Halloween '13 - Carving Contests, Dress-Up, and Friday Flair

Another Halloween in the books. This has never been my favorite holiday but it sure is fun to experience it through the eyes of my kids. Let's look at what this day had in store for our family.

In my last post I shared the Halloween Pails I created out of coffee cans. The boys loved them and they got a lot of attention at the Harvest Festival we attended. My husband said people kept asking if he was a painter! Too funny. Aren't my little super hero, ninja, and batman cute sporting their adorable pails?

Speaking of cute, while we didn't take Samuel and Amelia out with us, we still wanted to dress them up for their first Halloween. Tell me...are they not the cutest hot dog and chick you have ever seen? I sure think so!

 In my recent post about our trip to the pumpkin patch, I mentioned that we were again going to be participating in the school's pumpkin carving contest again. Want to see what we came up with? Nathan designed this stegosaurus and Jordan helped create the pirate ship. We managed to place 3rd in the creative category for the third year in a row....can you guess which pumpkin was the award winner? Congratulations Jordan, that pirate ship was awesome (and the stegosaurus was a winner in my books as well)!

And as if I hadn't crammed enough into this post, I wanted to try to fit in a Friday Flair as well since I have missed the last few. We have been hit hard with pink eye, ear infections and tonsillitis for two weeks so needless to say, lunches weren't the top priority. Here's what they boys' got for lunch on Halloween:

pumpkin shaped pb and honey sandwiches, graham crackers, carrots and celery (yes, that's an ear in there!), and a special treat of boogers (thank you Dollar Store for this absolutely disgusting candy that is bound to have my guys in giggles)

Coffee Can Upcycle - Halloween Pails

Jeremy and I drink coffee. LOTS of coffee. So we often just buy whatever store brand is on sale and the beauty of that is that they tend to come in those awesome metal containers. I started saving them with one intention (you'll have to wait until spring when I get more saved up and the weather turns nice again to see that project!) but as Halloween got closer I had the idea to turn them into Halloween pails for my kiddos to use at the Harvest Festival we take them to each year. This was such a fun, simple project. I think next time I would get the kids involved and let them create their own. Want to see what I did?

I started by removing the lids and peeling the labels off of some empty metal coffee containers.

Then I had my husband drill holes on opposite sides of the cans. He also filed them down so they wouldn't be sharp. We will use these later for the handles.

Then I painted them. I was thinking a Frankenstein, a pumpkin and a mummy so I used green, orange, and black (this will just be a background color for the mummy). I wanted to use stuff I had on hand so I just used the same old acrylic paint I use for nearly every other project - probably not the best stuff for this as it smeared around a lot but once I let it dry I was able to apply a second coat and it worked out fine.

Now let's add the handles. We started with a coat hanger and then my handy, helpful husband cut them down to size and wrapped them in the holes.

Time to decorate these adorable little pails. I used craft foam on Frankenstein and the jack o' lantern and gauze and googly eyes on the mummy. Add a little super glue and we had these cute pails:

 I love the way they turned out and think they could be easily be used over and over. Like I said at the beginning of the post, it would also be fun to let the kids design their own. The possibilities are endless - a witch, a bat, a spider....go crazy with it!