I hope everyone enjoys a fantastic Halloween!! It's going to be a bit treacherous for our trick-or-treating tonight, as it snowed about 4 inches here over the weekend. In October. In Pennsylvania. That NEVER happens!
This was the way our backyard looked at the height of our Cousins' Halloween Party:
Needless to say, the bobbing for apples was a no-go. Since I never get to see my sisters' and sister-in-law's kids on Halloween, I had them all over on Saturday so they could show off their costumes. It was fun, and kind of hilarious to see our mums and pumpkins covered with snow. I still can't believe it.
Here are some photos from the party:
My newest niece, Molly. She was a cute little cat!
My niece, Madison, was a pink poodle. How adorable is that costume?
My nephew, Nicholas, was "blackmail." Teen humor!
Gavin as a scary skeleton
My nephew, Joey, is missing his front teeth. Perfect costume!
My nephew Reese.
My nephew Kevin was a hamburger. His costume was a little cumbersome!
The kids turned down my idea of dressing like chimney sweeps for Halloween. I was going to be Mary Poppins, with my three little chimney sweeps in tow. Alas, they failed to share my vision.
Charlotte insists on being Cinderella. My novice sewing skills couldn't handle that one, so a dress was promptly ordered.
The boys were a bit less opinionated. With the promise of some black and white face-paint on Halloween, they agreed to be skeletons.
I picked up Hanes sweatpants and sweatshirts at Wal-Mart for $5 a piece. Then, I bought 10 sheets of white felt. Using stencils of bones, and some artistic license, I traced the bones on the felt and cut it out. Then I used fabric glue to affix the felt to the sweatshirt and sweatpants.
If my children were in a cooperative mood, I would have gotten some shots of them actually IN the costumes. No dice.
Happy Halloween, friends! Do you have any Halloween traditions? One of our favorites is visiting a local resident who carves amazing pumpkins. She lives in a rather secluded neighborhood, and never used to get any trick-or-treaters. One year, she carved one pumpkin, and got one trick-or-treater. The next year, she carved three pumpkins, and got three trick-or-treaters. Well, this tradition has continued to grow. She now has HUNDREDS of jack o' lanterns on her front yard. To accomplish this task, she takes the week before Halloween off of work, and her family and friends come from all around to help her carve. She is always so gracious -- she has candy for the kids and lots of fun Halloween decorations to look at.
These photos could never do her justice...they were taken with my iPhone. It's an amazing sight to see hundreds of carved pumpkins flickering on her lawn.
Aren't they amazing? I'm in awe every year. These photos are from last year. This year she had a terrific Beatles pumpkin that I wish I got a photo of. Maybe next year.
Speaking of decorating for Halloween, would you like to see my $1.10 table decoration?
Yesterday, on a trip to the dollar store, I found the white sparkly skull. I thought he was cute, so he came home with me. A few weeks ago, I bought a bunch of books at the thrift store for $0.10 a piece for another project. I ripped out a few pages and ran them through my shredder. (The book is Emma by Jane Austen, by the way. Yes, I feel a little guilty about shredding great literature, but since it was only 10 cents, I figured I'd be forgiven.) The spider ring was something Gavin brought home from daycare. I snipped the ring part off and hot glued it to the skull. Halloween decorating, on the cheap!
The BEST news is that my sister, Audrey, gave birth to a beautiful, healthy, super-cute baby boy named Kevin.
Oh my goodness, you have no idea how smitten I am with this little boy. Perhaps it is because I have the honor of being his Godmother (so excited), but I seriously could just eat him up. Audrey and her husband Andrew are two of the kindest, most generous, most thoughtful people I know, and this little guy is just so lucky. Could you not stare at that photo for hours, just admiring his perfect little mouth? LOVE.
Also, I am in the middle of completing my thesis for a Masters in Reading, and a huge part of it was due this past week. I haven't gone to bed before midnight in days. Thus, the blog was a little neglected this week. I'm hoping that since a large chuck of the thesis is now out of the way, I'll have more time to write. It won't be finished for-real until December. Can. Not. Wait.
So, the real reason for this post is to show you my Halloween mantle. It's nothing too fancy, because as you are now aware -- I've had limited time lately! It includes some ideas I've seen floating around the web. ("Floating" around the web. Ha ha! It's funny because I'm talking about ghosts! Get it?)
Okay, so the stuff on the topiaries is cheesecloth. It was supposed to look creepy and spider-webby, but I think it just looks like cheesecloth draped over topiaries. Maybe because it's wrinkled? Maybe it's because you can see seams in it? Oh well, next year maybe I'll try those fake cottonball cobwebs.
I painted the ghosts on the mirror with white Tempura paint. It just washes off. Easy! (Ignore the spots on my mirror, please!
This pumpkin planter is my favorite. It was an antique flea market find.
I used one of my Halloween Cupcake Toppers on the inside of the apothecary jar, and filled it with candy corn. I love using candy corn, because I think it looks so cute, and there is absolutely NO temptation to eat them. Yuck. You can download the cupcake toppers here.
And there you have it! My *kind-of-lame-because-I'm-so-busy* Halloween mantle!
Do you love Halloween as much as I do? Do you love cupcakes as much as I do? I thought so. Well then, today is your lucky day! I made some Halloween circle tags that you can download and print!
If you've never used circle tags before, here are some ideas.
Cupcake Toppers
I often use these tags as cupcake toppers. Here are the toppers I used for Mother's Day. These were created by Kim at The Tomkat Studio and were free to download and print!
Favor or Gift Tags
I've also used them as favor tags. Since my sister's baby shower had a ladybug theme, my mom baked delicious ladybug cookies. She put the cookies in individual cellophane bags and affixed the tags to the back using double-sided tape. (Unfortunately, I can only find a photo of the front of the cookies, so you can't see the tags. But you can see one of them in the centerpiece photo below.) You could print the tags out on label paper that has a sticky back, and just stick these to whatever you want. But, the double-sided tape gave the tags a bit of a 3-D appearance, which looked great.
I created some simple ones to use as favor tags for my cousin's baby shower. Jars of honey were used as the favor, so my mom punched small holes in the tags and tied them around the jars.
Centerpieces
At the ladybug baby shower, we hot glued some of the circle tags to skewers and placed them in the centerpieces. The tags were created by Sunday Girls Designs. They have a shop on Etsy, and were excellent to work with!
And just because I think she looks so cute, here's a photo of Charlotte at that baby shower. What a little lady! Note the ladybug dress and matching headband. My super-talented mom made those!
Here are the Halloween circle tags I created, just for you! You will need sturdy white card stock, and a 2-inch circle or scalloped punch. (Full disclosure: when I first started to use tags, I didn't have the circle punch. I used a compass to trace circles around them and cut them out by hand. Invest in a circle punch! It is SOOO much easier!)
1. Follow the link (below) to print them out.
2. Cut them into strips.
3. Center your punch to cut them out.
And there you have it!
Feel free to download and print, and use them however you wish! I uploaded them to a site called Scribd. You *may* need to create a login in order to download them...I'm not sure! If you do use them, PLEASE send me a photo that I can share on my blog! (Leave a comment, and I'll send you my email if you don't have it!)
Hi. I'm so glad you found my little blog. I like HGTV, sharpened pencils, palindromes, and enchiladas. I have three little kids. My twins, Charlotte and Gavin, are five, and their latest favorite activity is waking up unGodly early. Nathan is my little guy. He likes to refuse to eat anything but chips for dinner. As you can imagine, things are busy. I blog about a little of everything: parenting, crafting, decorating, and pretty things. To add to the fun, I teach first grade full-time. Thanks for stopping by!
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