Happy Halloween!

From Cold Weather Dora and Hunter Man.

I used Handmade Mommy’s 15-minute jammy pants tutorial for the Dora pants (I had a ton of orange fleece leftover from the goldfish I did NOT turn T into for Halloween last year.  I needed to use it.  ;-).  I bought a witches wig at Wal-Mart and gave it a bad haircut - just like Dora.  (PS – those pants were so easy.  I’m going to buy a bunch of fleece and flannel to make us all a huge stack of “comfy pants” for winter).

Little Man was supposed to be Boots the Monkey (Dora’s sidekick) but had a change of heart two days ago.  He decided he wanted to be a hunter.  Pretty easy, what with everything already in his closet - but I didn’t have a vest for him.  Enter more of the orange fleece and I threw this vest together this morning flying by the seat of my pants.  We borrowed the toy gun and he was complete.

Dora isn’t complete without Backpack, of course.  I made Backpack loosely following At Second Street’s tutorial. (I drew out my own pattern, own dimensions, added a pocket for Map and didn’t make the straps adjustable – I wasn’t joking when I said loosely followed).  Map is just a piece of rolled cardstock I quickly drew a face on with Sharpies.

Notice the animal in Backpack?  Yeah – that would be our back up Boots the Monkey.  I took a stuffed animal and quickly made some red felt booties for him – but he rode in Backpack all night.

My kids both loved their costumes – and helping make them!

Hope you had a Happy Halloween!

 

BOO!

Jack o Lantern Fun

I snatched this idea from a friend on Pintrest earlier this week.

Source

But Jodi, that is a snowman and it’s fall.

Yes yes.  I know.

How about a jack o lantern instead?

Monkey wanted to make a happy pumpkin.  I used white chalk to outline our facial features and Monkey cut most of it out.  I just used rolled scotch tape on the backs and let the kids put them where they wanted.

Easy peasy fun.

Fall Fun

Yes, it’s mid-September but here in Northern Maine, the fall weather hit us this weekend.

I picked up a bunch of mums to swap out my summer annuals, rearranged all of my outdoor vignettes and pulled out the Halloween tote.

Better.  My doors need some attention – and I have something fabulous in mind – but I’ve promised T I’d finish some other projects before starting anything new.

Those poor milk jugs of mine needed some love.  The stone paint had all washed off in the rain.

Fresh paint and a fresh look.

I’d put our old wine barrel in the middle of a flower bed this spring and it ended up being covered by the flowers (I was not expecting 7 foot tall flowers!).  We moved it out to a more prominent position.

We didn’t have any luck with the pumpkins in our garden.  I also haven’t found a new “go-to” pumpkin patch for cheap pumpkins.  So for now, this will do.

We’re getting our Halloween decorations ready with some new homemade goodies.  We’ll put them out in a few weeks but it doesn’t hurt to get ahead of the game in crafting!  My favorite so far?  This repurposed screen headed for the trash:

I found a witch image online to mentally guide myself with, but I freehanded this bad boy.  I’m quite pleased with it.  I have a second trashed screen waiting for a similar treatment.

Enjoy the change in the seasons.

 

I’ve linked up here:

Children's Creative Corner

We've had more than one crafting session this week, all inspired by this Martha Stewart project.

First we needed to make some glitter. Every recipe I found online was pretty much the same.

You'll need:

Mix together 1/2 cup salt with food coloring to get the color of your choice.

Spread evenly on a baking sheet and bake for 10 minutes at 350 (yes, I need to clean my oven. It could be - has been - worse).

Store in an airtight container (I'm using small jelly jars).

We ran out of time that afternoon to do much else because we had company coming (I'll explain later with "The Power of the Internet").

The next day, we pulled our glitter and plastic skulls and bones out only to discover a lack of glue in our house. Somehow, I didn't think using my hot glue gun would be safe with a 2 year old. I'm sure Monkey's fingers thank me for that. Off to an Internet search and I came up with this website, with different homemade glues and pastes. I opted for the No-Cook Paste but made it a little too soupy.

The soupy paste worked well enough. I do need to touch up a few spots, but I need to let it dry completely first (and the homemade stuff takes longer to dry).

Being as impatient as I am, I had to put them on display immediately (it also helped keep it out of Monkey's reach until they're dry, though!). Notice the $3 cake platter from our yard sale fun last spring. It got a paint job and now works great for displays.

Have a great day. And most importantly - have fun!

Happy Halloween!!

Bzzzzzz


Yes, her wings will be tied on better tonight. And hopefully, she'll be in the mood for her antennae again. She's been wearing them for weeks, so I don't know why she doesn't like them on her head all of a sudden.

And in the time it took for me to upload this picture and type out this post, she's managed to break one of T's airlocks for his wine (shhh.. I haven't had time to break this news to him yet). And spit pink spit at me. She had a quarter of a crayon in her mouth.

It's going to be a FUN day!

Enjoy!

Outdoor fun

One of my favorite things to do is to decorate. Whether it be "permanent" or seasonal, I just love the planning and implementing. We put out our pumpkins, mums and cornstalks a few weeks ago, but now it's time to put out the spooky stuff!

Monkey and I spent a couple of hours playing outside today. Perfect fall weather is the best!

Because money is obviously an issue (the lack of unlimited funds can be such a downer - HA), I'm at the point in life where I create small vignettes. Over the years, I'll slowly build my supply of decorations so that I can go hog wild but for now, I think smaller.


My current favorite display area is our old wine barrel. We picked this barrel up our first year in the house to use as a rain collector to use to water our flowers. That same year, West Nile virus started to be an issue so when it got put away that fall, it stayed put away. I pulled it back out this summer, plugged up the hole we had made in the top (no standing water for those pesky mosquitoes here!), and I've used it to display flowers. I did have a pumpkin on top but it was all rotten and fallen in on itself when we got home this weekend. Our first pumpkin casualty.


My second favorite is the chair. I need to put a board in where the old seat is so that it's level, but it will do until I find the time to fix it. This chair is one of a pair I bought at a yard sale for $10 a few years ago. My plan had been to fix them up, paint them and put a new seat and use them in my kitchen (at the time, I had 70's rolling chairs at my kitchen table.. UGH). T had been threatening to burn them, so I put them in MY yard sale this summer. One sold and I was left with this. I then had the brilliant idea to put it into my flower beds. The moose antler is the last one T found while he was working summers for Irving Woodlands in college. It's been sitting next to our shed since we bought the house, so I decided to put it to use as well.

My front steps still need something. I haven't decided what will be going there, but this is what we have for now. I saw an article in Martha Stewart Living last fall about plastic skeletal pieces and covering them with glitter to make them eerie to display on glass platters and in glass cake stands. I'm not up to glitter projects with Monkey just yet, but I liked the concept. So I filled my big glass cookie jar with water, put in some food coloring and plopped in a plastic skull. I need to get more water into the skull so it sinks all the way to the bottom, but I doubt I'll find the time for that. ha ha

Also, if you notice to the right of the steps, I have an old metal milk jug. My father in law had a pair in his basement for years and he gave them to me a couple years ago. For some reason, I had it in my head to paint them white. So Trooper T sprayed them white for me. I realized quickly that white didn't work and found this great looking paint at Home Depot in Bangor when the old store was closing. Paint on clearance. Great! No. Not great. Rust-Oleum American Accents Stone paints are horrible. T complained about the coverage (if we had been smart we would have used black spray primer, but we had white on hand). And look how the paint has washed away on the top! We put them out just a couple of weeks ago. Hurricane Kyle came through and washed the new paint off! I liked the look, while it lasted. But I will not be using this paint again - ever. And at $10 a can, it should work!

Back to the spooky decor. Here is Monkey helping me bury fake skeletal bones. I found an idea in one of the many magazines I read on making fake headstones out of styrofoam coolers. I had already purchased these at the Dollar Tree, but next year, we'll make a couple more so we can make a larger "graveyard" out front.

My last little area is right in front of our side deck. I saw something similar in a magazine years ago and had ripped it out to file away in my ideas binder. It needs another punch of color but I don't currently have anything to put there. Maybe next year I'll remember to buy one extra mum. You can also see a small white spot on the front of this metal jug as well. It didn't get as horrible a beating as the one in the front of the house, though.

We're hoping for another wonderful day on Thursday so we can make a scarecrow or 2 (or a family of them, if I'm really ambitious). We also need to make and hang a few (or bunch) of ghosts from the trees out front.

This weekend, we attack the interior Halloween decorating. Should be fun. I have a project for making cheese cloth ghosts with a sugar and water "glue" that I plan to let Monkey get messy with.

*mental note - don't wash kitchen floor until the ghosts are made*

Rainy Day

After a failed attempt at sewing (I woke up Monkey from her nap with the noisy sewing machine), I'm quietly surfing the net. The weather isn't cooperating for outdoor projects. And truth be told, I need a day off in the kitchen (though I do have enough tomatoes inside for yet another batch of tomato sauce!).

I have the antennae for Monkey's Halloween costume completed. I also have the basis for the bee body started. I decided that as much as I like to think I need my Mom's help, I really don't. I've been using a sewing machine and free-handing projects since I was a kid, so there's no reason why I can't handle such a simple project (and have it be cuter than this)! She taught me well and at my age, I don't need her to hold my hand anymore. I also have the supplies together to make her wings. I had completely forgotten about wings!

I decided to share a picture from last Halloween. At the time, we didn't realize how appropriate the monkey costume was (she's a climber, I tell you!). Please know that I won't be posting any pictures where you can see Monkey's face well because I want to protect her identity (which is why I call her Monkey here in the first place).

What you can't see is the embroidery on my shirt. I made a "logo" for "****** Zoo" (*** = our last name). And on the right side, I embroidered "Mommy, Head Keeper." And yes, that is a stuffed monkey tied to my leg.

I now am looking online to figure out what I'm going to use for my costume this year. I really just need to put together a bee keeper hat (I'm thinking of just using a mosquito netting hat) and make a bunch of little bumble bees to attach to my hat.

Too bad T is being a spoiled sport this year. I was going to dress him as a honey pot.

Afternoon errands

I've been out running errands all day today. With T at work all day today, out of town tonight and all day tomorrow... well, let's just say Monkey and I needed out of the house to break up the monotony of it all (especially since we've been here alone all day Wednesday and Thursday as well!)

I couldn't find a nice yellow fleece at my local Wal-mart, so I made a stop at Jo Ann's. DING DING DING! Fleece is on sale for $5.99/yard (regularly $8.99/yard). Now, granted it would have been cheaper to use a 40% off coupon at regular price, but I really needed to get it today because tomorrow is my one chance at getting my Mom's help to make it. The felt by the yard is also on sale for $2.99/yard (regularly $4.99/yard - 40% off). It's really wide so it will work very well to cut strips to make the stripes.

I found a black sparkly headband in the $1 bin at Jo Ann's. I needed some pipe cleaners, so I bought some of those, which I can attach to the headband as antennae. And I already have a bag of cotton pom poms (that I bought at the Dollar Tree), so I can attach a couple of those to the top of the pipe cleaners.

Speaking of the Dollar Tree.... I bought a few random Halloween decorations that I have a few project ideas for. I will refrain from the Halloween decorating until we at least hit the month of October.


Cheap cheap cheap! Loving it!

Fall

Fall is by far my favorite season. When I see the mums appearing outside, I know it won't be long before we have the pleasantly cool weather and the changing of the leaves. With fall comes the funnest holiday... Halloween!

In the past, when fall rolled around, I'd decorate with mums and cornstalks. I would forgo the Halloween decorations. It was just T & I, after all, and we are adults now (or so I've been told).

So this September, I'm sticking with my traditional "fall" decorating. But now that we have Monkey and she's old enough to have some fun with it (I'll just keep telling that to myself), October is going to be filled with ghoulish decor!

Last week, I went to buy mums to start the process. Wal-mart has great deals. Here's my first money saving tip for decorating: Hit up Wal-mart early. For $2.50 and $4.50 for mums, the nice ones go quickly. For a total of $25, I have all the fall flowers I need to start the transformation. If you wait too long, you're going to end up with a wilted selection - or need to go elsewhere and pay more.

We have also gone to pick our pumpkins. Money saving tip #2: Find a local pick your own pumpkin patch (a good place to start your search is http://farms.2havefun.com/). Our spot is Rocky Ridge Farm in Corinth. We've been going there since we moved to our house 4 1/2 years ago. In the past, it was $1 per pumpkin, but this year they've upped the price to $1.5o per pumpkin. That is still an insanely cheap price for pumpkins! (This is not per pound - it is per pumpkin!!). For a total of $15, we now have our second phase of our fall transformation.

I'm currently planning the next phase of our transformation.. but that's for another day (and I will share pictures when I finish up).

Back to Halloween. Growing up, my Mom made our costumes (and more often than not dressed up with us). We actually still have one that she made for me out of a suit she wore while pregnant for me. It's a little Indian (Native American, to be politically correct) costume that she lovingly designed and sewed for me to wear as a toddler. It originally was a skirt but she turned it into shorts when it was my brother's turn to wear it. It then got passed on to my aunt's 2 kids and has since made its way back to bro, for C, my nephew, to hopefully wear in the next year or 2. (It won't fit Monkey until she's at least 5 because she's so darn tiny!). So this is one of those fun things I was looking forward to as a parent.

We were gifted at a baby shower, appropriately enough, a monkey costume for last year. So I dressed as a zookeeper and hauled around my little monkey to visit my sister-in-law, friends and co-workers. This year, however, I'm making Monkey's costume. After much consideration and brainstorming, I've settled on her dressing as a Bumble Bee (and, I, obviously, will dress as a Bee Keeper).

I purchased a pair of black tights for her this weekend ($4/pair - ouch - but she can wear them all winter, so I'll still get my money's worth out of them). I also found a long sleeve black t-shirt for $4 with shipping on E-bay. This is the base of her costume. Today, I am going to Wal-mart to buy some yellow fleece - and depending on cost, either black fleece or black ribbon (which ever is more cost effective) to make the stripes. I'm just missing the hat, but I remember seeing a bee antennae headband at Jo Ann Fabrics last week, so I'm going to bring my 40% coupon (sign up for their mail fliers - money saving tip #3!) and see if it's still there.

T is heading north after work tonight to take care of my in-law's firewood (my father-in-law obviously can't cut, split, haul and pile wood this year after having his surgery a week ago). My parents are in Bar Harbor for a couple days but are coming to visit Monkey and I tomorrow (and spending the night before heading back north). Little does my Dad know, I'm sending him outdoors to entertain Monkey so Mom can help me sew my first Halloween costume for my daughter. I look forward to carrying on the traditions my parents made for us as I look back on my childhood fondly.

Besides, I need to enjoy the childhood years before they turn into teenage terror years....