Power Tool Pumpkins and Other Easy Hallowe'en Decorations

Hallowe'en is pretty low-key in our house these days with everyone a teenager or beyond.  We did get into the action a little bit though.

Hallowe'en threw up all over our living room window.

We decorated our front hall with a flag, a cauldron of candy ready to hand out, and

our ghost!  We put him up every year and the kids love it.  It was my husband's idea to put a white duvet over a step ladder, add black construction paper eyes and a mouth, and light it with a black light.  Ingenious!

The only one wearing a costume this year was Juno - and we really weren't sure what she was dressed up as.

As for the pumpkin we had to get creative.  When your younguns grow up into teenagers, they may or may not want to carve pumpkins any more.  That's when you move on to using power tools!  Using a drill puts a whole new spin (get it - spin!!!) on pumpkin carving - a good spin if you are a teenager.  Actually a good spin if you are me as well, because then I don't have to do the carving and we get an interesting pumpkin to put out for Hallowe'en.

I have to say that I thought the term "power tool pumpkins" was one I had invented until I read this post on Rambling Renovators blog, which referred to this post written in October 2009.  Their original post was written in my pre-blog days, so I have to say that I likely owe the inspiration and term to them.  It is a much loved tradition now.

 

Trust Martha to take pumpkin drilling to a whole new level.  Her power tool pumpkins are very creative, but I'm thinking Martha hasn't put a teenager boy in charge of making them.

 All images from Martha Stewart

  

Hope everyone had a fun Hallowe'en.  Do tell how the pumpkin carving went in your house.  Any ingenious costumes visiting your house this year?

 

Linked to the 2010 Hallowe'en Pumpkin Party Parade at Under the Table and Dreaming

Pumpkin Jar Lanterns

Look what I made today.  Aren't they adorable?

One of the parts of my job as a Speech-Language Pathologist, that I enjoy the most is working with a special class for children with learning disabilities.  Twice a week I go into the class and we work on early literacy skills.  I try to make it fun so we play a lot of games and do different activities while we are practicing clapping syllables, making rhyming words, and identifying sounds in a word.  

Last October I got the idea from someone's blog (sorry it was in my pre-blogging days so I didn't keep track of the source) for these adorable pumpkin lanterns.  I emailed the idea to the teacher and she loved them as much as I did, so we made them last year and again this year with a new group of students.  Now don't think it was all fun and games in the class.  We made the students work on their rhyming skills before they got each strip of orange tissue paper to glue onto the jar.  The kids were so excited to make them and even more excited when we lit the tea lights so they could see them glow.  

I wanted to show you in case any of you want an easy fun Hallowe'en craft.  And thanks to whoever's blog I got the idea from.

Up-date:
I've been asked to divulge how I made these lanterns, so here goes -
1.  We painted glass mason jars with watered-down white glue.
2.  Then we put 1-inch wide strips of orange tissue paper onto the jars vertically.  The strips of tissue paper look best if they overlap a bit so it looks like the ridges and folds on a real pumpkin. 
3.  Then we gently painted more glue on top of the all the orange so all the edges were stuck down and the lantern will look shiny when the glue is dry. 
4.  We cut out eyes, nose, and mouth from black construction paper and used the watered down glue to attach them.  We also painted glue on top of the black paper so they would look shiny as well. 
5.  Finally, we put green tape (it might be tape for painting or for gardening, I'm not sure which) around the mouth of the jar to look like the stem and to finish the top edges of the tissue paper.  You can put the jar upside down to dry.