Friday, October 28, 2011

Happy Halloween Decor {Kid-Friendly Crafts Too}

I like to focus on the "Happy" aspect of Happy Halloween.  Not only because I have kids, but because I am just about the biggest scaredy-cat around when it comes to anything scary or creepy.  Obviously I'm fearless since I'm a New Yorker, and I love heights (and jumping from them), roller coasters, and daring adventures.  But I'm really affected by scary movies and music, and since I already have an incredibly vivid imagination, I don't need any other reasons to make myself nervous.  My poor husband LOVES scary movies, but I won't allow him to watch them while I'm present.  Ridiculous, right?

Anyway, you can definitely see how that translates with regards to our Halloween decor.  No bloody daggers, big nasty spiders, eyeballs in jars, or otherwise creepy images that might cause my children to be afraid in their own home.  Maybe as my children get older, I'll get braver too.  For now, I'll stick with the cutesy stuff. Orange twinkle-lights, homemade Halloween decorations, frosted sugar cookies, you get the picture.

We made pumpkin garlands from foam pumpkins we got 20 for $1 at Target, and 10 sparkly ones for $1.  I had Ella draw faces on the jack-o-lanterns, and my favorite is the sad pumpkin who is crying.  I did a simple running stitch to link them all together. I made one with all of Ella's pumpkins, and one with alternating plain and sparkly pumpkins.    We also bought some expandable crepe paper globes for $2 and $2.50 from Target, and I pulled out my Christmas advent calendar to use for Halloween.  I filled it with little pumpkins, dum-dum ghosts, battery-powered votive candles that flicker (awesome!), and little cards that Ella drew with jack-o-lantern faces.  This is by far the "scariest" display I've ever made, but it looks a lot happier in person. You'll just have to come see for yourself :)

I used two sets of these fabulous OTI candlesticks in both large and mini, and framed a free Halloween printable from Brejer (download it here in orange or black).

Do you decorate for Halloween?






 Do you see the Statue of Liberty ghost? I love, love, love, Ella's random application of yellow frosting.







1 comment:

Unknown said...

We never both to decorate for Halloween, beyond jack-o-lanterns. I think most Halloween decorations are rather ugly (they suffer from a singularly unappealing color palette) but those are pretty cute. If we do anything, it's more general fall decorations (indian corn cobs, squashes, gourds, etc.) that we can keep up through October and November.