Fun Halloween Fixes

Today is a lazy Saturday at the Johnson household (Nathan is busy being productive by doing work for seminary... and I'm just hangin' out...), so I decided to spruce up a couple of things for Halloween!

Project #1: Spider Web Candy Bowl

Last Halloween, I bought this adorable spider web candy bowl:


Unfortunately, it is turquoise blue. Yes, it's a fun color and it's one of my favorites... but it does not match our house. And yes, it's Halloween decorations and so-what if it doesn't match... but hello, I'm Chrissy. Nice to meet you. I'm a Capricorn and I like things to match :) So we introduced our blue spider web bowl to our little friend: Mr. Black Spray Paint


I went outside with a piece of cardboard (from a mirror we purchased a couple of weeks ago) and got bussyyyy with my spray paintin'. Today was a GORGE day, so pardon the super bright shots :)


And voila! Now we have a sleek, black, and still creepy/cute spider web candy bowl for our candy-candy-candy (did anyone else ever watch the Garfield Halloween special when they were little?)



Project #2: Pumpkin Painting a la Young House Love

When buying Halloween pumpkins this year, I knew I wanted to paint instead of carve. I will be carving pumpkins with my class at school, so I figured I'd save the gross-ness mess of carving for my Kindergartners. Did I mention Nate was working on his Master's? I'm not allowed to bother him right now :) Teehee, I did try, but still- paint was the way to go.

I remembered reading about John and Sherry's pumpkins from last Halloween on their blog (click the link above to go straight to the post I'm talking about). It was classy, yet creepy. I'm all about that combo for Halloween. The goal: monogrammed pumpkins with an "N" for Nate and a "C" for Chrissy, all the while looking like creepy, crawling centipedes (I do NOT do bugs: just ask my Kinder students). So, I started with a big ol' pumpkin:


I bought generic, acrylic black paint from Walmart and got a variety of brush thicknesses to get started. The fantastic thing about this project is that it does NOT have to be perfect. And YAY for having beginning letters that can be make-shifted into centipedes :)


I free-handed because it's a pumpkin and I'm not THAT particular about it, but if you want to trace beforehand with a pencil or marker, have at it. After doing the "N" and "C", I got to work on the legs and antennas of my creepy crawlers with an itsy bitsy brush.

It was a-dorable and I showed Nate, and he said, "but what about Chloe?" A-ha, of course I can't forget our four-legged pooch. Now, if you haven't met Chloe... well, let's just say she LOVES life and excitement for it. Seeing as another project of ours today was bleaching our couch slipcover white, we didn't think painting her paw with black would be the best option... knowing her, she'd get SO excited, she'd run all over the house sporting her new accessory... So, Nate took a photo of her paw and I free-handed it on the pumpkin. It looks pretttyyyy legit.


So there is our Halloween pumpkin, all decked out for Oct. 31. We have one more big pumpkin, and 3 small pie pumpkins, so we MAY do a project with these... Not sure yet. We'll keep ya posted (if you actually cared enough to read this post in its entirety :)