Trick or treat thank you cards

Just a quick fly by post today. I have a lot of sewing and drawing and cutting out to do this afternoon! I've talked before about how we try to give something in return for the treats that we get at Halloween, just to offset the feeling of trick or treating being a grabathon. In past years we've taken cookies around with us to give to neighbours along our trick or treat route, but this year Carys wanted to make them a Happy Halloween card, so she drew this spooky picture and I scanned and shrunk it for her so that we could print out four little thank you cards to one sheet of paper.

They are just black and white so that you can print them easily and colour them if you want to. I think she's just going to write "thank you" on the inside of the cards and give one to whoever is handing out candy at the doors we knock on. She's very proud of them. If you'd like to print some too then just click on the thumbnail image below to get the full size image (which fits on US letter sized paper). Or if you have time let your kids draw their own.

Happy Halloween!

Colourful skull and monster cookies

I've just written up a little Halloween project over at Alpha Mom about using cookie dough as playdough and baking it into nomable 3D monster and skull cookie sculptures. We had a lot of fun doing this one and as you can probably tell, it's not something that you have to limit to Halloween. You can make any cookie your imagination can invent with this technique. I'm quite tempted to get a bunch more dough made and make a cookie solar system or a cookie self portraits. Endless possibilities and when you've got more than one kid and only one rolling pin and hardly any cookie cutters, this is a great alternative to conventional cookie baking! so pop over to Alpha Mom to read more and see some more photos too.

We have had fun with cookie dough and food colouring in the past here as well, making giant cookies and pizza cookie here, plus candy cane cookies last year and cookies that you could lace with too.

Hope you've all got your Halloween costumes ready. We haven't! Carys only told me a couple of days ago that she wants to be Miss Frizzle from The Magic School Bus series of books, which I think is a totally awesome choice, but does mean that I need to do some sewing over the next week. At least the princess dress that Ffion wants to wear just needs the length altering. Any ideas for a really easy baby costume for Delyth? I thought maybe I could make her a lizard costume, so she could be either Liz to Carys's Miss Frizzle, or Pascal to Ffion's Rapunzel, but that seems like a lot of work right now!

Halloween and other people's projects

I want to post about the birthday gift that we (me and Paul) made for Carys this year, but it's going to have to wait because it ain't done yet! Arg, bit off more than I could chew in the time available, but she's a cracking kid and totally understands that it's nearly ready and I just want it to not be a rushed mess because with any luck this gift will be something that lasts for many years. I'll be excited to show you some pics when it is done though.

She had a few little gifts actually on the day though, so she was happy. One that really went down well was the "birthday coupons", which was a totally last minute thing scribbled on some index cards at almost midnight before her birthday. She's actually using the ice-cream for breakfast one tomorrow morning, at least that's what she said before bed anyway. Have any of you tried this? I think we're going to do it for every birthday from now on (maybe even for me and Paul!)

This post is mainly to give kudos to some people that have tried out some of the things on Filth Wizardry and made their own versions and also to give a bit of a round up of anything Halloween themed or fall themed from the archives for any of you that are new here and won't have seen them because they are burried in the depths of my badly tagged posts.

I got into the habit last year of doing round ups every now and again to share other people's versions of our projects, but I let that slip and I'd like to start doing those round ups again. Unfortunately, even if people did email me about their takes on our crafts over that period of time, I'm not going to be able to find them easily in my chaotic inbox, so this little round up is just a few things that have been brought to my attention over the last week or so. In the future I'll try to be a bit better about putting emails in the right places and not getting burried under them.

• Kami from Get Your Mess On (also of Austin Tinkering School awesomeness) posted about the hot glue and wooden stick marble and ping pong ball fun they had after reading our tribute to Scott Weaver post. Love that they got some marble run action going with theirs, because we all got sidetracked into the sculpture side of it and didn't get very far with the plans to make it a dynamic sculpture.
• Eden Folwell and her daughter did some snail painting together. Boy is that a blast from the past for us! Our 2008 snail painting is still up in the kitchen. I am rather sentimental about certain pieces of art that we've made together and that was a very fun afternoon we had making that one!
• Speaking of art that I am sentimental about, Meri cherry over at her blog by the same awesome name posted about the leaf rubbing mural her class made after seeing our one from 2009. This is another thing that we still have up on our wall years later because I love it so much. Seeing the one that Meri's kids made gave me the grins and a bucket full of nostalgia too.

If you have had a go at one of the projects/experiments/crafts/stunts posted on Filth Wizardry then let me know and I'll add your link to a round up in the future :)

Possibly useful Halloween and Fall posts.

With Halloween around the corner, here are a few old posts that might come in handy for last minute costume making or decorating or just fall themed makings...

 

• Halloween pancakes from 2009. This was before Jim from Jim's Pancakes went and put my efforts to shame! Have you seen, he's doing Star Wars pancakes now! Tardis Pancake dude! Make a Tardis pancake!
• Jack-o-lantern apple printing, Frankenstein hand prints and halloween stencils from 2009.
• Toilet roll bat decorations from 2009.
• Milk jug trick or treat pumpkin pots from 2008.
• Jack-o-lantern pinata from 2009.
• Pumpkin carving daftness from 2009.

As far as costume stuff goes, here are a few posts that might help with last minute cheap ideas...

• If you've got a little girl and two little boys, I would love to see someone do Amy Pond, The Doctor and Rory as The Last Centurion. Yes, if the remote controlled Dalek from recycling didn't give it away, I am a bit of a Dr Who fan. Here's our Roman centurion costume from cardboard and crepe paper that you could whip up pretty fast.
• Easy peasy lemon squeezy mermaid tail from some old sweat pants and a flouncy skirt at Goodwill.
• Headband Star Wars masks for trick or treating. With bonus weird photo of our dessicated 2009 Christmas tree done up for Halloween.
• Balloon torch light sabers for last minute Jedi trick or treating.
• The funny looking but beloved old milk jug storm trooper helmet. Also milk jug batman masks.
• Insect antennae for bug costumes. Made from felt and electrical ties.
• Superhero fleece poncho capes for if it's very cold where you are trick or treating.
• Newspaper swords for pirates, muskateers and I dunno, kid's that want to be olympic fencers?
• Seriously last minute panick stricken costume possibilities also include Origami bunny ears and the gift bag robot costume  (Aw, my girls look so little! How time flies) and all manner of weird stuff out of aluminium foil :)

One kid has decided she wants to be rapunzel for Halloween, no doubt along with all the other girls in her class, but she'll be the only one with a Vic and Bob style homemade foam frying pan if I have my way :) The other one hasn't expressed her preference yet and I have no idea what to put the littlest one in either, but we'll figure something out closer to the time.

We're off to have some fun at the East Bay Mini Maker Faire tomorrow. Thought I'd mention it in case any local folk don't know that it's going on and might like to take part.

Back on Thursday with a new Halloween project for you!