Happy Halloween!

Happy Halloween, my sweets!

(Sorry for the blur)

How was your Halloween? Did you see any unusually good costumes? I think my favorite was a 40-something-year old man at our church Trunk-Or-Treat who was Justin Bieber- sporting his daughters skinny jeans, a Bieber wig, hat, and headphones. I really thought he was a teenager at first glance.

A few days ago after my husband re-seeded our front lawn, I thought about making this patch into a little graveyard (secretly hoping the hundred or so trick-or-treaters we've had tonight wouldn't walk all over the fresh grass- it worked!) We had some spare wood leftover from another project, so I tried to draw a template and go at them with a jigsaw. After cutting the wood and painting them grey, I just layered more paint on with sponges and painted cracks, looking online for ideas. It also helped to water down the paint and drip it from the top. Grant helped put them in the yard along with an overhead light and some hanging ghosts. They're no masterpiece, but if you were to see our neighbor's all-out haunted house, you'd understand why we had to do something... anything! His house pretty much looked like the Youtube Party Rock light show video that's been going around.

I'm trying to catch myself up on journaling past projects so I can delete some photos off of my computer. These are a few of last year's simple decorations, cards, and cupcakes for Grant's work (I've found that grocery stores charge pennies for their cupcake carriers- that's where I get mine). Nothing fancy, but I have fun making them. Working at a floral design studio in Florida, I was able to dry some hydrangeas and cover them in curly willow, spiders, and webs for a Miss Havisham feel. I love that with it dry, it can be on display year after year. In case you didn't see this last post and like Halloween decoration's, here are some more simple, inexpensive craft's from this year.

Hope it was a great, happy Halloween for you! :)

A few Halloween decorations

Thanks for the comments about the last chair re-do post! If you haven't guessed for the giveaway, I'll be announcing the closest guess next week!

Are you all in the Halloween spirit? Christmas is my favorite time to decorate, but I love traditional and vintage, cheeky Halloween decorations. As much as I love the fun look of haunted houses, I'm not into the extremely creepy or gory decorations that are sold at so many stores today. My family can attest that I'm a first degree fraidy-cat and I also hate the evil that is now all too often associated with Halloween. Since we've moved quite a bit, having to store lots of huge holiday decorations is bit of a down side, so I always find myself going back to making paper decorations.

Come on in!

I had a banged up white/corkboard frame from a clearance rack. After painting it black, I cut out paper bunting and stamped it all with black ink. The tulle wreath is based off of something on Pinterest. As much as I love Halloween magazines and inspiration like Pinterest, I really like to just have fun creating from things I have lying around.

The bats are cut out with black paper and hung with fine silver floral wire and the old orange ginger jar lamp was bought for $5 at a thrift store. I cut out some black felt to lay over the shade.

I love Halloween trees after seeing the clever ones my mom's been making and displaying in my childhood home for the past 20 years. She was way ahead of her time.

I took some old tree branches we had cut in the backyard and spray painted them black. The container is a pot stuffed with newspaper to hold the branches in place (could use floral foam, I didn't have any on hand) and then wrapped in some leftover black felt. The branches are wrapped in orange Halloween lights and then covered in upside down mini cupcake wrappers to make them look like mini lamp shades. The paper was bought on clearance from Michael's and then stamped with some Martha Stewart halloween stamps from last year that I love.

The ghosts were made with the old trick of putting them on a bottle with wire arms attached and then starching the cheesecloth and letting them dry. The eyes and mouth are felt cut-outs. The candy containers are vintage from my Grandma. I decided to hang some ghosts over our kitchen lights, and it's neat how they really look like they are glowing and floating mid-air.

What kind of decorations do you like/do? Are you going trick-or-treating with family? Our neighbors have a full-on haunted house, the hit of the whole neighborhood, so I think we'll have a few children coming by this year. Have a happy, cozy October and Halloween!