Our Halloween Dining Room

Last Halloween we came up with spooky decorations for our breakfast room chandelier, so this year, it was time to decorate the dining room too. All it took was a length of black tulle, spider diecuts and a couple of strands of mini skeletons from Dollar Tree to make it look creepy and elegant.

 It looks great surrounded by paper rosettes and paper lanterns.

 I love the black and white vibe we have going on in there this year. Here's a peak at all of our dining room decorations-

All in all, it came out even better than I expected. This year, there wasn't a plan - just kind of threw it all together in about an hour using items we made and a few decorations we picked up at Dollar Tree and Target.

Are you ready for the big day? We hope to take the kiddos trick-or-treating on Saturday, but right now there's a 100% chance of rain!!! Oh well, guess we will all be using the umbrellas on Halloween!

Wishing you a Happy and Dry Halloween!

Painting Party and a Wicked Witch Sign

Have you ever gone to a painting party? We've gone to Painting with a Twist several times, but yesterday we went to a local shop here in Crosby for a party and had an amazing time! This was an early birthday present from my Mom and she couldn't have given me anything better - love you Mom!

Anne with The Antique Trunk, was an amazing teacher and since there was only 5 of us there it was so much more relaxed and fun. Anne even let us choose a painting that I found online. Thank you Anne for such a fun day!

None of us were sure of painting the witch, so we decided to let the Cricut do the work for us! So much easier and we all loved how it turned out.

Here's the painting that I found online and sent to Anne - 

Our paintings are pretty close to the original, except for the man in the moon. We didn't think we could get that level of detail so we just placed the witch over the moon. 

Of course, I couldn't wait and had to hang mine up today. But it looked a little lonely and I decided it needed a little Wicked Witch Sign.

The witch is a stamp from Inkadinkado that I picked up from Michaels a few weeks ago.

I stamped her on colored paper, but in hindsight, I think it might have been better to stamp her on white paper and fill in the white with colored pencils? Hmm.... next time I'm going to try that. 

It's hard to see in the photo but she has a bit of orange tulle over her skirt and ribbon trim that was hot glued on. Next time, I think she should be purple with a black tutu skirt? The combinations are endless and I know that there are going to be many more versions of her by next Halloween.

The arrow sign came from Hobby Lobby and was painted and covered in a piece of scrapbook paper.

The black and orange bakers twine came from the Dollar Spot at Target and was the perfect finishing touch.

Hope you had as much fun this weekend as we did and hope you have a wonderful week!

Easy Halloween Photo Booth Ideas

Have you ever set up a Photo Booth before? It is so quick to do and so much fun! Halloween is the perfect time to get some great shots of everyone in their costumes.Our booth has been such a hit at our past 3 Halloween parties and I thought I would share our some of our DIY frames and ideas in one post.

The first year we kept it fairly simple with just crepe paper and a photo frame with a simple Boo banner and spiderwebs.

We are lucky enough to have the perfect spot upstairs for the photo booth. Two of our bedrooms open into a small alcove that is the perfect size for a shower curtain rod. A white sheet is the perfect backdrop when it is suspended from the rod. Black and orange crepe paper is the perfect inexpensive way to add some color to the background.

Small chalkboards are easy to make with black foam core board, chalkboard spray paint and wooden dowels. These are always fun additions and ours have been used over and over again.

Foam core also makes an easy Polaroid Photo Frame like the one we used in 2013.

We added strings of white Christmas lights behind the backdrop this year. They really brightened up the photos.

Last year, we made another frame out of foam core that was a bit spookier. It was decorated with felt spider webs from Dollar Tree and we decorated the backdrop with spooky fabric and bats. You can get the easy how to here.

This year, will probably be a combination of the three different frames or we might set up a spooky scene in the hubby's office so check back next week to see what we came up with.

The Halloween countdown has begun! Hope you are having lots of spooky good fun this year!

 

Easy Jack-O-Lantern Vases

Last summer we held a wedding shower for Leigh's BFF from first grade. We used lots of burlap, lace and country accents, both in the house and in the back yard. I saw a really cute photo on Pinterest of brown bottles hanging in trees and copied it for our yard. We all loved them so much that they stayed up until almost Halloween last year and a friend of mine borrowed them for a shower she gave this year.

These photos are from last year -

This year, we turned the plain brown bottles into Jack-O-Lanterns with a bit of vinyl, orange spray paint and twine. They look adorable hanging in our crepe myrtle trees and best of all the flowers last for at least a week in them.

They are super quick and easy to make. Thoroughly clean and dry the bottles before you start. These were soaked in warm water to remove as much of the label as possible, then we used Goof Off to remove the remaining glue. We freehand cut out the vinyl pieces, stuck them on the bottle and covered it all with 2 coats of spray paint. Make sure to remove the vinyl before the paint has fully cured. This will give you a crisp clean image.

Wrap brown twine around the top and tie it securely with a long piece if you are going to hang it in a tree. I also tied a small piece of green on top of the brown.

These bottles just make me smile every time I look out the back window and once the weather cools off and we can use the fire pit, then we will really be able to enjoy them! Once the redneck swimming pool comes down we put up the fire pit. Once spring roles around, we put it away and out comes the swimming pool so we have the best of both worlds.

The swing has a perfect view of the Jack-O-Lanterns, now all we need is some real FALL weather!

Wishing you all a wonderful weekend!