Bowman Clan: 2011

Confession: I read craft blogs.

I sit around and learn about all these home made ingenuity's and wish that I could make them too. Then I remember that I have no where in my house to decorate, except my mantel, which is getting over run with light houses and the rest of my stuff has to hide on the shelf in the school room where company can't enjoy it.

Then I got the brilliant idea that if I put a nice china cabinet / hutch in my living room I could fill it with homemade decorations. So I went out and bought 3 of them.

OK so those are just for Vivian but we did stop at the Goodwill and we found this one for $65.95. I didn't get it then but a few days later it was still there and I had Kenneth go pick it up because I hadn't been able to stop thinking about it. See the chewed up corner on the left? and the missing handle on the right? Yeah I didn't care. I still think it's a wonderful piece, it even has lights on the inside that work. The first thing Theodore did was drive his cars on the little ledge and Lawrence likes to pull on the handles but we'll need to replace them anyways. The kids can't really even reach the handles for the glass case and they know that anything in there is just to look at and not touch. I LOVE IT and now I have a place to put my nice stuff.

OK, so what does this have to do with Halloween? Well that is the current holiday and it happens to be one of my favorites. Especially when it comes to decorating. I hosted a Girls Night Out Halloween party last year so I did a few decorations for that. But this year John was turning 30 and I wanted to go all out. I made some invitations using this idea: http://www.meandmyinsanity.com/2008/10/bat-iful-party-invitations.html

And here is what his party looked like:

Cardboard tree (Free), paper bats ($1), streamers ($1), spider web in window ($3), Halloween lights ($3), and balloons ($4) they were part of a game.

Skull lights ($2.50), spider web banner on back door ($1) the other panel was on the front door, Pandora Halloween channel playing in the back ground (free), homemade chocolate candies for favors ($15-$20 For molds and chocolate), Black table clothes with purple tint (Free - Fabric from Debra who surged the sides for me after I cut them to size), bag of small spiders scattered all over floor ($3).

Freaky Fabric hanging from chandelier ($3), bag of big spiders ($2.50).

Pumpkin and skull flashing lights - $2.50, tea lights - borrowed from Debra, orange jelly toy - $1, Halloween town - 5 houses - $5, assorted ribbon - $7, Paint - free, witch and Mummy - $2, scrapbook paper - $1, google eyes - $1, stickers - $1, hot glue sticks - $1, 2x4 - free along with everything else I already had on hand and I have lots of leftovers to play with for next year.

3D tree - $3 from Target, skeleton favors - $2 for 8, Butterscotch candy - $1, Eyeball rocks - $2.50 [I just printed eyes from here http://www.flamingotoes.com/2010/09/bowl-of-eye-balls/ (another project that I wanted to do but didn't get to) and cut them out and glued to the bottom of the clear glass rocks from the Dollar Tree.]

Black tray - $2 @ Goodwill, salt dough ghosts and tombstones from last year, idea here: http://familyfun.go.com/halloween/halloween-crafts/ghost-crafts/salt-dough-ghosts-671167/

and Jar-o-lanterns - free, idea here: http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/jar-o-lanterns-1024695/

This I found awhile ago and I had to make one for my friend (she loved it) and it ended up being one of our Super Saturday projects. But these are the two I ended up with. Idea here: http://adiamondinthestuff.blogspot.com/2011/08/googly-eye-halloween-frame.html

And you gotta love my furocious wreath. idea here: http://familyfun.go.com/crafts/fur-ocious-wreath-1024768/

And this is the one that took the most time... My Witches Cupboard. This is how it looked for the party. I collected any glass bottles I could get my hands on without going too far out of my way. I confess I bought a few things just for the bottles but knew we would use the product anyways. I printed most of the labels from here: http://thehauntinggrounds.com/2010/halloween-props/new-potions-and-ingredients/ but the rest I got off of a list on a Harry Potter fan site. (I guess some geek read the books or watched the movies and wrote down any potion they mentioned and I chose the ones that weren't obvious or exclusive to Harry Potter). Then I formatted them in Word, printed it on cream paper and aged the paper by crumpling it up and using distress ink. Then I filled them with whatever I felt fit. I bought a few things for this but most of the bottles are filled with water or shampoo with food coloring or paint. Then some of the powder is just from my cupboard. A mix of spices or baking ingredients. (I was able to clean a few old things out of my crowded cupboards without throwing it away.)

Here is my spider sack that never got more spiders added around it. Idea here: http://youcraftmeup.blogspot.com/2010/10/spider-egg-sack-tutorial.html

Here is the food spread. I asked everyone to bring an appetizer. John wanted a Fondu party so we tried to have that available as well (however we failed miserably with the sauces). We tried again for his actually birthday dinner and the sauce tasted better but still ended up just being poured over peoples food instead of used as fondu. I guess it's not really a party food.

I dragged the entry way table over to be the drink table (genius on my part). I bought a brain mold ($5) but my punch mixture was too heavy to float in the punch bowl but we still had green punch and water. And you can't see it in this picture but I bought a witches broom for $6 at K-mart and it is along the back of the table. Oh and the crows were at the Dollar Tree and I got 5 of them. The Halloween plates and cups and napkins were about $15 altogether. And this was the first half of the freaky fabric I bought from Walgreen's.

One of the guests bought John a totally cute cake. (Which was awesome because I totally meant to make him one but ran out of time, I had bought a couple pumpkin pans from Goodwill too, oh well.)

So after the party I put all the decoration into the cabinet to still show them off.

Here is the skeleton tree with more skeletons on it. I had intended something different hanging on the tree but this was improvised and definitely a keeper.

So my Halloween Town is [one] of my proudest accomplishments from the whole thing. Mostly because it is more of an original idea than anything else. I do confess I did see a couple blogs of using a birdhouse and putting Halloween scrapbook paper and other embellishments on it so I didn't come up with the idea all by myself. But I only was on that site for a few minutes and could never find it again so I was on my own and couldn't make a carbon copy of someone else's work. It took me awhile to gear up for it. I painted the houses one night. A few days later I put some of the paper on it. It was one of those things I wanted to get out of the way early but for some reason I was having a hard time with idea's. One day I said today is the day I will get it done and then I realized... I'm not creative during the day. So I did some other more brainless work (probably made more glass eyeballs or something) and then that night about 10 or 11 when John was getting ready for bed, I sat down with the glue gun and got to work. I was amazed at how everything just came together and each house ended up with its own personality. It is totally how I wanted it without really having a picture in mind to start.

Now to my Snow White's Step-Mother display. I saw a few things like this:

http://christybuonomophoto.blogspot.com/2010/10/witchs-spell-book.html

and this:

http://www.madiganmade.com/2010/10/turn-old-books-into-spooky-decor.html

Then I used the labels from here:

http://savorypg.blogspot.com/2008/11/peddler-punch.html

So I was going to put the spells in the book but my book ended up too cool looking for me to display open (see below) So I turned the Snow White spells into plaques instead and displayed them with the potion ingredients needed.

And of course the Crow adds to the display since she had her own black bird with her.

OK now my spell books. You already saw the links above that gave me the idea of having a stack of spell books. So I had gone to Goodwill and bought some hardcover books with old looking pages and preferably no color. I chose 1 bigger one to use as the spell book and the best one I could find had blue in it but otherwise was colorless. And then I came across this tutorial from craftymommyandme.blogspot.com. (for some reason the link isn't pasting in here) But she used hot glue to create a 3D image on the front of the book and then cut out thin cardboard for a name plate and to make the spine more authentic looking. Then she took a paper towel and watered down Elmer's and formed the paper towel around the whole cover of the book and then painted it with watered down paint. So I went to get the books I had bought at Goodwill and it turned out the titles of the books were Servant of the Bones and Dirty Business. Well I thought those two titles would look good in the witches cupboard as they were so I took the big one I had bought and found one on our shelf that neither of us cared too much about and got to work. It went a lot smoother than I thought it would and turned out to look super awesome. On the big one I aged the pages by painting watered down brown paint around the edges while the book was closed. I did this several times in front of the fan and then I just took 5-10 pages at a time and crumpled them up and then straightened them out. Then once it was dry I put a couple cans on it to weigh it down to flatten the pages a little bit more.

People ask why I chose those symbols and I really don't have a good reason. I just looked up Celtic knots on google images and chose an easy one. Then I did the celtic tree of life because that is the one the lady in the tutorial had used. I still have to name these books but that will come later.

I had some Family members question me a couple times while I was making all this Halloween stuff to make sure I wasn't going to the dark side. I really wasn't putting mental thought into most of it - it was purely for decorations only. I did realize at some point in the middle of it that some of my ideas were a bit dark and wrong so I didn't do them. They also wanted to know why Halloween was one of my favorite holidays and at first I couldn't give a real reason. Then I thought about it and decided that the Day of the Dead was to acknowledge our ancestors but to also celebrate our life and to celebrate life we need to have fun. So on Halloween I will probably spend a couple hours with the kids talking about Family History and maybe we'll turn my spell books into something along those lines instead of potions, curses or hexes like I intended on. But we will also dress up and have fun together as a family. I have had a lot of fun making everything and I'm so excited for my new cabinet and to go all out for Christmas and other holidays now. I hope you enjoyed my display and don't think I'm evil for getting so into Halloween. My kids on the other hand love all of it and both want to have Halloween be the theme for their birthday parties (February and May). I think I'm ok with that since I have enough decorations already.

Here is Michael camoflaging (sp?) with my dead tree.

Hi, I'm Michael and I go to First Grade. (Not in my pajamas though) Mommy caught me in the middle of asking a question. I guess it's not that hard to do since I ask A LOT of questions. But I know that is the best way to learn and it's why I am so smart.

I eat this many Vitamins every day so I can grow big and strong.

I love my baby brother Lawrence.

And Theodore is so much fun to chase around.

Vivian can be sweet sometimes too.

And after 6 years, I still love my blue pillow.

I love to take pictures with Mommy's camera.

I love to play dress up.

And I love my row boat (wagon).

I love to find different ways to use things.

And to use up all my energy.

When I was in Kindergarten I went to rock climbing class. On our last day Mr. Marlow set up a zipline. It was so fun. And over the summer when we went camping, I got to go on Grandpa's Zipline that was waaaaaay bigger. It was awesome.