cobwebs, leaves and potions, oh my!

I used to love the day when our mom would have us bring up the bins from the basement with the season's decorations. We obviously had the most for winter and Christmas, but there was still a large spread for Halloween and Thanksgiving, for Easter, even Valentine's Day and the Fourth of July had their own bins. In the five years since Dan and I have lived in our own house, I have slowly started filling my own bins. I still feel the same excitement carrying them up from our basement to transform our home for the holidays...whatever the holiday may be.

Recently, I carried up my three autumn bins so that I could show Henry all the different Halloween things we have to put out (I save the Thanksgiving and harvest items for after October 31st). He squealed over the rubber ducks for the tub that are dressed up in costumes, and carried the Halloween Beanie Babies around with him all afternoon. We washed his Halloween cup and plate using the Frankenstein soap dispenser and witch towel, and he watched intently as I pulled spider webs across picture frames and wall hangings. I even let him stand on the dining room table and the kitchen island while I strung leaf garlands on the light fixtures. 

My favorite part was pulling out the crafts I had made last year, as well as finishing up a couple that never got completed. I had turned some of Henry's old Gerber Puffs containers into ghosts. I peeled off the labels to make them white. I left the lids yellow, however I've thought about painting them white or black. I hot glued glass votive cups that I had leftover from a party, and used leftover ribbon from my ribbon box to cover the ridges on the containers. I used black puff paint to give them each a face, and finished them off by filling them partially with rice to weight them down. 

Last year I also crafted door hangers for our three doors upstairs, using this page as inspiration.

Instead if using coasters and paper like that site, I bought a 4-pack of cork squares at Target and used felt. I cut each cork square into fourths, so the pack could make four hangers total (I saved the last square to make a "NOEL" hanger this winter). I free-handed all the designs on felt and then hot glued them to the squares. Some of the smaller detailed are done in the same black paint I used for the ghost project above. To finish them off I glued the squares to patterned ribbon. I had bought a 2-pack of over-the-door hangers for both bedroom doors, but for the bathroom door I just cut the ribbon extra long so that I could tie it to the robe hook on the reverse side. They're so cute!

For my door downstairs, I made a Halloween wreath following the directions loosely for this one that was in Better Homes & Gardens. It was one of my more "expensive" projects in that I had to buy the cardboard wreath form ($5), the black feather boa ($5), and the foam balls ($3). The rest is scraps from my ribbon box, white paper and hot glue. I did notice that the wreath got a little smooshed in storage, and didn't fluff up as nicely as it looked last year so I'll have to be more careful with it this year.

Lastly, the craft that I finished up this morning at the dining room table while Henry ate his breakfast is my favorite. I had saved glass bottles and jars last year (which were wine, red-wine vinegar, pickles, mayo, ground mustard, baby food and soy sauce) and never got a chance to make them into the potion bottles I saw here. By this morning, I had already poured and swirled black paint in them and they were dry. I used a variety of Pinterest searches to find labels I liked and I printed them regularly first to make sure they would fit my bottles. Then, I have a roll of kraft-like paper for wrapping care packages so I cut a few 8.5x11 pieces that I could feed into our printer to get an "aged" look to my labels. I affixed them with Modge-Podge, and then either corked them with corks from my craft supplies, or tied twine around scraps of brown lunch bags on the top. Because I had all the supplies, all of these completed bottles were FREE!

So now our house screams Halloween, and I love it. I filled the fragrance plugs with their apple and spice refills, and Hank and I have already made three loaves of pumpkin bread. But before we know it, we'll pack up these decorations and replace them with turkeys and cornucopias. Then, it'll be time to bring up the eight Christmas bins. And that's a whole other ball game....