^ DIY ghosties: wrap white or ivory yard around a six-inch section of cardboard a least fifty times. Slip the bundle off the cardboard and tie a foot long piece of yarn about an inch down from one end of the bundle to fashion a head and neck. Cut open the opposite end of the bundle to create the bottom edge of your spirit. I hang mine using light wire.
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Corkscrew roller coasters.
Bloody horror movies.
Psycho clowns
And the threat of the zombie apocalypse.
We are not big into hardcore scary things around here.
Oh, sure, spiders are fine. And the occasional snake. We all genuinely enjoy air travel and I am totally down for some public speaking, as long as I'm comfortable with the topic at hand.
We like our spooky on the soft side.
^ DIY spiders: cut up a cardboard egg carton to fashion the bodies. Paint them black and decorate however you like. When the paint dries, glue on googly eyes and punch eight holes around the body. Cut four eight-inch lengths of black pipe cleaner and weave through the holes to create eight legs. My then-twelve-year-old fourth daughter wove the web with a small ball of fuzzy white yard and a whole lot of knots.
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Oh, sure, spiders are fine. And the occasional snake. We all genuinely enjoy air travel and I am totally down for the occasional public speaking gig.
We like our spooky on the soft side.
^ Store-bought black cat.
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Take our Halloween decorations as a prime example.
You are not going to find any life-size skeletons swaying from our tree branches, nor sinister inflatable ghosts or witches with warts on their nose.
No fake tombstones.
No zombie arms clawing up through the lawn.
No robotic grim reapers or splatters of fake blood.
^ DIY jack o'lanterns: cut pairs of circles from gold or orange felt. Cut one green felt stem and use yellow felt to cut eyes, nose and mouth as you like. Use hot glue to attach the face pieces to one of the circles; glue the stem to the opposite side of the same circle, so the end of the stem will be inside of the pumpkin.
(My second-born, middle school architect of this project, chose to glue a two- to three-foot length of white plastic lanyard cord inside in back of the stem, for hanging. We tied thumb tacks to the opposite end of each cord, and push them into the porch ceiling.)
When all that glue has dried, put a line of hot glue three-quarters of the way around the stem side of the face circle, and attach the matching circle, leaving a hole for the stuffing. Once this hot glue has also dried, stuff a bit of polyester fiberfill into the middle, and hot glue the rest of the circle closed.
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What you will find are soft, sweet, not-so-spooky symbols of the season.
Happy jack o'lantern faces
Heaps of pumpkins
Googly-eyed spiders playing on a fuzzy web
Green glow lights.
A smiling black cat.
A gently abstracted skeleton.
And my personal favorite, soft little ghosties who sway with the breeze.
^ Pumpkins and gourds from Gordon Skagit Farms.
^ Store-bought skeleton and green light bulbs.
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As my daughters look back on their thrilling days as little trick or treaters, and I remember my own, we recall the delicious feeling of being just a tiny bit scared. And that's what we try to capture for our young visitors on the dark nights of Halloween.
^ Gracie ain't afraid of no ghosts.
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Soft spooky. That's the Halloween look we're going for. And I think we've got it nailed.
