Thursday, October 29, 2009

I Love Halloween

I'm particularly biased, since I was born on the 31st, but I love Halloween and autumn, especially in Michigan - so beautiful. So, we've been enjoying our lead up to Halloween - making Jack-o-lanterns, pumpkin bread, getting our costumes, etc. We've also been making some fun Halloween crafts. My kids love crafts. It's just so fun to see how excited they get about it. Paint, markers, glue, glitter, and fuzzy balls get used up as quickly as breakfast cereal around here. Here are a few cute pics from our festivities and some of our crafts.

Here's Benjamin in his costume before his school Halloween party today. He was too interested in what the other kids were wearing to look at the camera.


At home we were mummies and witches. We do the mummy thing every year and then I have a big bag of ripped up toilet paper that sits by the toilet from October until January!



Here are some of the crafts. I try to keep the best ones, but mostly I document them and then I don't feel bad when I 'unclutter.' So, that's why he's wearing the same thing in each picture - we took all the pics on one day before we cleaned out the closet.

The kids had so much fun picking stickers to put on their bags, although Bella immediately started ripping them off again and sticking them in her mouth. My kids outgrow that phase so late, it seems.



This craft is fun and uses some of that ripped up toilet paper! Wrap it around an empty toilet paper roll (there are many of those around now too) and then staple or glue the arms, legs, and head on.


Don't you love how excited he looks to be wearing this? I promise, he LOVED this headband. He wore it the whole rest of the day when we first made it. By the way, the bat's face was Benjamin's artistry.



Here are a few other non-Halloween crafts we enjoyed.

These are magnets we made out of clay. Benjamin has been really into space and planets lately, so we made some space-themed fridge magnets. It's children's clay so it hardens without baking. We molded them one day and pushed magnets onto the backs before they hardened and then painted them a week later - two crafts in one! His were the rocket ship and the alien space ship. I made a shooting star and Bella's....well, they're up for interpretation. But she sure loved the process! She was the last one to leave the table, both on molding day and painting day! I kept asking her "are you done?" and she'd vigorously shake her head and keep working away.


We made the frog headband and the raccoon puppet during story time at the library. They do great stuff with the kids there.




After Halloween, I'll post pics of Bella in her WonderWoman costume that she chose herself. So cute!!

3 comments:

Loni said...

Happy Birthday on the 31st, I always thought that would be a fun day to celebrate a birthday!
Love all the crafts, your kids look like they must have so much fun doing them!
Can't wait to see the Halloween pics!

Than and Erica said...

You are so good to do those with your kids! Happy Birthday!!!!!!!

Julia said...

All of those crafts look like a lot of fun!

Happy Birthday, Michelle!