Halloween

Halloween.  Such a controversial topic.

In our home, we love Halloween. We love the crafts associated (I will share a few simple ones we did tomorrow), we love to decorate the house and we love to dress up. 

Seeing as though it is also Angus' birthday, it has made the organising and celebrating a little hard but we seemed to hit the jackpot this year!

By mid October our front cupboard unit (the first thing you see when you enter our house) went from this;

to this;

A simple display with some goodies I have picked up quite cheap over the years.

And who can resist the fake spider webs?

And this year we received a new goodie to add to our decks.

My MIL is a fantastic patchworker and sent this up to us!! Awesome hey!

Stella also had a dress up day for school, and she asked to go as a Vampire! I didn't think she even knew what a vampire was but they were obviously talking about it at school! 

Thankfully my Mum sent up some costumes from the cheapie shops as we don't have any of those in our new town!

The most gorgeous Vampire I ever did see!

Stella's teacher also dressed up as a witch and looked fantastic and decorated her whole classroom with spiderwebs, signs and bats etc. It looked amazing and the kids were all so excited and stoked!

And that arvo/night, we all headed off to a Halloween party at a friend of Stella's house. 

All the kids were invited which was fantastic and I think they looked so cute (and Angus had a ball on his birthday night)

At the party (which was a bit out of town) the kids did Trick or Treat (only going to the party holders families houses in the street) , watched a Halloween movie, had some dinner , played with glow sticks and had fun with a pinata.

All in all, the day and night was a heap of fun , and thats what it is all about for our family and children!

Halloween crafting

Over the weekend, we set to creating some Halloween themed crafts.

We started by making some 'Cotton wool Ghosts", with inspiration from Pinterest of course!
See below

Source

It was really easy and I didn't need to buy any supplies , win win really.

The kids glued the cotton balls all over a small paper plate. Then glued on some black eyes and mouth that I had precut from Crepe paper. A hole through the top and a piece of string to hang it with and a few strands of white crepe paper (or you could cut up a white plastic bag into strips) and there you have a spooooooky ghost!

We also made a few Contact pieces , using some Halloween themed confetti that I found in the $2 Shop the other day. It was $2 for the pack and can be used for anything!

A piece of contact in the shape you desire (we did a bat, skull and pumpkin) and then the kids stuck all the relevant confetti pieces over the top.

When finished, line the shape with a large piece of contact and cut around it.

We also used this method to create Hearts for Valentines Day HERE,  with Fish HERE and for our Yellow theme HERE.

Simple stained glass window art.

And the Ghosts now take pride of place , scattered around the house.

BOO!

Halloween Crafting

Earlier on in the week, we had a little Halloween painting session. First up we did some Pumpkins (just orange circles then the leaves and stalk were handprints) and they look fantastic, but are still in progress! Then the kids painted these cool masks. I saw the printable on Pinterest, and knew it would be perfect, and easy!! There are 4 different types to choose from -  a pumpkin, an owl, a cat and a ghost.

And here they are finished!! I just glued them to some orange card and cut around them again. I also just used ribbon to tie them , instead of Elastic, my kids tend to not like elastic and it freaks me out a bit!

So very proud!! Lacey did a fantastic job painting this time, she dipped her brush and stroked. She is really getting it , and loving it too. Max however, hmmm , he likes to finger paint, have a taste and just make mess!!

 The masks-  Stella's Lacey's and Max's -  after they have finished playing, I will just adhere them to some paper and put it in their art folder!

              If you are interested in creating some yourself, the printables are available HERE.

A spooky house!

October is the month for Halloween, albeit on the 31st, but thats ok. Considering we are due to have our bub on the 28th, I decided to get in early with a bit of Halloween decorating and organising!

I know that Halloween is an American tradition, however, I believe its important for our kids to know about and understand traditions from other countries as well, and hey, its just a bit of fun!!

Our display this year is pretty simple, and VERY cheap to put together, but I have just purchased a few goodies from Pottery Barn Kids! eeek

Alot of my inspiration and decorations were found through Pinterest, with heaps of free printables available. I had all of the frames already on hand, so it was just a matter of printing, cutting and filling them. Sometimes I get the printables done at the camera shop, they are much better quality and colouring than when done on my home printer obviously, but these don't look too bad!!

This awesome Trick or Treat Print is available HERE, I decided to stick with a basic colour theme , and it made it alot easier to decide on what prints to use, there are soooo many out there, the decision was VERY hard!!

The Subway art Print in the frame on a stand is from HERE

And the Eat , Drink and be Scary Print is from HERE

The Owl is a tealight holder and actually always sits at the entrance, the pumpkins are plasic and from Red Dot, I think there were $2 each and the little spiders are confetti, bought in a pack on Clearance at Spotlight after Halloween last year ( I have a box labelled with the different events , Ie; Fathers Day, Easter, Halloween etc and I just add to them when I pick up things cheap along the way.

The spiderwebs were just bought in a pack from Red Dot. You just pull it all apart and hang where you wish. They come with a spider or 2 in the pack, but I bought a pack of spiders last year after Halloween on clearance at Spotlight, so I added them into the web aslo.

You will notice that everything is towards the back of the buffet!! I am not Silly!!

Having two 18 month olds aroung, you learn to not put anything within reach!! They have Go Go Gadget arms!!

There you are, a little welcoming Spookiness at the Morrison house, and just yesterday we did a few craft activities , when they are finished, I will share!!