Things We've Been Up To Lately

As Halloween and The Boy's birth roll nearer, we're finding ourselves up to our necks in creativity around here. I'm allowing my nesting instinct nearly free reign and the kids have really enjoyed our Art Project Fridays--so much so that they cheer when I tell them it's Friday. Which reminds me--I need to get some prep work done for this Friday, which means cleaning up my "creativity corner", a.k.a. my overflowing sewing/crafting area. I have GOT to find a solution for that corner's organization. But that's another post for another day.


Anyway, I was whining in the Wishing for Beauty post that I didn't have any artwork on my walls. So I fixed it.

The brown poster is a quote from Enya's "Only Time"--made it last week--and the posters below it I made a few years ago. They actually coordinate pretty well and I like how they hang in my sewing area. Clutter Corner. Whatever I decide to call it.

This is a collage I put together a few months back. I had these fall tree prints that I liked, but didn't *love*, so I recombined them into something I liked, then added my favorite J. Kirk Richards print. Someday I'm going to have a large print of that painting to hang over my fireplace, but for now this will do. I love how the colors worked out. I know the flowers block it, but it says "eden" in the upper left corner.

Also, I've been growing a human. Here's a picture from a couple of weeks ago:

Here's a picture from last Sunday. My mother-in-law swears I look much bigger. Perhaps. I did pass the 36-week (9 month) mark on Monday:
All I know is that I'm getting continually pummeled from the inside and weigh about four more pounds. Mid-November needs to come a little more quickly. Maybe.




Back to Halloween fun! Our porch decorations are a combination of last night's family home evening efforts and my desire to get everything up in time for a contest today:
We did the fake jack o'lanterns last night, but it was too humid for the spray paint to be very effective, so I gave them a second coat this morning. There's Tinkerbell on the left--The Eldest's lantern--and Ariel on the right--Miss Bubbly's lantern. Mine are in the middle and spell BOO. We'll be putting fake candles in them tonight and hopefully the effect will be spooktacular. Ha ha ha. The kids were excited, though the adults decided that perhaps next year we'll carve artificial pumpkins for a better result.

Why no real pumpkins? They rot, they have slimy innards, and this year they cost more than the milk jugs and the spray paint put together. I think I'll call the theme of the porch "Simplify and Recycle." The only thing I purchased for the decor was one more leaf garland and the orange spray paint. Everything else I had on hand. Of course, that says more about how many fall/Halloween decorations I have than anything else.

The patio decorating contest should be judged today and the prizes are $300, $200, and $100 off rent. Otherwise, I don't think I would have gone to quite so much effort. I am nine months pregnant, you know!




Last Friday's art project was a cop-out--I let the girls color a lot of printed Halloween coloring pages with my colored pencils. They had fun anyway, of course. Two weeks ago, however, we made bat garlands with googly eyes. They thought the eyes were the best part. Here's Miss Bubbly hard at work, gluing eyes on or threading the yarn through her bat (I can't tell):

Here's Miss Bubbly's garland:
Notice how the bats and the grandparents are guarding the closet door:

And here's a section of The Eldest's bat garland:
They enjoyed the project and it was fairly simple to put together, so it was a win-win situation all around.




Finally, for your consideration, we have Miss Bubbly's favorite face to make:

I'll let you know how we did in the contest (I don't expect to win, really, since I don't have any spider webbing up and the other decorated patios seem to think that's a necessary element) and I'll post pictures of our trunk after Friday. Yep, there's a Trunk or Treat on Friday. Yay! I love Trunk or Treats. Halloween's just not the same without them.

Happy Halloween!