Peek-a-boo Card: Haunted House

It's OCTOBER! That means we really get to dive into Halloween! One of my favorite holidays for sure! Candy, costumes, COLOR! All good things start with C. Cookie Monster and I are of the same mind.

And CARDS! We love making and mailing cards. They are a great, fun craft and a fantastic way to show your love. Who doesn't like getting a card in the mail? Nobody, that's who.

This is a neat lift-the-flap card that my octopi and I designed together especially for our favorite people last Halloween. (And I had to wait a WHOLE year to post it, do you know how hard that was for me!? Do you!?)

It was a fun project the kids really got into and allowed them to put as much craziness into it as they wanted while making a really cool finished product they felt pretty proud of. (So did I, I admit it.) The materials are basic, the result awesome. Just how we like our projects around here.

What You Need:

• Card stock. We cut ours to fit a business envelope when it was folded, so 8.5"x8" or you can use the pre-drawn printable at the bottom if your octopi just want to color.
• Gluestick
• Exact-o knife or craft knife
• crayons, markers, etc.

What You Do:

1. Take your cardstock and fold in half so it's 8.5"x 4".
2. On the front of the card, draw your haunted house with nice good-sized windows that will be easy to cut, big enough to draw a cute picture inside but small enough to fit a few peek-a-boo windows. We found 6-8 1"-1.5" windows to be a good size but it doesn't really matter so long as there's enough room around the windows to glue and seal up the card.
3. Unfold your card and putting your card window-up on a cutting surface, cut out the windows on 3 sides (top, bottom, right) so to make flaps that open and shut.
4. Open up all the flaps and refold the card so you see the underside. Trace out the window openings. 
5. Open up the card and have your octopus color monsters in each of the traced out boxes. It helped my younger octopus if I colored around the windows so he knew what NOT to color. Those areas won't be seen once you seal up the card.
6. On the inside, glue all around the windows and along all the edges of the card.
7. Fold the front over the glued inside and seal it up.
8. Now have your octopus color the outside of the haunted house.
9. Peek-a-boo!

The printable:

Pumpkin Collage Card

For this craft we cut a pumpkin shape out of a folded piece of card stock, not cutting around the top fold so it was a card that opened up. Then my octopus glued on orange paper squares on the front and then made a face with cut black shapes. He finished it up by coloring the stem with marker. On the inside he wrote to his friend. Easy peasy.

Lollipop Ghosts

I think we've all made these at some point in our childhood, but I just remembered to bring them back this Halloween. They're a quick and easy festive treat to make! And cheap, we like cheap.

What You Need:

• round lollipops like Charms Blow-Pops or Tootsie Pops
• tissues
• yarn cut into 6" pieces
  
• black pen/marker

What You Do:

1. On flat surface lay two unfolded tissues flat on top of each other at an angle so that all 8 corners show.
2. In the center of your tissues, hold the top of the head of the lollipop down so the stick stands straight up. Pull up the corners of the tissues and twist them around the base of the head so they drape around the stick when turned over.
3. Tie a yarn tight around the neck at the base and tie a bow.
4. With the black pen, draw a face. Done!

To show off the ghosts, I made a stand. I took a couple lengths 2x4" pieces of pine from my husband's stash and drilled holes the diameter of the lollipop sticks every inch or so the length of the wood. Then I stuck the pops in the holes and stood the whole thing on the table. Yummy and a great decoration. What's more to love?

Printable: Five Little Pumpkins

So, we all know that poem. It's my favorite Halloween poem. Okay, I don't know a lot of Halloween poems, but even if I did, I feel confident saying that the one with five little pumpkins would still be a favorite. First of all, "pumpkin" is just a fun word. You know what else is fun that you can do with pumpkins? You can make jack o'lanterns. Whoever invented them is right up there with Thomas Edison in my book. That's right, I said it. So, pumpkins are great. That poem is great. And because I said so, I made this printable. Your octopus can cut and paste those pumpkins right on the gate (or fence, fine, I made a fence) and then, because just pumpkins is never good enough, they can put little faces on them too and make some Jack O'Lanterns. And maybe even some Jill O'Lanterns.


The Printable:

Super Masks!

When my older son turned four, we had a superhero birthday party. I made a bunch of masks for the kids (and adults!) out of foam sheets and some elastic string. Easy peasy. Perfect for parties, Halloween, heck, every day! Get your webslinging action on!



Printable Templates:

Recipe: Fake Blood

When Spiff was 14 months old he was a Vampire. Because he was in a biting stage. But what kind of a vampire can you be without blood? So I set out to find a recipe for an edible blood suitable for a toddler. And this is what I found out- Corn Syrup! (Yeah, it's my crafting friend, what about it!?)

What You Need:
light corn syrup
red food coloring
blue food coloring
water

And this is where you'll hate me, but it's true, nothing is precise. You just feel it! Start with a quarter cup (or more depending on how much of this stuff you want to make) of corn syrup, and add red food coloring, lots of it, and a drop or two of blue until you get the color you want. Then you just dribble in some water until you get the consistency you want. I added just enough so it slowly dribbled down Spiff's chin and dried there. So, it's not a science! Happy Haunting!