Halloween

Paper Plate Spiders 

(thanks to Rachel of iheartcraftythings.com)

So, we've all explored pinterest by now, haven't we? Well, I found this cool idea on pinterest! I thought this would make the perfect craft for kids young and old, and they can be used to decorate your home for years to come!

First, let's get down to the basic necessities:

To do this craft, you will need 

• small paper plates (large size could be used as well, to have large spiders and small spiders) It takes 2 plates to build a spider
• acrylic paint (any color you choose
• googly eyes (the website uses these to decorate the spiders, but you can also let your kids draw on the plate to make them more unique)
• pipe cleaners for the legs 
• paint brushes
• kids glue (glue won't be necessary if you choose not to use the googly eyes)
• scissors
• stapler
• string

1. You begin by painting the bottoms of 2 plates and allow to dry completely.
2.  Once dry, now it is time for the spider to grow legs! Begin by taking 8 pipe cleaner sticks and bending them slightly so that they resemble spider legs. With the two plates held tight together, place the legs (4 on each side) in between the 2 plates. 
3. While still keeping the plates together with the legs in place, use the stapler to staple the plates (and the legs to hold them in place).
4. Now is the time to get creative with your spiders. You can choose to use the googly eyes, or draw pictures. For the googly eyes, she said to use 8 eyes per spider (the eye sizes can vary), so you would just need to glue the eyes to one side of the plate. (you could also put eyes on both sides of the plates). If you choose to have your kids draw their own pictures, I will leave it up to you to provide your own rules.
5. To finish it off, punch a hole in the top of your spiders and tie a string through the hole to hang your new spiders!

 

Halloween munchies and treats.

        I just want to show my excitement about living in a historic town like Natchitoches, LA.(you know, the town where the popular Julia Roberts movie, Steel Magnolias was filmed). Well, every year around this time, the city workmen are busy getting the Christmas lights up for this years festival(and Christmas season). We are known as the City of Lights, not to be confused with Paris. They have been working since the beginning of this month to get the lights up, and are now almost finished! I have been living here my whole life so far, and I still get excited about this.

Though, my favorite part about this, and what I cannot wait for is when they have completed getting all the lights up and begin testing them at night. This usually happens around the beginning of November, before they do the annual "Turn on the Holidays" when they officially turn on the lights towards the end of November. What I love about the beginning of November is being able to walk downtown with my dogs to see the lights on for the "unofficial" first time. I just hope the weather will cool down some, soon...


Ok, now back to Halloween..

The holiday is creeping up on us. For the remaining days of this week, I will be making Halloween cookies. I am no cook, so I get the pre-made Pillsbury Halloween shape cookies®.

Yeah, I know, any one can do this, right? I guess it has been made into a tradition in my family(well, a tradition in the making) to bake these cookies.

I remember last Halloween, I took the Toll-house Pumpkin Pals® pre-cut cookies and iced them with black and orange squeezable, store-bought icing.

     I also took the orange dough(pumpkins and all) and rolled it out again so I could use my own Halloween cookie-cutters. This would be a great activity to involve kids in. I always enjoyed the times when my mom let us decorate our own cookies. And, of course we liked getting our hands messy, too.

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Much ado about Pumpkins!

October is not only breast cancer awareness month: it's Pumpkin Month! Time to start thinking of how you want to carve those pumpkins. There are more things to do with pumpkins than hollowing them out, giving them a face, and illuminating them.

When I was younger, one of my favorite Halloweens I had was when we held a family pumpkin carving contest, to see who came up with the most creative(or scariest) pumpkin. It was a lot of fun for us as kids being involved in competition with our parents. I don't believe our winner got anything special, I honestly do not remember. But, there are many possibilities such as being able to display their pumpkin where it can seen better, or rewarding with candy and sweets from trick-or-treating, or baked goods.


One thing I have always wanted to try with a pumpkin is to carve it as they do on the Food Network Halloween Challenge, when they make it 3D.

 

It is sculpted, finding the face(picture) within the pumpkin, as they do with marble and stone sculptures. This is more advanced, having to use a paring knife(sometimes power tools, drills). Therefore, if you want to try this out, I would recommend only for adults.

Pumpkins are also good for home decor. One idea I found when looking through a Better Homes and Garden's 2010 Oct. magazine was this:

This isn't a normal pumpkin though; Gourd is the right term. You could use a regular pumpkin and get the same results, as well. All you do is take a maple leaf(it doesn't have to be the actual leaf. There are many printable cut-outs on the Web), trace it using a black fine point marker or pen, then cut out the traced pattern, lightly slicing into the gourd so you get the yellow background color for the leaf. And it does not have to be a maple leaf specifically. Other fall leaves like ginkgo, oak, elm, or aspen leaves will create a "fall feeling" just as well. You could even do a combination of leaves, just don't overwhelm your gourd with leaves, making it too busy. You still want to recognize it as a gourd.

I also just discovered this other creative idea for decorating your home with pumpkins:

This is a cute idea for displaying your home address number during this Autumn season. You don't even need to use a stencil. Draw on the pumpkin however you want your numbers to look, and trace it as it is done with the maple leaf gourd(pumpkin) from above.

 This was my attempt at the maple leaf carving. As you can see it works just as well with a pumpkin, so a gourd is not necessary. This was a lot of fun, too! ---If you enjoy working with your hands, and the tediousness of sculpting and then scraping out the traced design. This requires patience.

I also carved another small pumpkin like this one, into a regular Halloween jack-o-lantern face. Carving in this way will help your pumpkins to stay fresher, longer. I will post a picture of that pumpkin later. Although, I do recommend, if you are going to let your children participate in this type of pumpkin carving, to only let them dig out the traced design. And make sure they use a dull tool. An adult will have to make the incision following the tracings with a sharp knife, then the kids can use a dull (sturdy plastic, maybe) kind of tool to scrape out that tracing. I am saying this because I had an injury in the making of my second pumpkin like this, because I was using an x-acto knife to dig out my traced marks. And when you do this, what ever tool you are using will get stuck in a rut of the pumpkin and you will have to yank to finish slicing through the thick, outer layer of the pumpkin. When mine did this, and I yanked, my thumb was in the path of the knife and you can see where this is leading. So just be wary about having your children carve. You be the one to judge on how much of the activity you let your kids partake in.