Back in my Jr. High French class, we used to sing a song that went something like "Whoopee, c'est l'Halloween!" Translation - "Whoopee! It's Halloween!" I sing that song every year because that's totally how I feel about the season.

Apparently it's apparent.

My friends have sort of caught on. And last week, my awesome friend Aimee brought her toys over when she came for a much needed big girl playdate while the kids were at school. She has the new Cricut Explore™ (can you sense me drooling?), and we had a blast with the brand-spankin' new cut-able Cricut Decorative Window Cling, Black.


My problem, as always, is too many ideas and too much fun.  Where to even start?  So I narrowed myself by choosing a very narrow little window that still has a big impact because of the high-traffic location in our home.

This tiny transom window next to the door is a weird space I never know what to do with. I already have bats flying in my house, so spiders seemed the perfect creepy crawly choice.

Aimee showed me how to select my designs and size them the way I want them.  It is really very intuitive with the Cricut program. It's a simple matter of selecting the graphic.  It then appears on your design page.  Clicking on the graphic enables sizing and movement within the page, and while sizing, the dimensions, both width and height are displayed.  I was able to get my spider web to the exact width of my transom window by measuring my window first, then adjusting the graphic to the same width.

Maybe it's the little kid in me, but I have way too much fun watching the cutter create the designs.

Applying the window clings is SO easy! The spider web took some patience to get on straight because it's delicate, but it was worth it.

I think Aimee thought we were done after such a big project (and I absolutely should have been).  But I was all caught up in the Halloween spirit, and had fallen in love with one particular seasonal subway-art-like graphic.  So we tried that one, big, in window cling, for my mirror in my kitchen.

Things I learned:
1- The window clings look AWESOME!

2- It was too big and too delicate, so it took a long time to get onto the mirror correctly.  I love the result, but it was difficult.  Instead, I'd probably do it in vinyl on glass and put it in a funky frame and put it up for Halloween.

3 - Because it was so big, we tried to use the transfer paper (the sticky stuff like giant masking tape) that is used with vinyl application to keep the pattern straight as we applied it.  THIS DOES NOT WORK WITH WINDOW CLING! The window cling sticks to the transfer paper and will not come off easily.  It is MUCH easier to simply apply the window cling directly. Unless there is a transfer paper of some sort that is barely sticky at all, I would not recommend using it with the window cling product.  After I removed the transfer paper, putting my design on the mirror proceeded much faster and more smoothly.

4- I NEED a Cricut. My mind is buzzing with ideas.  For Halloween, the cute projects Cricut Halloween Treat Bags and Cricut 3D Pumpkins look like so much fun! I'm a new convert. That's all there is to it. :)

Fall is my season, as far as color palette, so I have loved pulling out the foliage every year as the weather cools.  This year I realized just how long it's been since I've added anything new, and I was determined to get creative with some dramatic impact. I would LOVE to have Martha Steward's decorating budget, but alas, I do not.  Still, what's a silly little thing like no budget compared to the need for rockin' Halloween decor?

I started with my pantry.  Actually, the remnants of my pantry.  I tend to save any container that I think might someday serve some sort of purpose - and HOORAY! Today a purpose has emerged!  Inspired by amazing apothecary jars on Pinterest, I got to work.  Now, most of the jars I read tutorials about have either been store-bought, then decorated to be spooky, or else they are tiny little jars - medicine containers for example.  What I wanted was something LARGE that would sit up above my cupboards in my kitchen and be noticeable.

I started with 1 peanut butter jar, 2 large protein shake containers, a Clorox kitchen wipes container, a Nesquick container, and a Jelly Belly's jar.  The first step was to camouflage the lids so they'd look more like apothecary jars.  For that, I used several ribbon rolls - the cardboard bolts that ribbon comes on.  (Yes, I save those too.  No, I'm not a complete hoarder)  Since the ribbon rolls come in various widths, this gave the jars different silhouettes. On some, I'd glue a large round bead in the hole in the ribbon roll, giving the jar lid a "knob".  On others, I'd add little bits of wood shapes or blocks for interest.  My favorite is the Witch Potion lid, which uses a ribbon roll, with a wide bead, and a plastic ring (leftover "earring" from a kids' bday party pirate kit) stuck through it.  You'd never know through the paint job, right?  Wait, no, my ABSOLUTE favorite is the skull, which my husband dug out of some ancient box of decorations from his past and donated to my cause.

With the tops glued on (except the skull, which waited till the end), I sprayed all my containers with primer.  I probably could have skipped straight to black, but I wanted to make sure that the paint adhered to the plastic well, and I had primer on hand, so I used it.  Spray paint black on top of the primer and the jars looked pretty cool.  It was actually hard for me to get to the next step of painting them.

 The shape of the Nesquick container just screamed "metallic" to me.  It looked like it should be an old metal container.  But I didn't want it to be the only metallic, so I chose the Clorox wipes container as well, and spray painted both of them silver instead of black.

I think it is so hilarious that the final product looks absolutely aged metal, when the inside is bright yellow plastic!

For some of the bottles, I chose to print off some labels and use modpodge, and for others I used hot glue for writing - just like I did for my Fall Gourd last year.  I had to choose before painting because the ones that used hot glue writing had to have that completed first.  

All of the bottles were painted using similar methods of sponging on then wiping off different colors and combinations of paint mixed with water.  For the silver containers, I used black paint with water and a drop of silver to keep even the shadowy parts metallic instead of dull.  On the Snake Venom I added an extra layer of an olive green and a pea green.

The Poison bottle has elements of brown, green and silver with detailing in red.  The Brains bottle (my least favorite and the one I'm sure will be adapted and overhauled at some point) is in tans, yellows and even a little metallic gold.  The Witch bottle has gold and copper in the wash, then sponged on moss green.

The point in painting these kind of jars is that there isn't really a way to ruin it.  Every layer creates a new dimension, and you just keep sponging it on and using a paper towel to blot it off, smear it, whatever - until you get the level of character you want.  It's super fun!  And you end up with paint ALL OVER your hands!!

I modpodged printable apothecary jar labels that I found online here.  And here are some others I thought were cool but didn't have enough bottles for this year.  And a gorgeous tutorial for the hot glue writing on the jars came from here.

Happy Halloween!  May you be able to make something out of nothing but your recycling as well.  It is a really great feeling!

I love greek yogurt!  I've tried all the brands - and was intrigued by the Fage container that allows me to put only the amount of fruit/flavoring I wanted.  The yogurt was good, but when I finished and looked at the shape of the container, I saw a face - an animal face.  And then I got really excited!  I mean, who doesn't get really excited when their yogurt container looks like a face?!  That's the general concept behind the puppets that resulted.

Start with an empty, washed out yogurt container - the kind that has the fruit in its own separate reservoir to the side of the yogurt. (YUM!)

Turn the container upside down and you'll see the shape of a snout with a working mouth that opens and closes.

Paint the container.  I found the most effective paint to be a spray paint that specifically says it works on plastic.  We did a bunch of brown ones at once since it's a basic animal base color.  For the girls who wanted to do piggies, we used pink acrylic, then put a top-coat of clear spray paint so it wouldn't flake off.  I admit that this isn't holding up as well as the spray paint, which covers beautifully - no need to worry about the text on the container the paint covers right over it.  I'll have to do some more research and see if there are paints that fare better on plastics, since my kids LOVE to paint their puppets themselves with paint brushes.  Spray paint isn't quite as fun for them.

At some point in the process, using a narrow elastic, elastic chord  or elastic thread, punch small holes on each side, as shown, and tie elastic across the back.  This goes over the back of the hand and secures the puppet - keeping it from falling off the kid's hand when the puppet looks down.  This isn't absolutely necessary - the puppets work fine without this little touch - but it's helpful.

Let kids go crazy designing!  I originally envisioned bears when I saw the shape of the face, but the kids saw pigs, horses, a lion... and we're just getting started!!  I can't wait to see what we come up with next.

Use materials on hand to decorate puppets.  For the lion, I finger-knit a mane using furry yarn. Click HERE for more about finger knitting.

With his mane glued on, our lion just needed a triangle shaped piece of felt, a couple of felt circles just bigger than the googlie eyes, and some details drawn on with a sharpie.  Everything glued with hot glue. Kids placed, I glued.

For the horse, felt circles for nostrils, felt triangle for the white patch on its face, googlie eyes, and a finger-knit mane.

The adorable pigs have felt nostrils, googlie eyes, ears made of craft foam, and ribbon bows.  I love how the different eye placement gives each pig a completely different character!

 Finished puppets 

-- OH we're just getting started!!! (my daughter is bugging me as I type to make a dog.  That should be fun!  And my son wants more lions so he can put on a puppet show of Daniel in the Lion's Den.  Me, myself, I see three little pigs - three bears and Goldilocks...)

 And this is what it's all about - all afternoon we enjoyed stories and silliness from our new characters!

You'll never look at these yogurt containers at the grocery store the same :)

 We're celebrating Pioneers again here in Utah, and in honor of one of my favorite pioneer stories, I'm sharing a game I made for my kids a few years ago.  For those of you unfamiliar with the story, when Pioneer settlers arrived in the Salt Lake Valley, they planted crops hoping for a harvest in time for that first winter.  Just before harvest, an infestation of crickets descended on the crops, devouring everything.  These were not average crickets - they were huge, menacing, rotten things and their role in this historical plague earned them the nickname "Mormon crickets," forever after.  Despite all their efforts, the settlers could not save the harvest and were about to despair when flocks of seagulls came out of nowhere - eating the crickets and saving the crops.  It was called the Miracle of the Gulls and is the reason the seagull is the Utah State bird even though the state is landlocked.  Neat, eh?

For Pioneer Day, I made a "fish pond"style game with the magnet in the seagull's beak enabling it to "eat" the metal parts on the crickets, made out of clothes pins. My kids love it - and it's a favorite whenever I bring it to Primary, so I'm sure you want one of your very own.

Crickets: 
The crickets are super fun to make, even if you don't make the rest of the game.  The kids had a blast making these!  Paint the clothes pins black.  You could probably spray paint for speed, but my kids LOVE to paint, and I enjoyed the character it gave my bugs to have imperfections in the coverage.

For eyes, glue metal BBs in place.  This took me awhile to figure out what to use because I wanted buggy looking eyes, but I also wanted to provide a metal that would be attracted to magnets so that the seagull would have a surface to grab onto.  BBs worked perfectly and look a little bit creepy, while being highly magnetic.  Hot glue worked fine, but after losing a few BBs, I reinforced with E6000 and haven't lost a BB since (3 years of hard play...)

For legs, cut two pieces of chenille stem.  Back leg piece is 8 inches. Front leg piece is 4 inches.  Thread the chenille stem legs through the holes in the clothes pin and glue in place at center.  Wait to shape legs until antenna are inserted.

For antenna, cut a piece of black craft wire anywhere from 5-7 inches long. (Different lengths give different personalities).  Thread through the front clothespin hole with the front leg chenille stem and put a little more glue in there to keep it in place.    Hot glue works fine here.

With a pair of needle-nose pliers, round ends of wire into little circles.

Shape antenna into curls, cross them, keep them straight - whatever you think looks buggy.

Shape legs by bending at the knee and again to form a foot.











Seagull:

The concept of the seagull is a simple softie - by which I mean it's made out of felt and not turned inside out.  I don't know if that's the exact definition of softie, but that's what I think of when I hear that term.  So simply cut out the body and wing tip pieces.  Tack wing tips to top side of body.  Then with wrong sides together, topstitch all the way around, leaving an opening for stuffing. (note: the neck is the hardest part to stuff, so I suggest leaving the opening somewhere around the neck instead of trying to get stuffing through that narrow channel.)  Also leave open between dots on pattern at the top of the head, indicated on pattern, to insert the beak.

For the beak, I used bright yellow lycra - simply because I had some on hand.  I recommend any fabric thin enough to allow the magnet to do its thing.  Cotton or poly would be fine.  Fleece or Felt might be too thick.  Cut the beak piece and fold along line, right sides together.  Sew along edges, leaving top open, using the tiniest seam allowance possible.  Turn right sides out.  Insert a high-powered magnet.  I used a magnetic rock my son got in a set of magnetic rocks.  It works ok, but I'd like a stronger one if I can find one.  If you need stuffing to fill out the beak, add it, but make sure that the magnet stays at the tip of the beak with no stuffing blocking the magnet.
Insert the beak into the opening at the top of the Seagull head and topstitch across opening, between dots indicated on pattern.  Depending on how uptight you are about this whole process, you can either topstitch through all layers, closing off the beak opening, or you can hand-stitch around the circle of where the beak joins the head to keep the beak more dimensional.

I glued on googlie eyes for silliness, because kids giggle over googlie eyes.  If I had my druthers I'd embroider some eyes with personality and pizazz, but hey - googlie eyes rock too.

To Make & Play the Game:

The Seagull must be attached to a stick in order that it may "fly" - then it's just like a fishing pole.  Any broomstick or dowel will work. I happen to have a leg from a three legged table that is perfect for stuff like this. In fact, you'll notice that my seagull is only pinned and not permanently attached - that's because I have multiple versions of "fishing" games, and all of them use this same table leg with an excellent piece of string strongly knotted to the screw at the top.  The seagull gets attached for Pioneer Day, using a safety pin, then goes into storage :)  You could make a more permanent toy by sewing the string to the seagull body and knotting it to your stick.

To play, I like to start with telling the story of the Seagulls & the Crickets, using a dollar store green plastic table cloth to represent the crops.  This keeps the field of play defined.  On the bottoms of the crickets are stickers.  When I use these for Singing Time, the stickers have song numbers on them and the cricket "eaten" shows what song to sing.  For fun, the stickers can tell the child a prize they've won, or an activity they have to do (i.e. 10 jumping jacks).  HINT: The magnet grabs 3 things on the cricket - the eyes, the metal wire in the chenille stem legs, and best of all, the spring that constructs the clothespin.  Those are the best targets.  The wire antenna were rather disappointing as far as magnetic attraction goes.  They look great though, so that's something!  And sometimes they'll hook the felt, and I say that counts too. :)

Happy Pioneer Day, and Have Fun!!