Halloween-come and gone!

Wow, I can't believe that it has been since October 3 since I last posted. I guess I haven't gotten into the flow of blogging, but I'm not giving up yet!!! We had a really fun busy October, with many crafts, visits to the pumpkin patch, parties, and a mushroom festival...Oh, and of course Trick or Treating. This year Bode wanted to be a rocketship. I searched the internet for premade rocket costumes, and surprisingly could only find little Einstein's rocket costume, NOT what I was looking for. So I tried my hand at crafting a costume out of fabric I found at Joannes. I have to say, I was pretty impressed with the result.

Here is my little rocket ship son! I remembered that I had a silver plastic egg (that nylons used to come in) stored in my art studio, and one of the halves came in handy for the tip of the rocket.

With Bode being a rocket ship, I of course had to be the moon, so I made myself to match the rocket, with lights (battery-powered) strewn through the front so it could light up (which of course you can't see in the picture).

After constructing the costumes, I talked to my friend about what she and her family were being and she said they were doing the space theme too...how coincidental...except she was the sun and the rest of her family ended up being aliens!

Here we are Sun and Moon:

This year was the first time that I ever took Bode Trick or Treating and HE LOVED IT!!!

(no surprise really). But I think he not only enjoyed getting the candy, he also enjoyed feeling brave and walking up to the doors and knocking. He insisted I waited at the sidewalk!!! I thought that was pretty cool.

I had to laugh at one of the houses that we went to...this particular house had a woman in her 70's answer, and she was a very kind and sweet person, but what made me laugh was that Judas Priest was being blasted from her stereo...no joke!!! Gotta love this town!

Apple Prints

I had been meaning to make apple prints with Bode ever since apples started falling mid-summer from our backyard tree. Well, the last of the apples finally fell last week, and so I knew the time had come that we needed to get this project done!

One of my favorite memories I have when I was a kid was making potato prints, and I remember doing them on white polyester fabric that had a thicker spongy quality. For this project too, I thought printing on fabric would make the end result a little more special than paper that one would typically think to use. Also the paint absorbs into the fabric to some degree making it less likely to smear and a neater choice overall. I had muslin lying around the house, so I mounted the fabric on foam core board, pulling it taut, and duck-taping it to the back of the board.



The materials we used were:

• apples sliced in half horizontally and vertically
• trays (the ones found in frozen food meals work great)
• folded paper towels to line the trays
• paint in the colors of apples (Green, Yellow, and Red)
• fabric-covered foam core
• Corn-cob holders (*these were great for picking up the apples, otherwise it gets messy quickly!)

Bode had fun dipping the apples and pressing them down on the fabric. At first I directed him to keep each apple into only one color paint and not mix them, but by the end I encouraged him to experiment, and the last print turned out to be my favorite with all the colors mixed.

Apple Print Number #1


Apple Print #2



Apple Print #3: My fave...