Merry Printable

I've been busily decorating for Christmas and thought I'd share a printable I made for my vintage decor:
 

Ghost Photography

 

Yesterday we took these fun "ghost" pictures of the kids.  I think they turned out great!

We went to visit a friend in Malad and stopped at this old school house.  It was literally two rooms!  I really wanted to steal the old doors ;)  Anyway I got the idea from Candice Stringham.

Our Creepy Decor - Inside

The minute my husband hung my faux mantle I wanted to decorate for Halloween!

 The black cat was from Michael's, I grabbed it after I saw the cute bottle brush cats at Pottery Barn.

 These were left over from the Harry Potter birthday party.

 I fell in love with the creepy black birds on Anythingology.

 Spray painted pumpkins with metallic silver.

 And for my favorite part - the Haunted Village.  My kids love the creepy village at Michael's but I would never spend that kind of money on holiday decor, at least not Halloween.  This alternative saved the day.

The idea came from The 36th Avenue blog.  I bought a Dollar Tree Christmas village, people and trees and spray painted them black.  I added black glitter paint to the roofs.  I also cut off the bats of some bat rings, painted them with black glitter and glued them to the houses.  Super creepy!  I love it.

*She also has a solution from a Christmas village I wanted to make too....yes I'm already working on Christmas decor.

Our Creepy Decor- Outside

Outside:

This is a work in progress. I'm hoping to add a lot more pumpkins after our trip to the pumpkin patch.

This pumpkin head kit came from Dollar Tree.  We have a couple more to add to other pumpkins, I think it's so cute!

I got the idea for the haunted house from Decorating Ideas Made Easy.  It's made out of a plastic doll house I found at a thrift store, spray painted black and then I added the neon purple and glow in the dark green paint on top.

I'll be putting giant pumpkins on top of the porch planters.

My bat wall is inspired by this one at Country Living.

Harry Potter Party - Halloween Crafts

My son wanted a Harry Potter party this year and since it was his year for a friend party (we only do them every 4 years) I wanted to make sure it was geared toward short attention spans :)!  I scoured the web for ideas, and there are a million, and used Pinterest of course.

 I used the invite idea from Just Sweet and Simple for our invites.  I opened the background page she has for a free download in photoshop and altered it to say my son's name instead of Harry Potter.  I used this for all the backgrounds of my signs.

First up at the party was Olivander's Wand Shop:

I made our wands out of cut dowles and hot glue following the tutorial from Deviant Art.  These were super easy to make and I loved how they turned out.  They were the proudest part of the party for me ;).

We had each of the boys pick a wand out of the box with their eyes closed, grab their school text books and Hogwarts train tickets.  Spell book and Potions book found at Dirt and Sunshine. 

We then head through the 9 3/4 Platform.  This was a craft fail.  I used that corrugated brick banner stuff people use for faux fireplace chimneys at Christmas.  It just curled up on me, the kids didn't notice.  You can kind of see it in the picture above.  I printed the platform sign from here.

Downstairs we did the sorting.  Luckily my neighbor had a sorting hat for us to borrow! Super cool right?  I just printed off house badges and put them in a paper bag to pull out lotto style.  We then pinned the badge onto the boys' shirts. Next up was Defense Against the Dark Arts, where the boys used their spell books to learn how to use their wands.

 After the boys moved onto potions class.  I created this spell book after an idea I saw on Tiff Creative Outlet.  I made the spell pages in photoshop and taped them to a thrift store book.  I painted the edges brown and bent the page corners.  Cute right?

We did the Mandrake Restorative Draught from Dirt and Sunshine - it was a huge hit!  This was the boys' favorite part.  They got to see their potions bubble up and change color twice.  It was really fun.  I printed her bottle lables and potions books too.

After potions the boys played capture the snitch.  We hid a gold Christmas ornament before the party and had the boys run around on their broomsticks looking for it.  Then it was time for Honeydukes:

I made the candy labels in photoshop to look like the ones in the real Honeydukes in Orlando.  I printed the Butterbeer labels from Karen Cookie Jar.

 My mom took a graduation robe we found at the thrift store and shortened it for my son.  She also crocheted his scarf with this pattern, I know she only did half the width that it called for and it was plenty wide.  He's going to be Harry Potter for Halloween too and we got him a gryffindor tie for his birthday.

Overall I think it was a success.  The kids all had fun and my son was super happy.

Here's the candy labels if you want them.

Thrift Store Fall Mantle

 I saw this look in the Restoration Hardware catalogs and really wanted to copy it.  I took some thrift store books that had that uneven cut paper and ripped the covers off of them.  Super easy.

 This is a bowl I found at the thrift store and just spray painted it.  I'll use it for my halloween mantle this year too.

I totally scored this candlestick at the thrift store too!  It's leaded crystal.  I can't wait to change out the candlesticks for each of the holidays!

  The jar of acorns come from my brother's yard, the leaves were used the past few years on my porch and the pumpkins were left overs from years past too.  I have big plans for my porch and I will be reusing all of this for November after Halloween is through, I might just add some "thanksgiving" banners or something.

Check out my Fall pinterest board for some beautiful ideas...

Girlie stuff

I made a blanket from some receiving blankets anna gave me last year. They had holes in them
so i cut them into squares and did a patchwork top. the backing is some rose minkie that i got
in minnesota last year also. the burp cloth was easy; i cut hearts from some left over squares
and sewed them on with the raw edges showing.
fun sewing, laura