Preparing for Halloween

We've had this little skeleton body for a while. Last year, we got an oversized pumpkin and he just kinda looked odd.

Then, we got two small pumpkins that the kids decorated and then it was a two-headed skeleton pumpkin. Kids didn't care though. They were proud of their work!

This year, however, I decided that I was tired of this poor little guy not being used for his full potential and I warned the kids that Mom's pumpkin was going to be his head this year. Not theirs. I think I might have hurt their feelings, but I don't care....Mr. Skeleton looks so great!

The white pumpkins were the rage this year and I thought maybe I should just pay $2 extra and get it. And I'm glad I did. No orange pumpkins heeerre! 

I was inspired by the movie Nightmare Before Christmas and my "Anything Skullified" Pinterest board

I grabbed my trusty acrylics and paintbrushes and got to work. It was pretty fun!

Plus, you know how much more awesome this little guy is? I can use him for Dia de los Muertos and I am ever so excited about that....

Now, when they boys walk to the front door, they don't fight about whose pumpkin get to be the head.

This momma reigns on Halloween! 

this is halloween, HALLOWEEN, halloween!

Ahh! Halloween is finally over.

I'm so glad. I got tired of seeing my faded bats, ghosts, and pumpkin outside. 

I don't want to sound cliche and shout, "I love this time of year!" I mean really, who doesn't? 

But just between me and you, I really love this time of year. Just don't tell anyone, though. 

But before Halloween ended, we made sure to keep crafting by painting some inexpensive wooden cutouts.

After 10 days of being asked when we would go Trick-or-treating, the day finally came. 

And guess who didn't want to wear their costumes come the 31st??? Oh they make me so mad sometimes, thank Heavens they're super cute and adorable. 

Once they saw Batgirl and got to eat snacks and make crafts at the local library, they were alright.

They were so excited to go Trick-or-treating with their cousins, we all walked around the neighborhood knocking on people's doors. 

 
The husband dressed up for school too! Danny Zuko from Grease.
I go BAN-A-NAS for Grease.
I had to settle down and keep my hands to myself, the man had to go to work!

And then he dressed up as a nerd the next day. =/
'It's alright babe, you can go on now and have a nice day.' I said to myself...

The boys and I went out to the park that day. Andrew exclaimed, "Now we get to have fun, Mom?"

Of course, dude. Run to your heart's content. 

I haven't had my camera with me at the park for so long, it was actually a treat for me. The lighting was amazing, we had Toy Story clouds all across the sky, no one was there--just us. It was nice. 

And then we visited Danny Zuko. And Andrew just had to have his vampire teeth.

You guys really deserve a close-up...

Before Halloween though, we had a two-month long date planned with an amazing artist that I actually met on Instagram. He works for this company called Dreamworks, not sure if you've heard of it? Sure I know other dudes in that same industry, but I never get to see them. I was excited I couldn't sleep the night before.

Gary and I traveled all the way up to Dallas to meet up with Caren and her beau so we could all head out to meet up with Zoro. Yeah, Zoro, the guy even has a cool name!!!

BUT, as always, we had to get ready. I always treasure such special times bonding over make-up and clothing and snapping pictures at my beautiful sister-- I love U. 

Finally we got ready. 

We met up with him at the Gaylord hotel -- super fancy that we can only look. The place is incredible.

Much more so during the holidays.

We had a good time, ate dinner at Mi Cocina and chilled at the bar. We later caught the movie "Sinister"--you know, because we all love a good scary movie {except Gary} only it wasn't scary and put us all to sleep. 

Oh and yeah, those are two movies he worked on. He is such a workaholic and an amazing inspiration.

Even though the movie was horrible, we had a great time. I was so happy to just see my sister. 

The guys at the bar with their gigantic sports screens in front of them they didn't know I was taking their picture--haha! 

I hope you all had a great Halloween.

This is how we roll....

And now we begin to brace ourselves for the super fast approaching holidays.

A lot of traveling, days off, colder weather {hopefully} and a new year await us!!!

Have any of you started a Christmas list yet? 

Am I crazy that I already have like 7 things listed on mine?

Have a great weekend!

There's been hardcore halloween decoration going on....

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.

Sources:

Learn, Create, Love

Dana Made It

Clean and Sensible

Creating Cupcakes