Trick or Treat!

Here are some cuties!

A few years ago I had a child dragging his bag on the pavement, since he was tired, and he lost a lot of candy.  So imagine the devastation we were dealing with!   

I decided enough of that!  We are going to use the reusable shopping bags for now on.  I was lucky enough to find these bags at our local grocery store and bought four (and so did my friend).  The next year I wrote names on the bottom of the handle so nobody was fighting about their candy bag.

I love these bags and I heard a few comments tonight about them and how cool they were.  Hopefully you'll be able to find some tomorrow during the day after Halloween sales that your checking out.  They may not be on clearance but they are really only a dollar or two so it's well worth it.  I have used these ones for 3 years now.  The bottoms are just starting to wear thin in a couple spots.  I will be looking for replacements tomorrow but I'm going to hold out for cool ones!  

Who's to say I can't lift up the black plastic bottom at throw down a piece of duct tape to cover that half inch slit on the bottom if I don't find that special Halloween bag?  If I could find some skull duct tape I would even stick it on the outside!

Hope you had a happy and safe Halloween.

Spiderweb Cupcakes

Who are these for????  Famous question in my house.   Life is so busy, anytime that I bake something there is usually a good reason.  It generally consists of giving the baked good away.  So my kids are always very excited when I can say, "for you guys".

Here's what you will need:

cupcakes

white, orange, purple, or green frosting

small amount of black frosting, small tube with a small circle tip or you will need a baggie

knife or toothpick

These are super easy!  Just whip up your favorite cupcake recipe and frost with your favorite frosting.

Get your black frosting.  I cheated and bought a tube of black for this batch since I didn't need very much at all.  You either want to put the frosting in a baggie and snip a very little hole or use a decorating tip with a small hole.  I like to practice my method on a paper plate first to get the right consistency.

Make some bullseyes.

I noticed that this tube of black frosting needs to be pushed down into the white just a little bit so the web turns out better, otherwise your black piping might roll as you pull the knife or toothpick through.

Wet your index finger and lightly tap the black piping down.

Then grab a butter knife or toothpick and start at the center of your bullseye and lightly drag a strait line out to the edge (you don't have to go too deep into the frosting), repeat 5 or 6 times.  You may need to wipe off the knife or toothpick several times to keep your work clean.

When your webs are done you can add a scary spider to the middle.

I was putting the black on these yesterday when my kids got home and my 9 year old son wanted to help.  He thought it was awesome!  This is easily a project that the kids would love to help with.

Scary Tree

Well, it's not really a scary tree, but it could be!  I have seen these and they are so cute!  The idea?  Pick up stray branches from around your yard, spray paint them black and put them in a container of some sort and decorate.  I found my branches, on clearance last year after Halloween, at Kmart.  They have LED lights woven into them.  I definitely think that the random branches outside would be really a lot more cute than my long straggly branches.












I started out with a vase and wrapped orange paper around it and stuck it to the glass with double stick tape.

Then I wrapped the ribbon around to break up all the orange.  I cut the bats out on my Cricut and used wall tacky to stick them to my branches and vase.

 I let the kids stick the bats to the branches and turn it on.

Here is my outdoor one with spray painted branches.

Shazzaaam!  A cheap and cute Halloween project that is relatively easy!

Robot and Trash Can Costumes

The robot needs to take out the trash!

Savage Kids 2011

 Last Halloween I had a boy who wanted to be a robot and a girl who wanted to be a trash can.
Let the adventure begin!

Jer-bot robot

Jerod's costume didn't take much as you can imagine.  We have a box covered in foil and silver dryer duct tape.  We made some gauges put some fuses on him and used dryer vent hose for his arms.  And of course the Cricut came in handy to make the letters and circles that I cut in half for the gauges, as well as those cool arrows.

trash can girl

Shayla was my trash girl.  Her costume was a little more work but fun all the same.  Her father got to play with his sawzall and cut a big hole in the bottom of the can as well as a hole for her head.  We used pool noodles on the bottom of the can to protect her legs from the hard plastic and any sharp edges left behind.  (My kids are very hands on so she spray painted the purple noodle black to blend in, can't you tell?)  Also to make it a little easier on her we attached 2 big bungee cords to the bottom of her costume and she had noodles wrapped around those and wore the bungees in the fashion of suspenders so she wouldn't have the can pressing down on her shoulders too much.  She added the little "Candy Drop" hole herself since she didn't have arm holes she held her bag under the hole to catch her goodies.  And she also added the cockroaches.  Our cockroaches did not like to stick to that can though so we had some struggles with that.  It seems that clear packing tape worked the best.

The great thing is that the can is now used to put our soda cans in for recycling.  It works great to hold that huge black bag.  The kids like to keep the lid upside down for a funnel effect, until the can gets too full, then they flip it over.

These costumes were great, I love that the kids came up with the idea and helped out.  The hard thing for them was that they were rather limited on movement and took them off during festivities.  I wanted to get my garbage girl dingy and gross to go with the can but she said no way.  What fun is that?

Halloween Banner

I really love the fall.  With the beautiful colors and more tolerable weather you just want to be outside more to enjoy it.  As far as scrap booking goes, Halloween is one of my favorite holidays to scrapbook. I love the rich oranges, greens and purples.  These colors definitely work together in my 

Happy Halloween banner.

laying out the paper 

Making the banner is actually quite easy, but it isn't a 5 minute project.  I cut all my circles and squares 5 1/2".  I made my Cricut do all the hard labor on that.  I also cut black circles and squares 5 3/4" to go behind my colorful ones so they would pop a just a little bit more.

I cut the letters in all capitals, choose your favorite font!  I also cut the same letter in Shadow on the Cricut to have the black one behind the colored one.  I used glittered paper and alternated lime green and orange.

I laid the letters out on top of my colored paper. 

I laid everything out on the table to make sure I thought all the colors went well together before I started to glue it all together.  No orange letters on orange shapes for me.  Once I was happy with my banner I started to stick the colored letter to the black letter.  Since I used glitter paper I needed a heavy duty adhesive to make sure the letters would stay stuck.  I used my Xyron 5" Permanent adhesive.  If you don't have one of these you might want to make that investment.  (I did put double sided tape on one of my letters and realized I don't have the time or patience for that process.)

I used double stick tape to put the colored shape onto black shape and made my hole punches for the ribbon.

 I eyeballed the holes for my hole puncher.  I didn't want them to all be exact so the irregularity would be played up.

tie letters together

I used a variety of colorful Halloween ribbon to tie my letters together.  I love ribbon!  Use fairly long pieces of at least 6" long to allow room for each letter to move independently from it's partner.  I like having longer pieces of ribbon between my letters on the banner but you can trim them to however long you want them.

close up

On the very ends of your banner you may want to tie on extra long ribbon to drape your banner across your window or mantel or hang on a couple of nails.  I used wall tacky on the back of each letter and stuck it to the wall.  You may also rather have one long banner instead of two.  Have fun!