Pumpkin Carving

If like me you have been planning your pumpkin carving now for a few weeks, I’ve done almost everything you can imagine when it comes to pumpkin carving. I’ve etched moths flying to a flame, used fairy lights to make an elegant spotted pumpkin and even used the stem as a nose like the ones pictured above.

 Are you looking for some inspiration this year? The library has some great books to help inspire you to do something more than the traditional Jack-O-Lantern.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Halloween Fun Facts

• Trick-or-treating harks back to the Middle Ages and All Souls’ Day, when poor people in Britain would beg for soul cakes, a sweet-bread treat, and pray for dead relatives in return.

• When trick-or-treating first became popular in the United States in the 1800s, more children played mischievous pranks than asked for candy. By the 1950s, though, the focus had switched to good old family fun, with sugar-hyped children dressed in costumes.

• The candy-collecting tradition has spread from the United States to Canada, Australia, and Western Europe, where more and more little goblins now trick-or-treat. In parts of England, children carry lanterns called punkies (which look like jack-o’-lanterns) and parade through the town on the last Thursday of October. In Ireland, rural neighborhoods light bonfires, and children play snap apple, in which they try to take a bite from apples that are hung by strings from a tree or a door frame.

• Chocolate makes up about three-quarters of a trick-or-treater’s loot, according to the National Confectioners Association.

• If you find yourself with more candy than you know what you do with, put your leftover sweets to good use with these Halloween candy ideas.

Want to know more about Halloween? Click here!

Happy Halloween

I’m so happy this year that I get to be home to give out candy to all the kids in my neighborhood, last year I had to work and I was so sad to miss seeing all the kids in their costumes.

This year I have some (hopefully) amazing decorations I want to make. I’m really loving these cool chicken wire silhouettes. If you paint them with glow in the dark paint they should look like ghostly dresses wandering around your yard. I have a large front yard that could handle 2 or 3 of these dresses. If it works I think it will make my yard look spooky yet somehow elegant.

 

 

Here are some of the scariest books of all time. Check them out …. if you dare ….

It By Steven King

Hell House by Richard Matheson

Dracula by Bram Stoker

The turn of the screw by Henry James

The haunting of Hill house by Shirley Jackson

The silence of the lambs by Thomas Harris

Rosemary’s baby by Ira Levin

The complete tales and poems of Edgar Allen Poe

We need to talk about Kevin by Lionel Shrive

The Ritual by Adam Nevill

The doll in the garden by Mary Downing Hahn

White is for witching by Helen Oyeyemi

Halloween decorating

I love Halloween, watching scary movies, going to haunted houses, and telling ghost stories is my idea of a great night. I loved dressing up as a kid (and as an adult) and going out with friends to collect candy. I look forward to Halloween for most of the year and start planning my costume and makeup in the summer. This year for Halloween I’ll be out of the apartment and in my new house, I didn’t get an old house but I’m still really excited to decorate, I’ve been saving ideas up for a few years and now is my chance to give them a try!

Here are some of the cool things I’ll be making this year.

Mason jars are great and are being used for more than just canning. You can find mason jar wedding themes, put a layered salad in them to bring to work, and many other uses. My favorite is using them as candle holders, you can make them look elegant by wrapping them in lace and putting in a tea light candle, or you can make them look scary for Halloween.  I love the mummy and pumpkin because they will still look really cute during the day. They are easy to make all you need is some cheeses cloth/gauze and googly eyes for the mummy and orange tissue paper, green ribbon and black paper for the pumpkin.

Another fun Halloween decoration idea  is this great string of milk jug ghosts. Collect milk jugs from home, neighbors, or co-workers and draw jack-o-lantern faces on them. Cut a hole in the back and pile a few white Christmas lights inside and place the jugs beside each other in a row. This would be a great way to light your walkway on Halloween night so the little ghosts and goblins don’t trip coming to get their candy.

I’m very excited to try some window silhouettes this  year. You can do so much with them, you can keep them fun like the monsters in the windows above or make them more sinister with the silhouette of a person hanging or a witch at her cauldron making a potion.

Here are some books to help you get your home ready for Halloween.

175 easy-to-do Halloween crafts

Country Living handmade Halloween by Zazel Loven

Scary scenes for Halloween by Jill Williams Grover

Hocus Pocus!

Halloween crafts by Fay Robinson

Zombie felties by Nicola Tedman

Artful Halloween by Susan Wasinger

Halloween

Halloween is a great time of year, the weather is more often then not amazing and everything can take on a sinister haunted feeling at night. I know not everyone thinks of Halloween as a holiday but I do. I love everything about Halloween, the decorations, the fun you can have dressing up, scary movies, and the amazingly creative frightning food you can make. Every year I go through the Martha Stewart Halloween magazine excited to see what new and frightening costumes and decorations they have that I just have to try out.

Right now I live in an apartment so I don’t get to do much decorating for Halloween 😦 But I plan on buying an old house so that I can turn it into a really cool scary looking haunted house every year. I love that you can take a beautiful old home and make it look haunted for halloween and make it look so elegant for Christmas or New Years.  

Helpfull links

Halloween safety tips

Homemade Halloween costumes for kids

Indoor Halloween Decorations

Halloween books

Easy Halloween costumes for children byLeila Albala

Haunt your house for Halloween: decorating tricks and party treats by Cindy Fuller

Ghoulish goodies by Sharon Bowers

Halloween: the best of Martha Stewart Living

Extreme pumpkins: diabolical do-it-yourself designed to amuse your friends and scare your neighbors  by Tom Nardone