{Festive Decorating}

We’ve been doing fall things around here.  Power washing our driveway to get it ready for a coat of sealer.  Cleaning the windows.  And a little festive decorating…

First, I made these simple (and cheap) wooden candy corns for our mantle.  They were so simple and easy to make, plus they didn’t break the bank (they practically were free because we used what we already had)!

I had Justin cut three different sized triangles from scrap wood we had laying around.

Then, I painted them white, yellow, and orange with regular craft paint…making sure I blended the edges where the colors would meet, just like the real tasty little things.

I let them dry…and then displayed them on our mantle. 

I got the grapevine pumpkins from Target’s dollar bin. 

I filled the hurricane vase with dried great northern beans, green lentils, and popcorn (which I need to get more of from the store.)  The candle is a flameless candle with a four hour timer…it comes on every night at 7 p.m. and turns off at 11 p.m.   No worry…no fuss.

The sticks were collected from what our birch trees shed in our back yard.

Then, we made this cute ghost for our front flower bed (which is in desperate need of a tree, but it will have to wait until spring).  It was slightly altered from Layla and Kevin’s hanging ghost, due to the fact that we didn’t have a place to hang him…

First, we used a 1x2 that was about 6 feet tall.  It was left over from our side table project and it was a piece we ended up not using.  Then we screwed two pieces of lattice to the front side of the 1x2 for the arms.  Then using one large foam ball for the head, we pushed the 1x2 into the foam.  We used two small foam balls as the hands.  Then we took an old white sheet and draped it over the whole thing.  I added dabs of hot glue to the styrofoam balls to make sure the sheet would stay. I cut the edges of the sheet to make it look torn and old.  Then we draped 3 packages of cheese cloth over the whole thing, adding hot glue to the layers.  I cut the cheese cloth in half so I could get more draping from a single piece. 

Then I cut little shapes out for the eyes and mouth…and voilà…a spooky ghost!  Stuck in the ground, it looks great!

We love him…