first she was really wanting to be a ninja (which would have probably just been an all black outfit with a head wrap or something).  I really wanted her to be Tinker Bell since that is the material I had (for the one we would have made for Disneyland), but she really didn't want to.  But once she saw her little sister's pretty princess dress she decided that she wanted to be a princess too.  Again, not wanting to have to buy a costume, we had a ZING moment where we realized that Tiana ALSO had a green dress and we could use the Tinker Bell Material to make it.  Perfect!

K2 was thrilled with her costume and she and her sister had such a grand time coming down the stairs and announcing each other at the princess ball ("Introduciiiiing Snow White!") and having princess dance parties.

My daughter makes a very beautiful princess...but I am little biased.  :)  I actually ended up using Make it and Love It's Tinker Bell tutorial here for her leotard thing, but made some leafy modifications to the front to make it look more like Tiana's dress.  And of course I had to ad sleeves even though Tiana's dress doesn't because K2 has been on a huge "I need to be modest" kick lately.  Which is every mother's dream...I just hope it lasts!  The most ironic thing is that she didn't want to be Tinker Bell, but it actually ended up preeety much looking like a Tinker Bell costume.  Too funny!

And then of course we just did a tulle tutu for the skirt.  I was going to make gloves for her and stuff but we ran out of time.  Thankfully she didn't seem to mind.

K3 is next.  A few words about her dress:  It was a beast.  Luckily I was able to finish it in roughly one Saturday afternoon (only because my husband held down the fort for me and pretty much pretended like I wasn't there so I could get it done).  I think if I had started it in the morning I would have been able to finish it in one day, but I didn't have time.  I am glad that I can now say I've made a little girls dress but there are so many things I would do differently next time.  Apparently when I bought the material a year ago (the dress was originally supposed to be made for our trip to Disneyland, but that didn't happen) I didn't realize that the top part was all blue, and that the sleeves were light blue with red...so I just improvised with what I had.  I wished I would have had the stretchy blue fabric for the front though because the silky stuff I had didn't have enough give, and it had torn several times by the end of her first night wearing it.  Oh well.  She was THRILLED with it and has actually worn it all day every day since Halloween (it is now officially torn and trashed, but she doesn't seem to mind).  Thankfully she is also a very thankful little girl and tells me at least 6 times a day "Thank you mommy for making my best dress EVER!".  So I guess all the stress in making it was worth it. :)

Without further ado, K3 as Snow White!

This next one is what she looked like when I told her to smile like a princess.  Interesting...

Her poses make me laugh.  She is so kooky sometimes.

  

The sleeves were actually really fun to make.  I found the tutorial here.  I would definitely make them a little puffier next time.  Oh, and I used the basic form for her dress from Make it and Love it's Cinderella costume here.  I wanted the bottom to be fuller so I did two layers of the satiny fabric with two layers of yellow tulle in between.  It turned out cute.  The white collar was something I made up and it kept falling down, so that was an epic fail.  But it did the job.

All in all it was actually really fun to make.  I think I would enjoy doing something like it again if I give myself more time to do it next time.  :)  But she sure is cute and she has always reminded me of Snow White.

The kids had lots of fun trick or treating this year.  The kids' first stop was our wonderful next door neighbors.  They are seriously the best neighbors a girl could ask for.  They are currently letting me use their dryer since ours bit the dust and we don't have money to buy a new one yet.  They gave me a spare key and I can go over there during the day while they are at work.  Such nice people.

Anyways, we had lots of fun.  I, of course, just followed the kids around and took pictures, since that is my favorite thing to do.  :)

Poor K3 was left behind a lot because K1 and K2 would book it to every door and were a lot faster than her.  The two kids were actually really good at going back and bringing K3 with them before they would actually knock, but every once in a while we would here a sweet little voice saying "Don't forget Snow Whiiiiite!" coming from behind us.

It just melted my heart.  I know I will miss these days of having my kids so cute and little.  K3 isn't one to be upset...she was mostly being matter of fact in her tone of voice.  As if no one would actually forget the center of the universe.  :)  It always made us all laugh and so later on she would say it just to be funny.

These next two pictures showed the funny face she got at one point when she was really, really trying to keep up with the older two.

So funny!  I also love how she would lift up her dress like a princess as she walked.

A cute picture of all three of them.

Oh Wait!  I have FOUR kids!  At one point I had forgotten that we didn't get any pictures of all four of the kids together (K4 had been taking a nap when the kids first set off trick or treating).  So we all ran back real quick to take some pictures with him before it got too dark.

Ha, ha!  K4 looked reeeeallly concerned in that last picture!

Our cute little skeleton.  I feel bad that I actually didn't remember to include K4 in a lot of the picture festivities...but the older kids are just so overwhelming with holidays like this so it was easy to forget. I feel bad though because when all my other kids were his age they got a lot of pictures taken of them in their Halloween costume.  The poor last child.   :)  He is an expert at sitting up now, and I got one good picture of him in his costume before the light faded completely.

 I hope everyone had a Happy Halloween!

Night Shot

The past few years I have forgotten to take outside night pictures of some of the Halloween decor, so I thought I'd finally share a few!

Here are our carved pumpkins on our spooky pedestals outside.

Here is our witch and cats all lit up:

Honestly, I'm not the best at doing night shots.  These look pretty awful but you get the main idea.  We moved the rat crates up to the front flower bed this year for better visibility and added accent lighting.  If you look closely you can see the silhouette of a rat on the side of the crate.  

I might need to try and do a video of them next year, because it looks pretty amazing when its all lit up...worthy of Disneyland, I'm sure.  Don't let the awful pictures fool you.  :)

We used these flicker pumpkin lights (you can find them at Walmart or Kmart) as spotlights. They are amazingly bright and flicker just like a candle.

I may or may not have a whole bag of these...

Witch Silhouettes {free printables}

  I finally completed one of my favorite projects for this year...my witch silhouette wall!

  If you ask me, Halloween decor isn't complete without a few ladies in black!

I had a lot of inspiration for this project.  The first one came from Out of the Attic.  She is another witch lover like me, and I have gotten a ton of ideas from her decorations.  She had these lovely witches above her coat hooks that I just loved:

My other inspiration came from a shop on Etsy.  She had the most darling witch silhoette for sale:

At first I wanted to just copy her silhouette directly because it was so darn cute, but I decided to just use it purely as inspiration and make my silhouettes completely my own.  That way I could feel a little better about sharing my drawings. Yes, I'm going to share!  You can find the PDF's to download at the end of this post.

So to start my project, I printed out my scanned picture of my witches.  I used the darling Nessarose as my example (each of my silhouettes has a name).  There are many different mediums you can use to create silhouettes, but I chose the paper route.

 I cut out her out and traced her with a pencil on black paper.  I found it helpful to use a little bit of adhesive or tape to keep the stencil from moving around too much.

 Then I cut out Nessarose in black, and used my spooky damask paper and white oval from last year.  Isn't she a beauty?

And then of course I repeated the process for her sisters. I love how they turned out!

Time to make your own!  Feel free to print these out and see what you can do.

Download Nessarose here

Download Brunhilda Here

Download Elphaba Here

Download Zelda Here

Sorry Zelda.  I didn't fit you into the decor this year, but since I had a baby in April there will be another frame up here for you in time for next year.  :)

Witch Sign {part 1}

Have you ever seen THIS sign post from Better Homes and Gardens floating around the web? It has been my dream to recreate this for several years now...and I think this is finally going to be the year that it happens!

Last year my dear Halloween friend (she gets mentioned a lot on this blog, doesn't she) taught me how to make fake wood signs out of insulation using the technique found HERE.  So we got that all cut out, etched in, and painted black...but then things got crazy and it didn't get finished.  With Halloween finally coming around again this year, I whipped the sign out and gave it the final gray dry brush layer for the top.

And here she is close up.  I, of course, did a witches inn, because I love witches.

If I could do this over again (which I might if I have way too much time on my hands one of these years) I would make the lettering a lot bigger so that it could be seen better from further away, but this will do for now.  I'll also need to re-do the "established" part so that it is a little darker.  

There are always vacancies at my hotel...mwa-ha-haaa.

There is obviously a lot that still needs to be done.  I need to find some sort of chain to hang these from, for starters.  I also need the actual sign post to hang it from.

I love how on the BHG website tutorial they say to just grab your trusty old sign post as part of the project.  Sorry, I'm fresh out of vintage sign posts.  So I guess I'll have to make my own.

This part ended up being a lot more expensive than I would have liked, but I really wanted the fancy scroll work and stuff, so I grabbed a landing newel from Home Depot to use as the main part of my sign post.

I also grabbed some 50% off iron work and another 2 inch square long "stick" for the cross beam.

It is yet to be seen if I can pull this off the way I imagine it in my head.  But that will have to be a project for another day.

Just in Case...

It is amazing how much Pinterest has transformed the world of crafts since last October.  I was actually a compulsive "bookmarker" (I seriously had billions of bookmarks on my toolbar split up into a hundred different categories), so it was a natural transition for me to switch to Pinterest.  The best part is that now I get to see what everyone else has been "bookmarking" too!

Early in the year I saw a pin for a clever little shadow box that said, "In case of Vampire Attack, Break Glass".  I saw this idea and knew I had to do it.  (link to tutorial here)

Funniest party about this project is that I pinned it, then my Halloween friend immediately pinned it too.  The VERY NEXT DAY (no joke), my friend showed up at my door with a whittle out stake (made out of an old broomstick, I believe) just for me.  When making her own she told her son to make two so that I could have one too (yes, this was back in March).  Oh how I love my fellow Halloween crazy friends!

With the hardest part already done, I really had no excuse to not finish the project that weekend.  The rest of the project was easy.  I grabbed a $5 12 x12 shadowbox from the Craft store, got a paint pen from Walmart (the finer the tip, the easier this project will be), and got to work.  You can print off the words from the link above, or you could easily use any font you want on your own. It only took me about 15 minutes to paint the lettering on. 

And here is the finished project:

I have a couple of ideas using this same technique that I hope I get around to doing this year...

And there you have it!  An easy half an hour project for you to do before Halloween sets in.

My Halloween board on Pinterest is here if you would like to follow!

A Little Dusty

It has been a long hibernation, but I'm happy to be back!

September 1st is the first day of decorating around here. Although my husband and kids all know it is just the START...and it will actually take a few weeks to get it all up.  A nice bout of sickness in our home on September 2nd stopped us dead in our tracks, so we are getting a slow start.  But I'm not too concerned. Although there is much to do, there is still plenty of time.

The first few days of unpacking Halloween are always spent making minor repairs from last years' mishaps.  Take my candelabra, for example.  After being toted around to three different Halloween parties last season, she kind of bit the dust.

But no worries.  My trusty glue gun will have her fit as a trivet in no time.

Such is the scene around here.  While we are clearing off the dust (just so we can put it back on), I have a few projects I have been working on that I am excited to show off.  Be sure to check back next week to see what they are!