The New Wittys: leaves

It all started with a creative mommy blog...the idea of going to search for leaves and displaying them on the window...hmmm, I didn't even bother to check out the post. My mind started working like a hamster wheel of how I could do it, in my own little way. So, I have no witty name for this project....but I like to call it leaves on contact paper.
step 1. gather your kids, get a basket, and push them out the door to gather nature's daily gifts

Step 2., 3., and 4., cut out your contact paper double the size you want your display to be. tell your kids to lay out nature's gifts. fold over your contact paper and press.

Now display however you want! I chose to put up the kids work on the window so we could examine them further.

Been getting inspired by different artists online that sketch from live flowers they have or have picked up so i thought i would do the same in our handmade sketchbooks from our shop: ShopWitty

ink and prismacolors

Meanwhile, my calla lilies are now closing up, so I thought I would enjoy them more if I put them inside. I can't let them go to waste, so I captured them beautifully one cloudy afternoon.

It's been sorta boring around here...I have lots of projects I wanna do, but the day seems to just slip by.

I have allergies and am not feeling 100% lately so I've taken care of myself and rested up.

Homeschooling Andrew has kinda taken a backseat because the 'school's-out' feeling has kicked in. BUT, we are not quitting! One of my goals is to have Andrew begin to read by himself by the end of the summer, and we will work on that on a daily basis whether it be with bath crayons, foam letters, iPad, or just plain pencil & paper. And lots of library time.

Anyway, we will be traveling around like the circus for the next week so pray that we all make it to our destination{s} safely and that we don't run out of clean underwear.

I never used to decorate before I had kids.

I think I brought home my Mom's old Christmas tree once, when we lived in a tiny apartment before we got married. And that felt weird. And so Christmas has been the only holiday I really put anything up as far as decorations. But things change. Now I have two monkeys that can hold a pencil and paintbrush correctly and sorta know what the heck they're doing.

Except for Jonah, he's just a monkey mess all around.

Not to mention that the creative-mom title is SO competitive out there.

These crafts are so simple, they hardly need a tutorial. I'll spare you with pictures for each step {mainly because I didn't take any} BUT in case you wanna make your own, they're easy to figure out.

So I've made this post jam-packed with all crafts we've been doing at the Witty household.

6 of them, to be exact. I hope you'll stick with me 'til the end.

1. The Hanging Pumpkin

During art time, we busted out some creative supplies and got busy painting <--Did I sound Texan there?

Andrew always in his superhero underwear in case an emergency arises....

...proved to me how much he is my son by acting the perfectionist and filling in every white spot with orange paint.

1. Paint the paper plate orange

2. Cut out eyes, a nose, and a silly mouth out of black paper. You can be creative here.

3. Paste the darn things onto the paper plate.

4. Hang the plate.

In my case, I stuck both of them together so that when they rotate from the winds, you get a two-headed, very happy and cute pumpkin.

2. The Halloween Garland

This one is too simple, it is ridiculous.

I found these cute labels online by ways of a simple halloween search into Google.

I printed them onto orange paper, cut them out, punched holes and fed some black yarn through them.

Ta-da!!! It looks cute, simple and festive.

3. The Handprint Spider and its Spiderweb

This one is somewhat harder.

Not really knowing how I was about to begin this, I sat the boys with colored construction paper and BLACK paint in front of them. Knowing how messy Jonah is, I totally supervised him.

Knowing how picky Andrew is about dirty hands, I had to have something for him to wipe his hands on immediately.

Luckily, nothing was painted black, the hand prints came out stellar and they enjoyed gluing a ton of googly eyes on the spiders. They thought it was quite silly.

After making spiders, I luckily came across this oldie, but amazing tutorial for making a spider web out of a simple frame at Dana Made It and made one myself! Now our spider has a home!

4. Hanging Halloween Ghouls & Bats

Listen, I have a confession to make. I'm one of those creative junkie moms that has started a collection.

A toilet paper roll collection.

You cannot even imagine the things you can make out of these possibly-poop-infected rolls, such as these adorable bats.

For the bats:

1. Paint them black.

2. Glue eyes

3. Cut out wings, stick 'em on!

4. Make his ears by pushing the top down

5. String 'em up.

You have a bat!

And for those oh so cute ghouls all you need is a paper plate, black construction paper and white paper stringy stuff {I don't know what it's called}

Every time we drive up, I play along that they're gonna get me and make the "boooooOOOoooo" sound and the kids giggle and laugh and make sure I'm okay--that they didn't get me.

5. Mini Decorated Pumpkins

And thanks to Daddy one afternoon, we were surprised with 2 mini pumpkins because Andrew had been begging for some since pumpkins started appearing everywhere.

So we decorated them and made them into a two-headed-pumpkin-skeleton-door-guard.

Ultimately the thing will have 1 pumpkin decorated by both kids, but I'm not promising it'll happen this Halloween.

6. Fall Garland

I know what you're thinking, and yes, we're almost done.

Just wanted to show you this little fall garland.

This also became a pattern learning experience for Andrew, which wasn't too successful, but at least we made an effort at a learning experience...

1. Print out leaf pattern pdf on colored paper.

2. Cut them out and

3. String 'em up!

Now our home is all Halloween-y and decorated. And what's best about it, is that the kids and I both worked on each simple project. I love decorating with them!

There, I'm done.

I hope none were too complicated and I hope someone got inspired to do their own holiday decorating.

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