Chica Schmica

I am endlessly amazed by what one can do with something as simple as an egg carton. After seeing these egg carton lights, I couldn’t stop thinking about what else I could do with that lovely shape: flowers, skirts for little chenille stem dolls, ghosts.

With the approach of Halloween, I seized on the ghost concept and decided to use the pieces of an egg carton as part of a diorama.

Below you can see where cuts should be made on the egg carton for the pumpkin and ghosts, respectively.

Pumpkin:

Ghosts:

And, through a bit of serendipity, I discovered that the following cuts will leave you with little bat shapes!

Speaking of Halloween, I’ve been working on the girls’ costumes over the past couple days (leaving me waaaay behind in my blog reading). I usually work on my own projects while the kids are napping or at night while they’re in bed, but since Annabelle woke up early from her nap yesterday I decided to go ahead and finish what I had started while she watched close by.   As I sat down to stitch the pieces of Charlotte’s Princess Leia hat together, Annabelle astutely asked me, "Mommy, are you going to say "uh-oh?""   She kills me. Yes, I mess up. Alot. Don’t you just love the candor or children? Toddlers are like little mirrors showing us the good, bad, and the ugly of everything we do. Nothing like a little shot of humility, but at the same time, it’s nice to know she’s paying attention.

I went into planning this party thinking, “Fall Harvest.”  You’ll see from the pictures, however, that my one-track mind kept bringing me back to pumpkins. Lots and lots of glorious pumpkins!

The favors: Pumpkin finger puppets

These little finger puppets were super easy, albeit somewhat time consuming, to create. I made about 10 of them and each one had a different face. I really had fun with them.

By the end of the party the kids were really getting into them, too. One of the kids decided he needed one for each hand!

The Games:

One of the games we played was a pumpkin roll. It was absolutely perfect for the little ones. We have a slope in the back of our yard and they had a blast rolling their pumpkin balls down the hill and then running down the hill after them to bring them back.

Not quite as popular was the pumpkin ring toss. Although a few of the kids gave it a go, it proved a bit too challenging to keep their interest for very long. Perhaps it would go over better with an older crowd. All you need is a pumpkin with a nice long stem and some rings. We made our rings by cutting some rope and attaching them using masking tape (which can be seen partially on towards the bottom of the photo).

The Cake:

For the cake I went out and bought a fancy pumpkin cake pan, which is really just two bundt cakes joined together. It was supposed to look like this:

I should know better than to try something fancy. It was doomed from the beginning.  As I rushed around at the last minute trying to get everything together (as usual) I relinquished the task of putting the cake together to my mom. Who then passed it on to my dad. By the time I came back to check on it, my husband’s cousin was putting the finishing touches on it.

The cake was a excellent reminder that setting a picture-perfect, Martha Stewart-esque table is really not that important after all. Plus any attempt at something fancy would have been thrown out the window by all that debris left on the table. Good, grief… you’d think we would have cleared the table before setting out the cake, wouldn’t you?   Just FYI, it was a pumpkin spice cake with cream cheese icing.

Decor:

We kept things simple by sprinkling pumpkins, gourds, and acorns throughout the tables and such, and picked up some hay bails for extra seating.

Lastly, we have the birthday girl’s dress. Which I made. Which we did not get one SINGLE good picture of. Which got icing all over it during the cake eating. Which completely fell apart when I washed it. I’ll paint a picture for you: dark green corduroy, a-line jumper, little felt squirrel applique on bottom right-hand side. Very cute. The end.

And of course I have to include a picture of the birthday girl eating her cake.

Such a fun day…happy birthday baby girl!

After carving the pumpkin for the birthday invitations, I knew I wanted to do something with the seeds, but I wasn’t sure what. A quick consultation with our Nature’s Art Box book gave me the inspiration I needed: a pumpkin seed necklace!

I decided to paint some of the seeds orange so that I could introduce Annabelle to the concept of repeating patterns. We used:

• Sewing/embroidery needle
• Fishing line
• Twine
• Pumpkin seeds
• Scissors

First we strung the fishing line through the seeds. Annabelle helped pull the needle through a few times before deciding she would just tell me which seed to use next. We alternated orange and white seeds.

Once we had enough seeds (read: once she started losing interest) I cut some twine and tied the fishing line to it. Just a note, it’s important to make sure the knots are really tight so that it won’t come apart (we learned this first hand!).

Once both ends had the twine attached, I went ahead and tied the necklace around Annabelle’s neck.

It came out great and I always love activities that teach children about alternative uses for things, especially items from nature.

Oh, and the seeds that weren’t used for the necklace? We roasted them and gobbled them up!

I came across these instructions on making paper mache fish a couple weeks ago and my thoughts immediately turned to Halloween and jack 0′ lanterns.

You could hang them from a line or display on a shelf. Either way they’re fun to make!

Here’s how we did it:

I used the paste recipe from the original link, blew up some balloons, tore newspaper into strips, cut out some shapes from black construction paper for the face, and mixed some orange paint. You could skip the paint part if you use paper that’s already orange.

First, Annabelle poured the paint into the bowl of newspaper while Gramma mixed.

Once all the paper was orange, she swished the pieces around in the paste

and then applied it to the balloon.

After a few applications, Annabelle became preoccupied with trying to blow up a balloon, so Gramma finished applying the rest of the newspaper.

However, she was happy to rejoin the activity when it came time to put on the jack o’ lantern’s face.

We used clothespins to attach the fellas to a hanger to dry.

Taking “pumpkin head” pictures is completely optional at this point.

I let ours hang overnight to dry.

I love the face Annabelle put on hers. Doesn’t he look like he has the sweetest little disposition? Must be the huge round schnoz she gave him.