Halloween Prep

When you invite both sides of the family to your house for a Halloween party, you have a few things to prepare.
Like paint the fire-truck-red stools brown. The reddish color in the picture is from the primer, not the original red that was quite brilliant. Oh how I love to wander down the aisles of Home Depot looking for paint, primer, brushes, threaded rod and metal conduit. 

I have a great side-kick that loved to help by stirring the paint. He did well and only got a few drops on the concrete...or maybe that was his Mom. Either way, we are happy that the brilliant red, non-matching stools now look like they belong in our house. Trent was in charge of organizing the garage and I was in charge of the painting. I rather liked that arrangement and at this point I was winning :)


Found inspiration from here to make my own Candelabra. It was most definitely not as easy as they made it seem. ....Just throw a chandelier on top of a threaded rod and pvc or metal conduit rod and anchor it to a lamp base or two....  But several trips to Home Depot and many hours later, this was finally made. Thanks to Trent, Maddy and the worker dude at Home Depot who really helped me figure out the nuts and bolts part of this thing. I learned alot and it's nice to see something in the house that came from my hands.

Candles are crooked, beads coming off, but you get the picture. This was outside our door as the Halloween trick or treaters came up.

 Buy a cheap chandelier and lamp with good 'bones' at the local thrift store.

 Unscrew light bulbs, white piece and break the black part that is so old it crumbles when using pliers to unscrew it.

 This was a fun project because I was able to learn a little more about electrical work. Once the light bulb, white decorative piece and black part was out, then I unscrew the nut that had the wire connected which ran inside the curvy piece of the chandelier up and into the main section. Once nut is unscrewed and the wires are all clipped from the main section so that they are loose, I pulled the whole thing out, then repeat for the other 7.

 Make a big mess.

 Throw down the drop cloth, or plastic, and paint all the individual pieces a nice flat Halloween black. The wood is part of a sign we made from scrap lumber and beads I had bought years ago from DI.

 Once that is all dry, buy a 6 ft piece of threaded rod and metal conduit if you don't already have an old standing lamp to use. At first we cut the metal conduit to fit the length of the candelabra with the chandelier, threaded rod and lamp base attached. Yes, I carried that big ol chandelier and lamp base into Home Depot because the first time I tried to find the right size threaded rod, I was wrong. I needed a 5/8". Once the 6ft rod proved to be too top heavy, we switched the longer metal conduit for the shorter one (when we made the original cut, I kept the scrap piece which was the short conduit), then re-connected everything, filled the lamp base with rocks and a broken brick from the garden to make sure this shorter version would stand on its own and not tip over, and then measured where we needed to cut the threaded rod. The next day Maddy went with me to cut the threaded rod, then we returned home to re-assemble everything for the 6th or 7th time or 8th time.  Once it all fits and stays standing, we stick the candles in, wrap the beads around, stand back, admire, then take it down after 2 days and shove it in a corner in the garage until next year.

I had a whole 2 Halloween decorations before we decided to throw this party, so a few trips to the dollar store and Savers helped solve that problem. A computer search led me to find the pdf's of a Witch and Frankenstein silhouette which I printed, spray painted black, and painted the frames to match. The Orange sign is also something I saw that I liked, so I stenciled as best I could the design onto the block of wood after the orange paint dried and through many small strokes, finished that guy. I had no idea the smaller, green sign would be harder. But since it was smaller it required smaller, more delicate strokes which are infinitely easier to mess up. Black Witch textbooks are old College textbooks that I spray painted black then painted a few titles: Modern Spells 3rd Ed., Legend of Sleepy Hollow  Irv, The Joy of Hexing 1878, All Hallows Eve, Best of Poe, Jekyll, Hyde, Potter, Irving 1st Ed. (To give due credit, I found some titles here). If I had more time and money, I would have just bought vinyl letters to stick on as titles or buy real stencils. But, I just had to make do with what I had.

My homemade stencils. Found some pictures online (green sign here) that I liked, bought some scrap wood at Savers for cheap and began to paint. Was fun to try something new, but a bit time consuming. Again, to make it nicer, I would have bought vinyl letters instead of paint the words since it makes the lines cleaner. And also attach the flying broom school sign to a broom of some sort. Oh well, a project for next year :)

I messed up and painted where I shouldn't have by the cat on the chair.

Good thing going back with orange paint can cover that up. Amateur work, but it was placed far enough away at a distance that you can't see all the flaws. Nice.




Dollar store had the candle stick holders and glass cups large enough to hold a candle. I epoxy glued them together and put a large candle inside.
The black table runner is 2 pillow cases sewed together (thanks Grandma for the sewing machine. Once I figured out how to use it, I've been able to finish several projects that have been on hold for awhile. It works like a gem).

I am living my dream with a craft room of my own. It's ok that it's the computer room and play room as well. But I now have a space dedicated to sewing, painting and epoxy gluing and it's not the kitchen table. Heaven.

Maddy and Scott also helped me with this one. Home Depot has a wood scrap bin at the back of their lumber section, so I picked out 2 $0.51 pieces and had the guy make some cuts (the first 10 cuts are free). Then spray paint it all black, draw  my signs with chalk and have Maddy and Scott nail in the boards the night before the party.

Found this cute picture on Etsy.com I think her name was Dreamy Giraffe or something like that. She has all kinds of drawings in this sort of big eyes, big heads, little body sort of style. The frame came from DI :)

BOO sign was at Savers but I hated the colors. It was orange with black and white spots and a ghost hot glued. Roberts had some nice Halloween type paper, so I strong-armed the ghost off, spray painted the rope and sides of the letters black, and mod podged the scrapbook paper on.

While Scott turns on Emperor's New Groove, grab a few pieces of computer paper, find a drawing on my itouch that I like, and eyeball-it. His name was Bob. The kids had to pin the heart on the skeleton.

This was fun. Took time to research what to make, how to do it cheaply but nice looking, time to fix errors, and lots of learning, but most importantly, I think everyone was able to pin Bob's heart somewhere on his body. He wasn't left heartless. Thank goodness. It's embarrassing enough not wearing clothes and stuck to a wall. But he's safely tucked away in Brenden's room for use another day. At least I hope. That thing took me the longest to make. Now what to find for Thanksgiving........ (naw, I think I'll skip a few holidays. I might run out of paper).