Handmade Halloween Decorations

Finn is very excited for Halloween this year and is enticed with other people's yard decorations.... this meant that the guilty mom inside of me decided that I should probably get into the Halloween spirit and do more decorating than just carving pumpkins this year.  As some of you may know, for my One Thing, One Month challenge, I decided not to purchase any new items (except craft material) for the moth of October. This (along with our tight budget) meant that any Halloween decorations had to be from things we already had, or crafts we could make both cheaply and easily. A look at our crafting shelves and some browsing on the internet was all we needed to create a "spooky" house on a budget!

Easy construction paper Jack-o-Lanterns. I cut out the shapes and let Finn glue together the faces.

We decorated our holiday tree with paper ghosts. This was an idea I came up with  almost by accident, but was super easy. Just take some old tissue paper (I save old gift wrap, so this was easy for me!) and cut it into approximately square pieces. I did mine about 3-inches square, but it depends on what sort of space you are working with. Layer 3 piece of tissue paper together. Then make a wad of tissue paper for the head, place it in the center of your squares and tie together with a piece of rope or string. Viola! 

Finn loved these so we made a few more to hang in his bedroom window as well!

Then we found last year's spider web and hung some inside the house...

as well as outside the front door!

Then we needed to make some spiders to go in the web. We made some cute ones out of old egg cartons, black paint, pipe cleaners and googly eyes. There is a tutorial here if you need better instructions, but I bet you could figure it out! Finn got a little restless with this one, as it took a day for the paint to dry, and then I had to put in the legs because it was difficult and they are sharp. But he loved being in charge of the googly eyes and telling me where the spiders should hang out!

Sadly, there was a real spider about this size in our house a few days ago. It wasn't quite as cute as this one though...

And lastly, last night was our annual pumpkin carving! I made a cat in the moon, Finn requested a ladybug pumpkin (although I had to do most of the cutting) and the one that looks like a mushroom is Todd's and is actually a football trophy. Now as soon as I get our costumes finished, we will be all set for Halloween!

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