Halloween

The other night at the Pumpkin Carving Party, my SIL Jennifer, was telling me about these paper bag trees she made with her Brownies. I must have looked like I was lost in the muck and mire because she finally said, "Geeze... just get me a paper bag and I can show you in 5 minutes." Well, she was true to her word. In a matter of minutes not only did she make a gnarly looking paper bag tree, but I felt confident that I could make one, too.

I sat down tonight to try to make one. Sure enough, in a matter of minutes, I made a tree. Out popped the camera, and easy peasy... a tutorial. I love it when things are this easy, although it would be a lot easier if all of you were sitting around my dining room table. We'd have a forest in a matter of minutes!

Basically, you can't make these wrong, and it is a craft you can do with children. So, go grab a few brown paper bags and pair of scissors, and you'll be making trees in no time. BTW... for the observant... you'll notice some blood smudges on the trunks and branches. Took a little nip out of my thumb :( But I didn't let a little cut stop me, trooper that I am ;) Ready? Here we go!

Measure up 4" from the bottom of the bag.

Cut down the center of the 4 sides of the bag to the 4" mark.

Twist the bag, then untwist.

Twist the trunk up 4" to the cut.

Each of the four sections will become a major branch of the tree.

Twist the first branch about halfway up.

Then, cut lengthwise down the bag to where the branch is twisted. You can make 1 or 2 cuts making 2 or 3 sections.

Twist each section. You can twist all the way up, or go halfway and make another cut. Continue cutting and twisting until all pieces of the 1st branch are all twisted.

Do the same for the other 3 branches. Make each one slightly different.

Make 4 or 5 snips at the bottom of the tree. Twist each section to create roots.

That's it. You can dink with the branches a bit until you are satisfied with the way they look. Then, tah dah... you are done and ready to make another. Now wasn't that the fastest and neatest craft you ever made? Thank you, Jenny, for teaching me this fun technique!

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Saturday, our family hosted our 21st Annual Pumpkin Carving Party. Truth be known, it began as a ploy, to give 12 year old Missy (our nickname for Wee Folk Art's very own Michelle) a chance to meet the cute new boy that moved in across the street. She and her friend, Sarah, had been admiring him from afar and were too shy to cross the street and introduce themselves. They decided they needed a bona fide excuse to spend some time with him. Their solution... a neighborhood bash... and that gave birth to our very first Pumpkin Carving Party. (BTW... Incase you are wondering about the success of the evening... Jared became a permanent fixture around our house after that!)  True Story :)

Although the size and shape of the party has changed over the years, ranging from 135 guests (soccer teams upped that one!) to 18 attendees (a very challenging family time) we’ve never missed a single year. The Annual Pumpkin Carving Party has turned into one of our family’s most treasured traditions, not only because we love the fall, and this certainly helps celebrate the season, but it also marks the beginning of “The Holidays”. (As a bit of an aside…at some point my children had a Holiday Intervention with me and I was (I can’t put this in any milder terms) FORBIDDEN to listen to Christmas carols until after Halloween!) So, as you can well image, while preparing for the Annual Pumpkin Carving Party, I also begin assembling my imposing collection of Christmas CDs! (I'm ready for you Dean Martin!)

It is an evening we all look forward to, and although it drizzled for the first 15 minutes, the skies cleared, and everyone was able to carve their pumpkins, eat yummy food, run the yard with flashlights, warm themselves by the bonfire, and play in the straw fort/maze, which, BTW, our dogs Leonard and Sheldon LOVE!

We are on our way to our favorite apple orchard for a wagon ride, apple picking, and, of course, delicious cider and hot donuts. YUM! There is also a wonderful petting zoo and barnyard play area. Bug, Fairy and Pixie are looking forward to sharing the experience with Little Lady.

While we are off doing that, we wanted to repost a favorite activity to do with the wee ones. Although it is not specifically an autumn craft, we find the finished product makes a lovely addition to our fall/Halloween decorations. Check out our Handprint Sand Candles HERE. Enjoy!

We have got out-of-town visitors for next two weeks. Drew, Meghan and the Little Lady are here, and as you can well imagine, my time will be spent with them, and there will be little time left for crafting :) Of course I will be sharing some pics of our adventures, and Michelle has more projects for the knitting class, but I plan to take this opportunity to share some of our favorite seasonal crafts from the past. We've gotten so many new readers over the past year, these projects will be new.

First up... our Gourd Ghost Sculpture which can be found HERE. And/Or download our Gourd Ghost Sculpture Wallpaper on your computer. It can be found HERE. Boo!    

Here is a fun, quick project that can add to your spooky Halloween decor. We are going to be revisiting this project today. It was originally published Sep 18, 2008 on Nature's Way Learning/WeeFolkAcitivies.

This week's Unplugged Challenge theme was Sand. We made sand candles using the kids hand/foot prints. They were really easy and we used recycled materials... so it was a free craft too.

First I collected up a bunch of random votive candles. I seem to have them in mass, but seldom actually use them. I pulled the stickers off the bottom, then pulled out the wicks and set those aside. I put 2 votives at a time into my potpourri crock pot to melt.

Then the kids and I filled a Pyrex baking dish with sand from the sand box (I would recommend using clean craft sand, but this is what we had on hand). We dampened the sand and each kid got a turn to make an impression. The older kiddos used their hands (I had to help push them down far enough) and for B we did her footprint. I poured the melted wax into the impression (each candle took about 2 votives worth of wax) and set in one of the wicks in the deepest part. Once the candle cooled to the touch, we removed it from the sand, rinsed off the excess sand with cool water and set up the sand for the next impression.

I think we ended up with some really cool Halloween candles.