Halloweeeeeeeeen!

I am so excited for Halloween this year!

No, not for the costume parties, the amazing selection of candy at the store, yummy halloween-time food, or even the spooky movies running on tv.

I am excited for the trick-or-treaters!

This should be the first year that we actually get a steady flow of trick-or-treaters. In the past, the hubby and I have lived in apartment neighborhoods. I had initially though that we would have a flood of doorbell ringers, since there was such a high-density of doors to go to with little walking or driving required. 

But no such luck! I suppose it could be because apartments house families that are not all 9-5 type people, and a lot probably didn't participate or weren't even home. In fact, they were probably all out partying.

Anywho, now that we live on a military base, there are multiple children in each household. And the decorations are INSANE! Porches completely covered in spider web, giant pumpkins, a few inflatables, graveyards and ghosties, and right now it is just perfect with the trees in the midst of the color change and crunchy leaves all over the ground.

I wanted my yard to look awesome, too, but I didn't really want to spend the money on it. So I decided to just decorate pumpkins and decorate my door with leftover spiderweb purchased last year to decorate my classroom. (tear. miss my school.)

My pumpkins last year were great - until the darn neigborhood squirrels decided it was a buffet put out just for them.

Caught in the act!!

So sad. :(

I enjoy carving pumpkins, but I didn't feel like getting messy. So instead, I just picked up some craft paint, black glitter, and clear Elmer's glue. I know that I paid WAY too much for the glue, but making another stop at Walmart didn't seem worth it for a bottle of glue. I did, however, get my pumpkins at Walmart a few days earlier. For $1.88 each! A steal, for sure!

For the first pumpkin, I wanted to do the chevron stripe. So I used blue tape and made 3 zig zag strips around my pumpkin. Not perfect by any means. I then painted over it with my white paint, using vertical paint strokes. I started working on another pumpkin while the paint dried.

 I was so excited to see how it turned out! I started to carefully peel the tape off. And...it was a disappointment. The paint had seeped under the tape in many spots, and the paint was peeling off the pumpkin! I specifically chose outdoor paint seeing as how the pumpkins would (hopefully) be outside for a number of weeks. Bad idea.

 I do love that little stem on the pumpkin, though! Hard to find those if you don't buy from a pumpkin patch! I had leftover ribbon from last year, so in an attempt to make it look a little better, I tied a few around the stem.

 There. I guess that's not so bad.

My next pumpkin was a pot-bellied one! Huge and had deep ridges down the sides. As I stared at it to figure out what to do, I thought about using gravity to help me. I used black paint and squeezed it into each of the grooves and let it drip down.

Well, the paint didn't drip very far. Good thing I had the clear glue.





I went back over each paint drip and slowly squeezed some glue on top of it. It turned out pretty cool!

 I finished the pumpkin up by completely painting the top of the pumpkin black, including the stump of a stem. And then, before the paint dried, I shook glitter all over it. Ta dah!

Kind of ridiculous. Onto my last pumpkin! I was out of creative Halloween ideas, so using leftover red and blue paint and sequins, I came up with this!

Rock Chalk Jayhawk!

 Surprised?!

 And here they are. The only wildlife I see around here is an occasional beaver. So squirrels shouldn't mutilate my pumpkins this year!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!