Some Halloween Preparations

We've been collecting these (hickory?) nuts from around the neighborhood with the aim of using them in some sort of fall decorating since Chris accused me of ruining the boys' childhoods by failing to put up any Fall decor at all.  I still maintain that putting up Fall decorations when it is still in the 80's outside and there is not a tree bursting with beautiful colored leaves to be seen (other than green that is) just seems wrong and also silly.  

My idea was to crack them open and use the outer shells for making little toothpick sail boats and then string up the inner nuts in a garland.  That's Fallish right?  Did I mention Chris also wants all of our Fall decorations to be free?  Well, cracking these beasts was easier said than done my friends....even with bashing them repeatedly with hammers over the course of three days David and I only managed to break open half of what we collected.

Luckily, half turned out to be just enough to make a not too sad garland.

I will say though, that breaking nuts open with hammers is good work for rambunctious boys.  Not that I have any of those. 

I'm not generally a seasonal arts and crafter with the kids since they bore easily with crafts in general and I dislike putting a lot of effort into setting up something for them to make that I will ultimately throw in the trashcan......but this year I thought I'd try not to ruin the boys childhood memories by having a big gaping hole in the area of pumpkin crafting when I saw this idea for watercolor jack-o-lanterns.

They turned out really well and added that extra something special to our sad-ish nut garland.

It wouldn't really be Halloween though without some actual jack-o-lantern carving.  We waited until last weekend and bought the pumpkins for three dollars a piece at the commissary in the sad leftover pumpkin section.  There aren't any real pumpkin-patches round these parts since our climate is inhospitable to pumpkin growing so I didn't feel too bad skipping the trip to the pumpkins-lined-up-on-the-side-of-the-busy-road-masquerading-as-pumpkins-growing-in-a-patch establishment.  The children didn't seem to mind.

This year instead of me having to do the majority of the carving, we let the kids go to town with the drill, which turned out to be really fun.

David decided that he also wanted to carve his so this was his first year mastering the art of the tiny pumpkin saw.  He did a pretty good job carving his, um.....sideways bat?  He also drew the face for the big jack-o-lantern which he insisted needed to be really scary.

We've never been mere pumpkin painters here.  In the past even if the kids couldn't actually carve their own pumpkins I persevered and made them have there own pumpkin and at least attempt to help scoop guts.

Messy?  Yes.

Time consuming?  Yes.

But it's also the only way to get the pumpkin seeds which is really the only reason we go through all of this rigmarole anyway  :)

Well, I hope all your Halloween preparations are going as swimmingly as ours.  Now I've got to go put some finishing touches on our makeshift, Aunt Courtney had a baby and didn't buy us fancy costumes this year costumes :)