witch pumpkin

Because everyone needs a witch pumpkin on Halloween.  That's why.  Plus, it's something really fun to do if you have a special little person in your life.  

First, get said little person ready for some messy fun.

She was so excited she could hardly contain herself.  Not that she even knows what containing herself at this point in life looks like.  Nor should she.

Oh yes, and here is all the stuff I used that went into this project.

pumpkin with a good stem

old, black t-shirt

hot glue gun

hot glue

black, permanent marker

poster/craft paint

a plate, or some sort of round object

black and white scrapbook paper

cardboard

scissors

fleece scraps

twine-type "stuff"

fabric scissors

I didn't have any green paint, so I used yellow and blue mixed together.

This was Daisy's favorite part.  She wasn't happy when it was all finished.

While our pumpkin was drying we started on the hat.  First I used the plate to get a nice, round circle and traced it on the cardboard.  Then I cut it out.

Next I laid out an old, black t-shirt and used the cardboard piece and a crayon to trace the shape onto both layers of the shirt.  I realized after I cut it out that it needed to be a tad bigger than the cardboard piece.  No biggie.  I just cut another one.  I cut through two layers of shirt, the front and back.

Then I sewed the black pieces together with a 1/4 inch seam, leaving a few inches open.  (This is where I would slide the cardboard piece in.)

I forgot to take a few pictures, but I'll try to explain.  Basically I just turned the black t-shirt circle right side out.  Then I rolled the cardboard up so it would fit into the open slit, flattened it out, and then sewed the opening shut.

To make the top of the hat I again used cardboard.  I rolled it like this to see about how big I would want it.

Then I hot glued it together.

Then I took more black t-shirt scraps and wrapped it around the cardboard, hot gluing it down.

I just tucked the bottom up into the cone, gluing that down as well.

Then I hot glued the cone to the disc shape.  Can you tell I like hot glue?  It's wonderful.

You can use whatever embellishment you want here.  I used straw type stuff and tied it on.

I then realized I was going to want my witch pumpkin to stand on it's side and it wouldn't do this on it's own, being round and all.  So I found the bottom of a box and cut a circle in the center of it.

Covered it with construction paper.

Daisy liked this part.  This is when she really started to come together.  Black and white scrapbook paper for the eyes.

For the hair, I cut out several strips of fleece.  You could probably use felt, or really any kind of material you have lying around.

Then I cut those strips into smaller strips, stopping about 1/2 inch or so from the top.

Hot glue again.  Yay!  I just glued the strips on the top of the "head" so that they hung down like hair.

Add the hat (hot glue again).

Draw on a pleasantly angry mouth and there you have it!

The stem of the pumpkin plays a big part.  Make sure it's a good one!

Happy Halloween!

naked baby = fun photos

Here's another Pinterest idea.  You might seriously get tired of me talking about Pinterest.  I'm sorry.  Kind of.  :)  There are TONS of photo ideas on there.  I'm a very amateur photographer.  Like, not even sure I should call myself one, really.  I know next to nothing about taking pictures.  I know that natural light is best, that's about it.  Anyway, my baby turned 9 months old last week.  I find with my kids that any reason to have a photo shoot is a good one.  Some turn out good, some turn out bad.  Valentine's Day, for instance:

I take a LOT of pictures when I do a shoot with them.  The more pictures, the better.  This ensures me at least one or two shots that are presentable.  However, some days you just can't win.  See, I needed Pinterest back then so I could have a better idea than just plopping my poor Star Trek baby in a pillow beside his sister who can't seem to get far enough away from him.  I couldn't fix his collar?  Yeah.  It was one of those days.  I'm not even really sure why I thought it would be a good picture day.  What was I saying?  Oh yes, baby.  9 months old.  Pictures.  Idea on Pinterest.  Here is the original idea source.  And here are my pics from last week:

I LOVE the idea of a naked baby in nothing but a tie.  Especially my chub a lub.

I also love Picnik.  It lets me do fun things even though I don't know much anything about taking pictures.

mmm.  scrumptious, he is.

And well, I can't say I expected the tie to stay exactly in the place I put it.

That would just be silly.

Dimpled perfection.

i {heart} pinterest

Do you know about Pinterest?  You need to.  Seriously.  Here and there I kept hearing about it.  One day I finally checked it out.  Then I promptly "exed" out of it because I knew.  I knew if I let myself in there for too long that I would be sucked in and have yet another thing to somehow schedule into my daily routine.  I didn't know much about it, I just knew I would like it.  Then one day I decided my curiosity outweighed my fear.  A couple clicks later I was a helpless pinner.  It's just such a cool way to put all the ideas I find into one place.  I love it.  I recently started a board called, "pinterest ideas i done did".  Whenever I do a project from an idea I got on pinterest, it's going to go here.  So far I've got 283 pins and I've accomplished....TWO.  But that's okay.  At least I got a start.  :)  Here's the first one I did:

original idea source

The little people helped me make these really cool cards for the g-parents for g-parents day.  Well, the bigger little person helped. The smaller little person just kind of shoved whatever paper he could reach into his mouth at quite an alarming rate.  

Such a neat little idea.  And the grandparents loved them, of course.  If I had been planning ahead I could have gotten some little pictures of them printed and put it in the middle of "this much".  But that would have required, like I said, "planning ahead".  Something that is and probably will always be a work in progress with me.