halloween mantel

 it is officially the month of halloween!!  i absolutely love halloween for a few reasons...1. i first started reading harry potter in the month of halloween, with mysterious cloudy skies which makes it all the better. (warning: i am a crazy harry potter fan) 2. the treats are amazing. 3. you get to dress up as whatever you can dream up!! last year i was mother nature and little kids wanted to take pictures with me!! was that awesome? yes...and yes, i still dress up. 4. candy galore. 5. spooky decorations, which incidentally are harry potter themed or other books/movies from my childhood that i absolutely love. 6. scary movies. yes!! i can watch ghost hunters and not feel silly, cause it's halloween month.  ok. that was more like several reasons!! anyway, today, i want to share with you my halloween mantel that my boys helped me with.  i did not spend a dime.  everything i used on my mantel was random stuff i had around the house and  repurposed for this halloweeny purpose. here we go!!

here is my awesomely spooky spell book (hocus pocus)/wand (holly, eleven inches, phoenix feather core).  this is what i did for this look:  i got the biggest book i own (sorry jane austen, but i do have two more books that are identical to this one, not to mention the one in my kindle).  so, i ripped the pages on the sides to get a worn look. next, i dipped the whole book into a sink full of water. i separated the pages a bit to get them rumply looking.  i took it outside on our wall and opened it up to where i wanted, (pride and prejudice) took a wet sponge and some brown paint and rubbed the sides and top and bottom.  i also rubbed some on the open pages.  green came next, i splattered it so it looked like gross potion or something.  glitter was the last.  just a sprinkle.  i left the book outside for a while and when it was almost dry, i ruffled up the pages a little so it looked as if i had turned those pages a million times to do my evil deeds.  the wand is just a stick carson found outside.  easy. took about 20 minutes tops.  i put it on the mantel when it was still wet.

 this is just your run of the mill home-made apothecary jar.  mine is a pickle jar filled with candy corns and decorated with some leftover scrapbook paper and paper pumpkins.

 this was so fun/easy!! i took my same book i used for my spell book and tore 4 pages out of it.  ripped them a little and wrinkled them so they looked old.  i found a picture of a witch flying on her broom in front of the moon online and traced it onto a lined paper (we have no printer and no white paper :) )  i cut it out and sprayed it black.  then i glued it to the book paper.  i used a halloween scrapbook page and ripped the haunted house out of it.  put it in a frame i found in one of our closets and abracadabra!! halloween fun!  the books it is on are harry potter 4, short stories of roald dahl, and the swiss family robinson.  they were the most used and torn up.  the pumpkins are drawn on with marker by my two boys.  random candle

 more hp books and one called "past secrets"...i think that one is melissa's that i never returned.  woops.  on top of the hp books is a pickle jar filled to the brim with deadly poison!!! muahahahaha!!!  ok so it's just water and green food coloring.  "the powder of life" is what dorothy uses to bring the gump to life from the wonderful movie "return to oz".  yes, video store man, "that one weird movie".  i love it.  the firebolt (aka broom)  is made from, wait for it, a stick, found by carson (we have a collection by our front door) and the pages i ripped from the sides of the spell book, bound with black yarn. random candle.

next in line to the broom, we have our shrunken pumpkin heads. here's how to do those.

have your child gather acorns from around the yard.  peel off the "hats"  that's what we call them.  put them in a bowl, put your orange paint in and roll them around.  put them on a piece of paper or cardboard to dry.

when dry, put faces on with a sharpie. then dip the tips of them in the lid of green acrylic paint. done!  some were really small and super cute!

the bats are made from cardboard boxes that we were going to throw out.  made a basic bat shape and cut, and painted them.  we hung them up with tape.

(not shown here:  awesome yarn spider web slinging down from the mantel to the brick, made by carson and cody, cardboard hatchet, cardboard knife, also made my carson)

this was seriously fun, awesomely cheap, decorating.  it took us about 2 hours for everything. it was a really fun way to create with my creative boys and spend some quality time with them! we have yet to decide what we're going to be for halloween, but it will be great!!  all this witch stuff makes me want to be a witch this year!! happy halloweening!!

cherisse