Wizard of Oz Themed Halloween

Last Minute Scarecrow Wreath  Supplies: grapevine wreath, scraps of burlap, cotton denim, leg of jeans (cut offs) red gingham, striped upholstery fabric, black feathers, hot glue gun, jute twine
Just simply tie your scraps on the wreath and use the burlap to make legs and arms and stuff cut pieces of raffia into them using the jute to tie on.  Take some more jute and tie about 1/3 of the way down the raffia also.  I took the burlap bag corner and folded over to make the hat, stuffed it with raffia and glued some scrap squares on, stuffed some bird feathers over the shoulder area and that's it. I hung my wreath over my wood pumpkin already on the door.  Does it look last minute?  I intended to make an Urban scarecrow wreath from pinterest, but did not have the old men's xl men's shirt to make it, so here I go again....improvising!

Here's our pre-school craft: We took drinking glasses and cut out pumpkin faces on paper and taped them on the glasses.  We put a votive candle inside and instant carved pumpkins, sort of!

Here is my take on Halloween decorating: I've never celebrated ghosts and goblins and all the spooky things most people like to think of during this "candy and dress up" holiday....However, I just like the notion of Fall, the celebration of candy apples, and the thought of my childhood during the fall season.  The time where we'd pile the leaves up and jump into them, or make our own costumes and get together with church family and watch the older people "bob for apples". As I got older, I just enjoyed having a bon-fire, roasting hot dogs and s'mores, a fun hay ride and I love me some homemade chili. Now that I have children, they bring out the fun creative side in me.  There's still  the memory during this season, as a child, watching  "The Wizard of Oz" on tv and just hoping there wasn't  a storm that night, because our antenna would blow the signal off and we'd miss it. (oh, that's exposing my age, oops!) I really like the theme of "There's no place like home" and the way of finding who really matters is your family.  So in tribute to this, I share with you my wicked witch tutorial. 

The Sign

1. I took a scrap piece of 1x4 and painted it with green acrylic paint. 
2. I hand painted the words with black acrylic paint and a small stiff brush. 3.
4. Next I used the top of the acrylic bottle to make the dots by dabbing on the white paint and stamping the board. ( I did not have a round pouncer sponge or I would have used that)
5.   I then used a stiff brush and dipped it in candy apple red acrylic and made x's.  
6. I then glazed it with gloss medium and then used 180 grit sand paper and roughed up the edges and through the middle. This would have looked better with stencils and perhaps painting the dots all over, before the letters. I just didn't have much time for this project! So I hurried through, Eh, good enough!  

For the stake:
1. I used scrap lumber, and painted it solid green 
2. Used a stiff brush to paint the stripes.  
3. Roughed it up a bit with 180 grit sand paper. 
4. I took an electric drill, measured the thickness, found the appropriate screw and screw bit, then drilled the screw from the back.

The Shoes:  Supplies-High heeled shoes, from wal-mart on clearance, rubbing alcohol, cotton ball, newspaper or old cardboard,gloves,spray adhesive, and red glitter
Directions: 1.Take your shoes,  rub them over with the rubbing alcohol and let dry.
2. Over a piece of newspaper or cardboard (or whatever you have)   spray with the adhesive all over the top of the outside of the shoes, you may want to put newspaper into the shoe to block any adhesive in there.
3. Holding each shoe, take your glitter bottle and shake, shake, shake.  (Warning: you will get glitter everywhere) Whatever excess glitter that falls off, funnel it back into your glitter container so it's not waisted!
4. Let it dry, and stuff those little witches legs into them. If you want, you could glue the legs into the shoes...I just chose not to, for storage purposes!

I found the witches hat at Walmart for $1.97 that has the hair attached.  The witches broom was from Dollar General and was the cinnamon scented one for $5.00.  (I used the Saturday coupon and got it free!)



The Legs:  I first saw something like  this in an All You magazine a couple of years ago and thought it was cute. I could not find the black/white stripe tights, so I improvised.  
1. The Tights are generic white women's tights. I stuffed them with poly-fill 
2. Use black masking tape to make the stripes and space them equally. 
3.  Tie off the top with a twist-tie.

Here is the front door, ready for trick or treaters!

Here's my lonely little tree....My intention was to make miniature caramel apples on a pop stick and hang them with ribbons, however the apples were so juicy the caramel just went everywhere.  So instead of apples, I hung up string cheese, yes, in the package.  This project was for the 4-5 yr old Mother's Day Out class' fall party.  The kids liked the owl and loved the cheese and I ate all the melted caramels and lonely apples the rest of the day and the next, so it was a win, win situation! Oh, Landon ate a few, too.
 I also intended to spray paint the tree with a green glitter spray, but I had to improvise for lack of time and resources! Now we can use the limb for Thanksgiving notes!
Supplies: Metal Bucket, flower styrofoam, moss, old tree limb, orange glitter tube, halloween ribbons, christmas tree hooks, small owl, bow for owl's head, craft pic, yellow cardstock, rub-on fall stickers, glue gun

Directions:  Cut your styrofoam to fit the bucket, place your tree limb securely into the center of the bucket. Now you can add your glitter paint, I used a diagonal stripe all over and accented the leaves and acorns.  I removed the excess tree leaves to allow room for the candy apples. I covered the foam with the moss and tucked  in the edges.
Next, I took my little christmas hooks and wrapped the ribbon on securely.
I then took my owl and wrapped the wire stems around the branch and added a bow on her head.
I took the card stock,  rubbed on my stickers, then glued it to a craft pick and put it in the foam.
Last, I hung up the string cheese.
I will try to get a picture of that loaded soon!

There's No Place Like Home