Halloween Decorations - Pumpkins

Our second week of decorations was pumpkins.  

First we made paper pumpkins and hung them from the window.  You can see the pumpkin The Captain made in preschool that we put up as well.

Another paper lantern

We got the pumpkin and the awesome gourd at the Pumpkin Festival (more on that in another post) also the white pumpkin in the next picture.  The mummy is a giant butternut squash I bought at the Farmer's market.  It should soup up nicely after Halloween.

The Captain painted these, though Johnny helped on the big one.  We grew that pumpkin, and I refuse to acknowledge it's slow goopy leaking and deterioration.  I made that pumpkin, darn it, and it WILL last until Halloween.  Also, I'm super impressed my The Captain's developing face drawing skills.  He put teeth and a tongue on his monster.  And hair and glasses.  He insists everything has glasses.  Must be because I wear mine every day.  At least my ego wants me believe that.

Here's the window from the outside.  The Captain did both of them in preschool.

These are our pumpkin cans.  Sorry for the lame picture.  We painted cans and put faces on them and wire handles.  

We put Christmas lights around them and turn them on almost every night.

We did all this two weeks ago, right before/in the beginning of my sickness, so sorry for the late posting.  I am catching up on things.  And since then, we added pumpkin bags full of leaves in front of our ghost tree.

October Wreath

This was one of the wreaths I've been most looking forward too.

Supplies

• Fun fur $12/yd online --you can make due with 1/2 yd, depending on the width, but the website I went through has a 1 yd minimum, which just means you should get your own group together to make them.  And lots of people would mean you could pick lots of colors and split shipping lots of ways.  
• 12 ping pong balls.  $4-- I actually used bigger Styrofoam balls from the dollar store, so I only spent $1
• Paint pen or Sharpie -- if your wreath is exposed to the elements, I'd recommend the paint.
• Hot glue gun
• Plastic shopping bags -- Free!

Total  around $20 with shipping

1) Cut the fur into two identical wreaths.  Mine ended up being huge.  I recommend making the center hole as small as you can and measuring the diameter on your door first.  

2) On the back of one of the wreaths, make 1 1/4" slits for the eyes.  

3) Paint circles on the ping pong balls.

4) Put a ring of hot glue around the eyeball.  Push the eyeball into the slit until the glue sticks to the fur, and the eyeball is exposed the way you like. Repeat for all 12 eyeballs.

5) For the brave, with fur sides in, sew the outer edge of the wreath together, leaving a hole to turn it right side out.  

6) With furry sides out, hot glue the center together.  For the non-sewers, hot glue the outer edge closed leaving a gap to stuff the wreath.

7) Stuff the wreath with plastic grocery bags.  

8) Hot glue the opening closed.  

9) Attach ribbon.  I just pinned mine on.  And hang on door.

My monster Monster Wreath

Halloween Decorations - Ghosts

We are a little out of control when it comes to Halloween at our house.  It is my second favorite holiday, and sooo much fun with a 3 year old.  Finally, it's time to start all those fun crafts I pin on Pinterest. Well, the easy ones anyway.

I put together a calender of crafts on The Captain's Preschool schedule so that we could do something on the days when he wasn't in school.  And I organized the crafts by theme every week.  So our first week we did ghost crafts.  Here's a look at what we did:

Ghost footprints and leaves

The Captain glued on the moons and trees and both children got their feet painted.  Joy was much more cooperative than I thought she'd be.  And we managed to keep things pretty clean.  The leaves we got from a tree in our back yard and spray painted.  

We stuffed garbage bags with the Styrofoam from my anniversary present that the children ripped apart and snowed all over my house.  This time clean up turned into something super fun.   

This is left over from last year, but still cool.

I bought this paper lantern at the dollar store along with a slew of other Halloween stuff.  Did I mention we are out of control?  This lights up, assuming I have batteries somewhere around here. 

Next episode . . . pumpkins!

Touch a Truck

Just like last year, the high school FFA club had a Touch-a-Truck fundraiser.  We were excited. 

Inside a livestock trailer

 But unlike last year, I brought my camera this time.  

Also, Johnny couldn't be there, so I had to keep track of 2 munchkins and take pictures all by myself.  I brought the stroller, that helped a little, but eventually squirmy Joy had to be let loose.  

And stroller pictures are so boring. 

this isn't as boring

 I only lost The Captain once when he left the fire truck to go make friends.  

One day he'll be happy I got him a nice picture of a fire truck.

He wasn't gone too long and other moms are pretty great about looking after somewhat stray children in my experience.  I occasionally return the favor for other people's kids.  Anyway, it was a great day.  

The only thing missing was a school bus, which unfortunately was The Captain's favorite thing last year.  Here's some other pictures: 

Anyone feeling faint? . . . Anyone?

Even big boys need a leg up sometimes.

Beep beep

Those tires must be huge to be bigger than this big boy.

I'm on a boat, y'all.

Commence Operation Baby Scoop

No escape Little One

September Wreath

This is our inspiration pic for the September wreath.  I must admit, I was motivated by a slight case of coveting.  Let me explain--I visited my sister's house right after she moved a few years ago and she had a similar wreath on her wall.  My coveting gene flared up, I just never thought I'd be able to reproduce something like it myself, and no idea where to get one since her neighbor had made it.  Then I got the idea to make a bunch of wreaths this year.  I'm not sure, but the whole wreath-every-month thing might have just been a big ploy to get to make this wreath.  Anyway, I have no intention of giving a how-to, mostly because this woman did an exceptional job.  And here's my version. 

Please ignore my otherwise bare walls.  I'm clearly not a decorator.

But, not to disappoint, I do have a wreath how-to for you.  I have a somewhat unhealthy obsession with school supplies, and since September is kind of a back-to-school month, I thought I'd inable my obsession celebrate with a school-themed wreath.  

Supplies

• Cardboard wreath  free
• 112 wooden pencils  $6
• ribbon
• sparkly fall leaves  $2
• Glue gun

Total  $8

1) Cut out a circle from a piece of cardboard.  Mine is not at all symmetric because I just eyeballed it.  You can use a bowl or a pencil on a string or something, but it does get all covered.

2) After trying a few different methods, I discovered it was easiest to group the pencils in threes and arrange them around the wreath.

3) Spread out the pencils so they are evenly distributed.  Glue them in place.

4) Fill in the gaps with another row of pencils.  I lined up the erasers of the second row with the metal of the first so they'd be even.  And glued them in place.  I also sharpened the pencils--about 56--by hand.  My fingers were black and my thumb really hurt.  I do not recommend doing this.  It's fine if you have an electric pencil sharpener, or some help, but it's really not fun alone.  

5) Add a bow and some leaves for a little pop and hang on your door to enjoy.

Summer Updates

Since autumn is upon us, I guess this is a good time to remember all the fun things we've done this summer.  That I recorded on my phone because I can't seem to bring my good camera anywhere.

Some sibling love in Walmart, on Joy's birthday.  These two are great friends and get along really well most of the time.

The Museum of Transportation

 This is Joy's growling trick she spontaneously started doing this summer.  I finally got a recording of it, though she normally has sound effects to go with it.

Climbing in the engine room

Another future engineer?

Our friend (pictured with The Captain) took us boating.  It was a huge step towards getting The Captain to love the water.

Miss Joy, of course, snuggled in her life jacket and took a nap.

The Captain actually went out on a tube.  He took his squirt gun and was a regular James Bond, shooting people while tubing.

 Joy is getting really good at standing by herself.

She can take like 7 steps in a row, I promise, but she simply refuses to do it when I am trying to record her.  And the last few days she'll stand up and walk without trying to make it to Daddy.  So she'll be running after her brother soon enough.

We went to Charlottesville 2 weeks ago and they had a great play area in the mall.  It was fun for The Captain and Joy climbed all the way up here by herself.

For those who missed it on Facebook, I took this video the other day of Joy making it down the stairs.  She seemed so uninterested in learning to do this, but Johnny has been working with her and it totally paid off.  Now she's talented and speedy.

Projects part 1

For the second day in a row it is raining and pouring, which I am taking as a sign to put off my chores and catch up on the blog. So expect some posts in the next few days.

So, I mentioned back in May that I had a lot of projects lined up to do in the summer, which was true, and of course, I couldn't get through all of them before Seminary started again and my free time was commandeered by teenagers.  But as I also mentioned, not all of them waited until Seminary was over before moving up from the back burner.  This is one of those projects:

I got the idea from Pinterest (isn't that where all current craft ideas are born?) and after about 100 hours of work, it is finally finished, and well before I thought it would be. I was pretty sure I'd be latch hooking this baby until Christmas.

I bought a 36"x60" blank latch hook rug.  I cut t-shirts and sweatshirts into 1"x4" strips.  Lots of them.  That I got for $2 at a yard sale. I counted them -- over 10,000

I dyed them pink and gray and separated them into two very full diaper boxes (that fit 72 size 3 diapers).

The gray one looks more full because it has more sweatshirts in it, but really they were pretty much even.

Then I started filling them in, 31 in every square and after 7 thousand years, I was 1/4 of the way done.

I guess in my defense, I did take a vacation during this part, but still, this was definitely the longest section.  It took me awhile to figure out the fastest and best way to hook things on.

The rug was ridiculously intimidating at this point.

In order to motivate myself into not cutting the rug in half when I reached the halfway point and calling that good enough, I decided to checkerboard.

Halfway done!

And to be extra nice to myself, I left that bonus square for the last quarter.  By this point I learned that doing an entire row at a time was much faster than one square at a time, so things were speedier.  Also, I didn't have bare rug back scratching my knuckles and I had something nice to sit on.  

I learned to bind the rug before you start so you can machine stitch it on.  I had to hand sew mine on and it almost took longer than my patience could stand.  But as you can see, it makes a great wrestling mat.

After this huge project, you would think I learned my lesson, but I bought stuff for a rag rug before I even finished the binding on this.  I think I may have a crafting addiction . . .