Oh no! I have "BATS IN MY BELFRY"....Umm, I mean foyer!

We have around 50 bats spinning in our foyer during Halloween.  When it comes time for Trick or Treaters, we dim the lights and it looks really spooky, with all the bats gently swaying and spinning.   When the neighborhood kids come to the door and look up to say their "Trick or Treats", all they see is tons of bats floating over our heads.  It's really fun to see some of them simply become speechless (not is a scared way, of course).  They just stare without saying a word until we snap them out of it by saying, "Happy Halloween".  ;-) 

This picture shows just a few of our bats, with the rest spinning over my head and behind me, while I snapped this shot.  Sorry...it's nearly impossible to get a good shot of these little devils. 

Blessings, Tracy

Herman Munster

As I have said before, we have little children in our neighborhood, so we try to have a spooky....but tame Halloween theme.  Our Herman Munster picture is a fun and easy project that people get a kick out of.

I noticed in this picture, that poor Herman's spiders & webs need some serious readjusting.

Here's our quick how to -

1. I ordered a Herman Munster poster from somewhere like posters.com or a similar site. I think it was $4 dollars at the time.
2. We found a few 1x4 rough cedar planks in a home building site dumpster, near our home. We were lucky to find 4 pieces that were long enough to make the sides of our frame.
3. We cut the planks to make a rough frame (no mitered corners), attaching the pieces with glue and back brackets.
4. The year we were made this, we were way behind with our Halloween decorating, so we attached the poster to a piece of cardboard & (because of time crunch) we actually just duct taped the picture into the frame. We meant to go back & redo it, although I'm embarrassed to admit...it is still duct taped to this day. :-O
5. We put two screws in the back of the frame & added picture wire for hanging.
6. We draped the frame with some fake spider webs & a few plastic spiders.
7. Since we don't want extra holes in our walls, we hang it every year with a 3M Command Removable Hook. These work like a dream!

The sad thing is that pretty much none of the kids (& I think one or two of their very young parents) even know who Herman Munster is!!   It is a sad world we are living in when Herman Munster has been all but forgotten.... ;-)

Blessings, Tracy

Creepy Hanging Spiders

Are you lucky enough to have a front porch? Yeah…we are!

Do you have vinyl siding, including a vinyl corrugated soffit? Ugh…unfortunately we do!
BUT, it just so happens that this type of soffit comes in handy for one of our Halloween decorating ideas. I made creepy spiders that hang from our soffits.

In these pictue you can see a few of our spiders hanging from our soffits.

**Update - You can see a short video of these guys swaying on our porch in this post.  The video seems temperamental, some times it appears & other times it is MIA.  Try again later if you don't see it.

These spiders were made in a variety of styles and sizes. They don’t have to be perfect, ours are rough. They move (spin & sway) so much that you rarely get a close look at them, so don't worry.

For storing purposes, I wrap the fishing line around the bodies & fasten the earring wire to a leg (as you can faintly see in this picture). This prevents them from getting tangled while they are stored. These were just pulled out of their storage bag (for this picture)...so they are looking a little smooshed.

Here's a brief how to -

1. For the spider’s bodies, we either wrapped and sewed black shiny fabric around Styrofoam balls or used different sizes of black fuzzy pom poms.
2. For the spider’s legs, we just sewed/secured different sizes and widths of pipe cleaners on the bottom of the body section and bent them to look like spider’s legs.
3. We then added a length of fishing line to each spider, by looping and knotting the line through the top or back of each spider’s body. By attaching the fishing line in different spots on your spiders, some will hang a little askew. We also used several different lengths of line, so the spiders would vary in heights.  I think both of these add interest.
4. We used a pierced earring wires & knotted the top of the fishing line to the notched area of the earring wire. Your spiders are done.

To hang –

1. Open each wire earring clasp and gently feed the straight end of it through one of the corrugated loops of the soffit. Our loops are tiny, so there are times I have to pull my little bag of patience out while I'm attaching these buggers. You may also run into one or two of these loops that does not go all the way through, just move on to a different loop. Once the wire has poked through, close the wire clasp and let the spider hang. The pierced earring wires are so fine that you don't even notice them. 
2. Adjust any spider legs that may have been smooshed while in storage.
3. Depending on the lengths of the hanging spiders, make sure you don’t hang them too close together, since they will get tangled when the wind blow them around.

Close up of our soffit.

Blessings, Tracy