Is Halloween here yet?

Yep, more Halloween decorations. Apparently, making one just opens the door by setting the dangerous precedent. Or maybe it's just that it gives a little five year old reason to hope (and to whine) for more Halloween items made mostly for him.

Presenting Pipsqueak the Bat.

My son named him. He was thrilled when he came home from school to find it finished. After telling me what a wonderful mom I was and how he loved and adored me (OK, maybe that's a stretch and he really just said "Thank you."), he asked me to make him more.

I'm thinking of making a few more. I think they'd be cute magnets and I'd like to have a group of them hanging together near a doorway. Good thing they're easy to make, although the wings were a pain to make. I redid them several times. I think I finally settled on the fifth version. Who knew that wings could be so difficult?

Is it time to decorate for Halloween yet?

I love decorating for holidays (It's the undecorating that I hate.) and I find it difficult to wait until the appropriate month. It's gets worse when the stores start selling Halloween decorations in August and Christmas decorations shortly after that. Hobby Lobby is near torture to go into since they have Christmas decorations out in July. Hubby claims they sell them year round.

My son is even worse than I am. Of course, he just loves Halloween in general. Spooky decorations, playing dress up, and getting candy. What wouldn't a five year old like about that? He's already decided to go as a skeleton this year. He's really hoping for a glow-in-the-dark skeleton.

So walking through the stores with my son is fun this time of year. He wants to look at all the Halloween decorations and bring home all the spooky ones. Luckily he hasn't gotten into the gory ones -probably because I try to steer him away from those ones. At Costco a week ago we saw this giant spider decoration. He had to have it. Unfortunately what a five year old deems a necessity is often very different from what his mom considers necessary. So we didn't get the spider or the really cool $80 inflatable graveyard that would look great in the yard that we don't have. He was disappointed until I suggested making our own spider similar to the one that we had seen in the Oriental Trading ad.

Aside from a few little tantrums (mostly my 2 year old that wasn't allowed to paint with us), it was really easy to make. First we gathered our materials.

2 large black trash bags
red paper (or you can paint white paper like we did)
scissors
clear packaging tape
something to stuff it with (empty plastic bags or newspaper)

Stuff one trash bag until it's full enough to hold its shape -a little squishy is fine. Next, tie the bag closed. I taped down the two bottom corners of the bag after stuffing to make it more rounded. Then tie some string around it about 1/3 of the way up from the bottom of the bag to form the head.

To make the legs, lay the second trash bag out flat and cut it length-wise into 8 pieces. Do not cut the bottom seam of the bag or you'll end up with short legs. The bottom seam will be the halfway point on the legs and a great place from which to suspend the legs when you're done. Tape the legs to the bottom of the spider with 4 on each side.

Cut circles from the red paper. I traced around a wide plastic cup for mine. Tape eyes to the spider's face.

I'm not sure how well the spider would hang since I just put him on a high shelf and then attached the midpoint of the legs to the wall nearby.

My son and I love how he turned out. My husband is just glad that we put it up in the kids' room for now. Next on my list of homemade Halloween decorations is furry spiders and little bats.
And possibly a glow-in-the-dark skeleton costume.