Is it Halloween yet?

Now for the last two halloween projects that were attempted (and sort of completed) this weekend.

The first is a pretty standard one for all fallish receptions. We got ourselves a funkin (fake pumpkin for those that are not Hobby Lobby fanatics) and after some hemming and hawing I decided to go the traditional route and carve out our initials.It was pretty easy making the pattern, I just had to look through every single font I had and pick the coolest (and easiest to carve), then I printed it off, taped it to the pumpkin and started carving. (R is the worst, I kept threatening to change my fiance's name to Carl just to make it easier)

About halfway through the 'S' I realized that I really should have carved out the bottom first (as Martha Stewart will tell you it's better than carving from the top for pumpkins so your pumpkin will, um, not show it's scars?) For this funkin though it's very very important that you carve from the bottom and here's why.

As I was starting to saw using our puny little pumpkins saw the paint on the bottom peeled off a bit (would really ruin the effect if done on the top). So thanks to my hand cramping up I switched to our rather fat steak knife to see if that would work better. The knife went in about two times before the entire bottom collapsed in. It was such a shock that my hand went in with it and the funkin cut up the side.

That's right, I got beaten up by a fake pumpkin. Wait til all the other pumpkins hear about this. I'll never live it down.

Luckily the rest of the carving was mostly uneventful, just put a fake tealight in it (real ones would cause a really big fire) and stuck a really cute bat on top.


Our other creation was mostly just something we had wanted to make for ourselves. After finding a really cool skeleton from Oriental Trading we got some fabric from Wal-Mart (a whole nother fun story of waiting behind a guy getting 5 yards of fabric from 20 different bolts). I sewed the fabric onto the skeleton in two layers and after having him pose for a while made a little cowl.
Meet our Death. For a while he was enjoying watching TV in our clam chair, right now he's hanging out on the beanbag.

But to really make it look like Pratchett's DEATH, we had to get some cool blue lights behind his eyes. So began a very misguided plan. There actually are some small strands of christmas lights out at Hobby Lobby (sad, I know) and I changed three of the bulbs from white to blue and removed the rest. Then after some taping and finding holes I got the three up into his skull.
We'll probably still get him all dressed up for the wedding. Maybe give him a masquerade mask and a little hors d'oeuvre to get him into the festivities.

I promise this is the last of the halloween crafts, at least for a while, but if you want to steal any ideas for your own cool haunted house or halloween decorations feel free.