Painted Pumpkins

Every single year without fail Madison decides she wants some crazy elaborate pumpkin carved which isn't that big of a deal I suppose but the problem is she refuses to help because its 'grooooooosssss'. Which means dear old mom gets to gut, clean and carve the pumpkin. Times 2. You know what with the second kid wandering around the house now. This year I put my foot down and said no pumpkin guts for us.

I covered the kitchen table with craft paper and let the kids go wild with some acrylic paints on their pumpkins and dare I say I love them so much more than carved pumpkins. No aching hand for me and no rotten pumpkins the day after they get carved. Winning.

Earlier in the week I let Zoey paint for the first time so she was super excited to discover she would get to do it again and on a giant pumpkin for that matter. Maddie worked for a good hour or so painting not one, not two but three different princesses on her pumpkin.

Minimal mess and happy kids!

Cinderella

Tiana

Rapunzel

Happy Halloween!

 Saturday we headed over to our local zoo for their annual Zoo Boo celebration. Maddie was over the moon watching all the kids in their Halloween costumes! She was just as excited to see the zoo dressed up for Halloween too.

We were super surprised to see how active this lions were on such a crowded day at the zoo. We were all curious if maybe the pumpkins the lions got to play with maybe had a bit of hamburger stuffed inside!

Maddie had a chance to trick-or-treat throughout the zoo and even have her picture taken with a few friendly characters.

Miss Maddie Mouse had a wonderful time at the zoo and then enjoyed a bit of trick-or-treating in our neighborhood this evening. 

Hope you all had a wonderful weekend!

Monster Mash

 After I saw THIS post on Pink and Green Mama I knew exactly what Maddie and I would be doing after reading one of her favorite books; Go Away, Big Green Monster! by Ed Emberley.

Armed with an assortment of goodies (beads, popsicle sticks, googly eyes, marbles and buttons) 

 and a few fresh cans of Play-Doh we set to work. Don't you just LOVE being the first one into a fresh can. The perfectly formed lump with no stray colors mixed in. Lovely. 

Maddie and I designed monsters at the kitchen table for well over an hour. Sometimes I forget how relaxing Play--Doh really is!

I am so in love with all of the monsters we made! Aren't they ridiculously cute?!

If you haven't had a chance to read Go Away, Big Green Monster! we highly recommend it. Maddie and I are huge fans of Ed Emberley books. We also have Glad Monster, Sad Monster and Bye-Bye, Big Bad Bullybug! which we LOVE too!

Halloween Hooplah

Whew. We have had quite a busy week with trips to the zoo, library and Virginia Living Museum. Of course we had to squeeze some crafty Halloween fun in too!

After singing the 5 Little Pumpkins song (over and over and over again) Maddie used some popsicle sticks and pumpkin stickers to put her 5 little pumpkins on a gate... well sort of a fence but still.

Maddie received lots of Halloween cards in the mail from family this year and we chose one to chop up into puzzle pieces for Maddie to reconstruct with glue and construction paper.

I am pretty sure Maddie's FAVORITE activity this week was counting candy corn. I made a quick little counting mat with some card stock and stickers and then Maddie and I took turns rolling the dice and counting out the correct number of candy corn. Of course she thought she got to eat all 36 pieces. Umm no. Instead after we finished counting all the candy corn on the mat she got to roll the dice 3 more times and eat that many. Thank goodness it wasn't 3 sixes!

Maddie had fun constructing a mummy from an oatmeal box a la Superheroes and Princesses. Please forgive the horribly out of focus picture! And if you haven't tried BetterOats oatmeal you are seriously missing out. Just saying.

The Fall tree collage is probably my favorite from the week. I love looking at the sun streaming through! 

While I spent an afternoon chopping veggies Maddie painted a paper plate and then added googly eyes and pipe cleaner spider legs. Of course we painted it purple and added blue legs, which clearly means I wasn't really prepared for this project!

Last weekend I cleaned and carved Maddie's first pumpkin (yes there will be a second, the first molded!) and then I dropped the cleaned pumpkin seeds into some vinegar and food coloring. See I assumed I could skip the drying part and put the wet seeds in the vinegar which I guess wasn't the best idea because the color barely worked. Oh well. Maddie still had fun turning her slightly colored pumpkin seeds into a monster collage!

Painted Pumpkins

My lovely friend Suzanne mailed me a bit of swag from her amazing trip to The Creative Connection (I was so jealous!) and I was itching to use some of the cool new DecoArt paints she sent. 

 In the mood to craft but with little ambition or even inspiration I decided I would simply use the Glorious Gold Gloss Enamel to paint a seasonally appropriate pumpkin. Ohh sparkly!

I am super cool and all so I hunkered down with Parenthood on Hulu and my fake pumpkin for a bit of quality mommy time.

I love the end result! I ended using about 3 coats of paint because I was obviously too lazy to prime or even slightly sand the outside of the pumpkin. Oops!

Of course Maddie loved me pumpkin and wanted to paint her own. I set her up with Glamour Dust paints in Limelight, Sizzling Red and Sapphire Blue. Maddie was THRILLED to be using sparkly paint on her pumpkin!

While Maddie set to work on her pumpkin I enjoyed the beautiful day, a cup of coffee and a good book. When does that ever happen?!

Maddie was uber excited to show off her sparkly pumpkin as soon as daddy got home!

Ghostly Garland

Can you tell I have been in a crafting funk? I haven't felt particularly inspired but I did feel a little guilty at the thought of tossing an egg carton out last week and now we have some adorable ghostly garland!

 After a little prep work from yours truly, Maddie was ready to design her ghosts.

The thought of passing a Sharpie to my 4 year old sort of makes me hyperventilate but she did good and I didn't find any stray marks. 

How cute are these guys?!

After Maddie decorated each egg cup with a ghost face I strung them up with a big needle and some adorable orange baker's twine.

Of course if I was to re-do the ghosts I would definitely make my holes closer to the top of each ghost which would help prevent our spinning ghosts!

Pumpkin Spice Play Dough

We had a rough weekend. Not a lot of sleep all around for all three of us so we really tried to lay low and do a whole lot of nothing. Maddie of course isn't a big fan of doing nothing so I ended up mixing up a match of play dough to keep her occupied.

I split our usual play dough recipe in half this time and added some gold glitter, pumpkin pie spice and orange food coloring to make some fantastic pumpkin play dough!

Once the dough cooled I set Maddie up with a pie play dough mat, rolling pin, a few cookie cutters and the lids to some yogurt containers that looked like tiny pie plates!

We ended up all joining the fun and making some pumpkin pie creations. Pies, pumpkins and a dinosaur for good measure!

Happy Candy Corn Day!

Oh yes! It really is a day! I promise!

In celebration of this wonderful day Maddie made a super cute scrunchy candy corn! We did an apple with the same technique a few weeks ago and anything involving glue and scrunching paper is a hit with Mad!

Materials: scrap cardboard*, yellow/orange/white tissue paper squares, glue
Optional: yellow/orange/white paint

I decided to section off each part of the candy corn and paint a colored dot to help Madison remember where to put each colored tissue paper square. This also meant that I could clean the kitchen while she worked on her project all by herself!

Look mom! All done! Now can I have CANDY please! Please! Please!

*I cut out the sides of cereal boxes so we always have some scrap cardboard laying around the house!

Pumpkin Seed Art

I would love to post cute pictures of Madison carving a pumpkin but they don't exist. This year Madison wanted absolutely nothing to do with the pumpkin and continued to say it was yucky - what a girly girl I have!

I was hoping to come up with some great craft to do with the pumpkin seeds I saved but decided to let Madison lead me in a craft this time.

Armed with scrap cardboard, crayons, glue and pumpkin seeds Madison decided she wanted to make a tree! She asked me to draw the tree for her and then she took over with the glue and pumpkin seeds.

Madison was thrilled that I handed over the whole bottle of glue! I was surprised to watch her deliberately put little dots all over the branches for the pumpkin seed leaves.

Time for the pumpkin seeds!

I am so proud of Madison and here cute little pumpkin seed tree!

Muffin Tin Monday

We are back! We did do Muffin Tin Monday last week but I never got a chance to post, oops! Well we are back today for a Halloween/Fall themed Muffin Tin Monday.


Left Column: a forked eyeball, apples slices with caramel, pumpkin and bat shaped pretzels
Right Column: candy pumpkins, chocolate pumpkin ghost muffin, vanilla yogurt tinted orange

Sorry! We don't have time for a cute Halloween craft today, or busy to-do list just a got a bit busier! Tomorrow we will be celebrating Milo's first birthday though so stop by!

Upcycled Pumpkins

At one of the after Christmas sales last year I picked up a few of these cute little containers filled with bath beads and couldn't bring myself to toss them after I used up all of the bath beads. Finally the time came and I knew exactly what we would do with them! PUMPKINS!

Materials: small round container, orange acrylic paint, sticker paper, black marker, green ribbon, green craft foam

After I rinsed out the containers I added some paint with a just a bit of water. Maddie rolled around the containers and played catch with dad to get the paint evenly spread.

To help the paint dry and drain out any extra we tipped them upside down on an old magazine and some paper towels. Daddy used the marker on the sticker paper to draw a fun pumpkin face.

After the paint was dry Maddie added the sticker face. We finished them off with some ribbon vines and a craft foam leaf. I just adore how these came out!