The Last of the Halloween

I think this is the end of my Halloween crafts.  As mentioned my daughter is little red riding hood for Halloween, and so I'm dressing up as grandma.  I needed an old fashion sleeping bonnet, so of course I googled it.  I found the directions on how to dress up like Mrs. Claus.
You start out with a 18 inch circle, and then I changed the directions, I folded the edge of the material over two inches, so it gave me a inch wide hem.
Then I sewed bias tape on top of the hem in a circle so I could thread skinny elastic around inside.  My hat was not such perfect circle, but my bias tape was a beautiful circle, so I had to photograph.

I thought 18 inches in diameter would be too much material, but it actually turned out a tad small, but it will work for a few hours.  My daughter loves the sleeping bonnet, it could become a favorite toy after Halloween.  It fits much better on her head then mine.

Everything Ghost

Its everything ghost in our house this October.  The year of the ghost.  So when were asked to bring 15 small things to share with all of J's classmates for Halloween, I remembered kleenex ghosts. Sure its hardly an original craft, but he is young so its new to him.  He had fun making them for his friends.

He drew spooky faces all of them. He also drew blood all over his kleenex ghost but not his friends, because it is so spooky and he didn't want to scare them.  His dad and I thought that was very respectful of him. 

In our small bag of of tootsie roll halloween candy we only had 10 lollipops, so we just tied kleenex to the large tootsie rolls, it worked fine.

He also drew fifteen pictures of spiderwebs and other spooky things to give to his classmates, drawing the pictures was his idea.

Halloween Cookies

Halloween Cookies with grammy. Hmm, this sounds famillar. Oh yeah, I make the dough by myself, and a day or two later, grammy takes care of the rest with the kids. We have more pictures of J and Grammy making sugar cookies than anything else.

Of course we had ghosts!  He is looking so big these days, and so dang cute!

Nan just scooped the frosting off the cookies with her knife and ate it.

Halloween Preview 2010

After I posted on Friday, I convinced my daughter to put on the cape, by feeding her mini M&Ms constantly. Here is my ghost and red riding hood.

Red Riding Hood Finished

My mom and I finished the cape. Here were the directions we used.  It is not the most adorable thing you have ever seen? The dress was a handme down from a lady in my apartment complex who I've only talk to twice and don't even know her name. Is that not most perfect dress?

Here is her treat bag. I sweet basket that should hold grandma's muffins.

Unfortunately like I mentioned she is scared of the cape.  I have printed off countless pictures of red riding hood and hung them at her eye level telling her this is a picture of Nan Baby. The best pictures my far to print were from The Project Gutenberg Story Time. I also hung the costume in her room for her to see, asking if she wants to wear it.  When she tells me no, I say ok, you don't have to but when you wear it you get a treat.

Did I mention I'm dressing up as grandma, and my husband the wolf.

Teen wolf that is.... when I told him he was dressing up as a wolf, he said teen wolf?  I said sure, until I saw the pictures, now I don't know.  I was picturing a wolf dressed in 80s clothes, not a planet of the ape in a 80s jean jacket.

My Gnome

We made the hood of red riding hood first. It was adorable on my daughter. She looked like a gnome, if I have another boy one day, he is so being a gnome for halloween the first year he can walk. She loved the hood, unfortunately she doesn't like the cape.

Sometimes I wonder if we were crazy making the cape, and should have just gone with a gnome for Nan?  Normally I'm not one for baby photography, but seriously baby girl gnomes are dang cute. Its official no matter what gender I have next, the baby will be a gnome.

Look how happy she is as a gnome, she just needs pants in a different color.

We used Martha Stewart's instructions to make the hood. Can I put this here? Hopefully, so I can get it printed for my copies, so I can make them one day again.

Cape How-ToThis cape should fall just below the hip. You will need red pinwale corduroy, red cotton broadcloth for lining, and 1 yard red double-fold bias tape. Make the cape according to the basic directions.
1. Make the hood: Cut a rectangle 25 inches long and at least 11 inches wide from both corduroy and lining remnants. Fold each in half crosswise as shown, and stack. Mark a point 10 inches from the left along the fold, and one 6 inches from the left along the bottom; draw a line from the top point to the bottom one. Pin layers together, and cut along the line (discard the remnant to the right).

2. Unfold and stack so that right sides are facing; pin in place. Stitch together along the long straight edge. Turn inside out so that wrong sides are facing and seam is concealed.

3. Fold in half end to end with the lining facing out; stitch along the angled edge as shown.

4. Turn hood corduroy side out and open. Align the bottom edge of the hood with the neckline of the cape as shown, corduroy sides facing; pin, and baste in place. Center the strip of double-fold bias tape on the neck, and fold it over raw edges; pin, and sew it in place.


Read more at Marthastewart.com: Little Red Riding Hood and the Wolf Costumes - Martha Stewart Crafts 

Alterations to the Ghost

One day my son came home from preschool and told me that they are going to have a Halloween party at school? Oh really? that's great. Yeah, and I'm going to wear my ghost costume, but first we have to draw blood on it so you can tell how I died. Oh? Have you been discussing this with one of your friends? No. Did you talk about your costume or anyone else's costume today at school? No. Ok, apparently this is totally his own idea. He pulled the marker out before our last photo session ended. I spent three dollars on that sheet, and its his costume so I let him do what he wanted, but I did help him make the drip shape when he was marking.

Gorey huh?

The picture is not the best, but he had lost interest in pictures.

My true Ghost

My son has planned on being a ghost since November 1, 2009. Both his parents refused to let him only have eye hole holes, so we made a hood. It wasn't hard, it wasn't a lot of sewing, but we still used grammy's help while in Texas.

Then one day he needed a mask to be brave when an older boy in the neighbhorhood was being scary. In the words of his dad, "Now! he looks like a ghost." The mask is courtesy from a trip his great uncle took to Guatemala via his Auntie (Anti) Kim. But he won't be using it on Halloween.

Reject Costume

The second to last texas craft, is a white tutu that I made for my almost two year old. I was going to go with a tutu ghost. She was going to be themed with her brother. She loved the tutu until she got close, then would scream. It looks so pretty though. I changed, in my hearts of hearts, if I had only one costume to dress a daughter up in, I would pick a red cape for little red riding hood. Who knows I might never have an almost two year old daughter again, and almost three year old kids, are opinionated. (Well so are two year olds, they just don't have the communication skills, required to get out of little red riding hood.)

Although I knew how to make a tutu, my mom likes directions, so I googled it. I found this video extremely helpful.  I liked how she said to roll up the tulle before cutting, such a great idea. She said roll up a yard of tulle and cut each inch.

Super Capes

This is the third to last texas project I will post. While visiting my mom in Texas in August, she helped me make capes. We made a Super J cape.  J picked out the colors, lets just say I was right when I told his preschool teacher his two very favorite colors where blue and yellow.

He likes to run "super fast".  He also picked out the patterned material for the J symbol, and he wanted a diamond shape.  

We found the tutorial here. We needed a cape, so he didn't have to use baby blankets anymore.

Then we made a birthday cape for the friend that introduced J to wearing blankets as capes.  That is a B for the friends name, not birthday.  I wasn't in attendance at the party so I have no idea if the friend liked it.

Part of me wants to make a princess cape for Nan baby, I already have the material and everything, but the other part of me knows, I should wait.

Halloween Frame

I love cutesy holiday frames, but I never buy them, because what year to display there is so much fun each year, I can't single out one year. Then I found this tutorial, and made this. (just realized, most of these "tutorials" aren't tutorials, I thought people posted their crafts here so people would copy them.)

I am so in love with it, my shiren to my homemade halloween costumes. There is even a spot for this years picture of the kids being ghosts this year. (By the way, I made a mistake. Something is upside down, I didn't know it had a direction. Oops.)

Did you want close ups?  Yes, even my husband's ghost busters costume made it, heck we won trip to the movies with that idea. Somewhere I have candy corn stickers, they would made a great addition, we are big fans of candy corn and those pumpkins.

I bought a "distressed ink pad" in the scrapbooking section of the store for distressing paper and such, I love it, I used it on everything. It was so fun to make. J loves the distressed ink pad too.

Here is the end of my halloween decorations for the year. Yeah, that flat surface is never that clean. I love that cat, I carried it back from Texas.

Since this is the end of halloween maybe.  I just need to post one last thing from that blog party, I think this costume idea is so cute, and that is actually a tutorial.

Autumn Pillows

While I was waiting for paint to dry, I decided my green springy pillows, weren't going with the Halloween Motif, so I made some new pillows. They were much easier than the last set. I used some decorative tea towels I bought a few years ago, it was so super easy, just folded in half and stuffed.  I liked them much better as pillows than towels.

I think I actually for the first time in my life made an invisible stitch!  Horray for me! They'll last until December. And even match my harvest plaque, that stays up through Thanksgiving.

Hooray for shimmery gold, and orange.

Witch Plaque

I guess I have affinity for witches.  I found this collection, and loved this tutorial, and ended up making this. I absolutely love its, its probably my favorite thing of the year. I just found this picture on google images, I'm sorry to the people, who posted a picture of their grandmas and I defaced it, but they bring me great joy. The  tutorial, also linked to some great vintage clip art blogs, The Graphics Fairy, and Magic Moonlight.

My husband gave me a lot of design advice, for whatever reason, we sort of worked on it together.  If he wouldn't have helped me it would have added ridiculous ribbon, sparkles, rhinestones, drawn spiders crawling along the outside, drawn stars, some more bats.  But my husband understand the adage less is more, and steered me away from childishness as he described it.  It would have been over the top and cute, and included a purple plaid witch hat but this turned out perfect too. I love it. It looks like evidence to convict four poor women in Salem.

While I picked up my son from preschool, my husband worked on one of his own. He used a frame that was already on the wall, and just flipped the photo over.  I loved what he did, spotted it the minute I walked in.  But it needed a new background, so I added the scrapbook paper.  Part of me thinks it needs more like a huge spider, but part of me wants to keep it the way my husband did it.

Can you believe it too close to Halloween to buy Halloween ribbon?  I went to at least three stores, and couldn't find any! All sold out of the year.

J's Halloween Sign

Of course my son couldn't resist getting into the halloween crafting. This is the sign he made. He wanted it on the door, so I stuck it on with a magnetic. How useful to have a metal door.

Its so hard to take pictures of crafts coated with modge pogde. Funny sad story.  He showed it to his friend, his friend said I don't like it.  J said, I know its pretty spooky huh?! It was sweet that my son didn't realize what his friend meant, but everyone's an art critic. I love it, because he designed and made it all himself, except for the modge podge, he was gone, and I had it out, so I just did it.

Witchy Witch

My mom and I found these witch legs at Tuesday morning, and thought they were so dang funny, I convinced her to buy them, but then she ended up giving them to me. I don't know what you do with them, so I stuck magnetics on the back and stuck them to my metal door.

At the store, I saw a crafty sign, that was vertical and had scrappy material hanging.  I almost bought it, because I liked the material, but realized I didn't care for the wooden part of the sign.  So I came home and made a wooden witchy one. I love it! I think its so cute, I had so much fun making it, I haven't made a painted wood craft in so long.

Not quite Thirty

Between the two of us, my husband and I have 29 nieces and nephews.  Can you believe having 29 cousins before you are even 5?  That is the life my children lead, I only 13 and I am way older than 5. They aren't even done getting cousins?!  Anyway, so last month my brother's wife had another baby.  Here is the blanket I made her. 

But then when you name your kid, themed name you are likely to wind up with a themed blanket. 

I can't help it. (I should really crop my blanket pictures.)

See, little patriot hearts and stars with the word Liberty. (My corners are really starting to look beautiful.)

And remember if you ever want to make a fabulous sized receiving blanket, get a yard and quarter of cotton calico of two different materials.  Sew them together without batting, and either tie them or sew them in the middle.

My one and only sister

I'm really lucky to have a great sister and be friends with her, even though we didn't grow up together, (she is 9 years older than me, and graduated high school a whole decade before me). Unfortuantely she isn't so lucky, because she has a crafty sister who makes her homemade presents. First present, a half apron, I was in a big half apron mood this summer.

And then another baby blanket! She did not just deliever her baby, she is not pregnant, in the words of my father she needs another baby blanket like she needs a hole in her head. But I couldn't resisit.

Its strawberry shortcake!

Homemade Birthday Cards

I gave up making and giving birthday cards out for the most part. But I can't deny my grandparents or parents, just so happens that my father's birthday is five days after my maternal grandma's birthday, so I only had to come up with one design. But in a moment of ingeniousness I used thank you cards, and glued the pictures on top to hid the thanks, but that way I didn't have to fold or cut paper, just pictures. I also used a plastic label machine for the words. 

The cookies the kids are holding were free after finishing the summer reading program at the Library. Pretty awesome.

Wahoo, happy birthday. Grandpa and Great Grandma. Unfortuantely I apparently can't take in focus pictures.