SEMI-SPOOKY GLAMOUR-WITCH HANDS

We have quite a few Halloween crafting traditions around here and I think these semi-spooky glamour-witch hands are at the very top of Kinley's fave list. I love them too! It's hard to go wrong with any project that involves both washi tape AND warts, amirite?!

I saw this old monster hands post on The Happy Hooligans' blog a couple of years ago and, after adding a couple of twists to make it more us, it was an instant every year must.

Instead of wallpaper sample skin and band-aids, our fancy witchies are more into nail polish and sparkly rhinestone bling. Less cold and clammy, more haute and glammy 😉😎

COFFEE FILTER PUMPKINS

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Got coffee filters and washable markers? Well, go pull them out, friend, because you've gotta try this process art pumpkin craft!

A couple of days ago, my buddy Diane from @adventures.in.mommyland shared some cute little Frankensteins she'd made with our kiddo using our free Halloween paper doll printable and this technique and we couldn't resist giving it a try ourselves, but jack-o'-lantern style.

SPIN ART SPIDERS

Grab your googly eyes and popsicle sticks and dust off the ol salad spinner, friend, 'cause we've got one of our favorite Halloween crafting traditions for ya today: cute little spidies + psychedelic spin art webs!

This one is kind of the best of both worlds -- a little bit of super fun process art and a little bit of sweet sweet crafty magic! Kinley and I make these babies every single year. It's so fun to watch her spiders evolve and look more and more spider-like as she gets older.

HALLOWEEN PAPER DOLLS

 

When I was little, my mom and I would cut out a bazillion little paper ghosts and then we would decorate each one to look like a person in our family. A plaid shirt with a pencil in the pocket for Papa, a hot pink fancy dance recital costume for Aunt Becky, a firefighter coat for Uncle Gary...you get the idea 😀

Looking back it seems kind of creepy 😜 but it was one of our favorite Halloween traditions and all of those cute smiley ghosts hanging everywhere reminding us of our faraway family members made us so happy!

I was thinking about this one the other day and trying to figure out a way to make it work for Kinley and I. She's still too little to find tracing, cutting out and decorating tons and tons of ghosts enjoyable, ya know? And then it came to me -- paper dolls!

BEST. POTIONS. EVER.

We are crazy for anything resembling art or science that involves baking soda/vinegar around here. So much actually that we broke down and bought the ginormous sack of baking soda and twin pack of huge jugs of vinegar at Sam's Club a couple of months ago and we are already getting down to the last couple of crumbs and drops 😜 We've tried so many variations of this classic science experiment from apple volcanoes to Babble Dabble Do's Wizard's Brew (if you haven't tried that one, you need to!!), but this one knocked our smocks off -- so, sooo good!!

My good instabuddy and total momma rock star, Nicole @ThePaintedToddler, inspired some seriously spooktacular backyard fun at our house with her Witches Brew rainbow fizzy STEAM idea and I couldn't wait to share it with you!

BLOW-PAINT MONSTERS

We used to run an art challenge on Instagram called @smocks.on with a couple of my instabuddies and we had hosts every week who got to pick a theme and challenge all of our little art community to incorporate their theme into an art project. When my crazy hilarious, super rad, oh-so-creative blog buddy, Shannon from OhCreativeDay, had her chance to host she chose action art.

I instantly thought big and crazy messy when I read her theme choice, but it was cold, rainy and incredibly dreary outside in our neck of the woods. Big and messy are not good indoor art words, right? Luckily, action art doesn't have to be crazy. Small and semi-neat can work too!

EASY FRANKENSTEIN LANTERN

I know, I know. This Frankenstein craft is super late. Halloween is, what, 3 days away? Well, the good news is this adorable craft only takes ten minutes from start to finish! So, that pretty much means you have tons and tons of time to still get it done before the countdown to Turkey Day begins, right?! Let's do this!

I used to do this craft with the babies when I was a daycare lady. I had them paint white paper green to give them an extra step they could do themselves -- telling you this because if you have another little to keep busy during craft time, this could work for both kids at once.

SPOOKY BOOKS WE LOVE

I feel it's my duty to warn you, the holidays are coming and I happen to be a completely insane holiday lover. I actually refer to them as the "HOLLA-days!!" :) So, I hope I don't scare you off with my intense crazy obsession ;)

There, I feel better with that off my chest. I don't know how it works at your library, but at our library you have to reserve holiday books waaaaay ahead of time in order to get your mitts on any at all.  Because of this, I pour over other amazing blogs' booklists ( ahem, Cutting Tiny Bites) get out my phone and reserve away. 

We've discovered a bunch of new favorites this year and we are still a couple of weeks, and a whole bunch more reserves, away from the big spooky, amazing day!