I’m excited about Halloween decorating this year! I have to confess that I wasn’t entirely feeling it last year. Actually, I confessed it last year, too. I posted about a small Halloween vignette in my foyer and said, “Honestly? THIS is about how much Halloween decorating I wanted to do this year.” Unvarnished truth is what I give you here at Boxy Colonial.

I try very hard to make sure I don’t do things in my house (or life) just because I have a blog. I mean, I’m not first and foremost a craft blogger or a diy blogger; I’m someone who blogs about what we actually do to make our house how we want it to be and that often involves crafts or DIYing, but the causality goes in that direction. If that makes any sense. Which is not to say that having a blog isn’t sometimes a big motivator to get projects that we want to do done faster than we might otherwise (I wish it could be a little bigger of a motivator lately, in fact….I’m hoping big projects will pick back up again once Dave finishes his master’s in December)….but it’s all stuff we would want to do eventually whether the blog existed or not. The blog and the house are very co-dependent.

So I wouldn’t decorate for Halloween, if I didn’t want to decorate for Halloween (like I didn’t last year) just so I could blog about it.

But I would decorate for Halloween just because my kids really, really wanted me to. Because I’ve maybe spent the past few years leading them to expect over the top Halloween decorations, and once you go there the genie won’t go back in the bottle, as they say. This is also why I’ll be making US map shaped cookies on Election Day and letting the kids stay up late to color in maps.

Anyway, so, but THIS year I’m as excited as my kids about our Halloween decorating. We have a theme, and I’ve started collecting things we’ll need. Here’s your preview:

Looks creepy, doesn’t it?! Well. It will.

So enthused am I about this year’s Halloween decorating that I’m doing something I’ve never done before: I’m hosting a real life blog hop. The week of October 10th, a group of ten bloggers will be sharing their Halloween decor, and I have to design some sort of graphic for it and send out code and all this other big kid blogger stuff I’ve never attempted before. So that will be fun. More details to come, but that’s the week when you’ll find out what’s going to happen with that violin case up there. I may have a couple of small projects here and there before that, too.

But today, now that I’ve gotten all philosophical about Halloween decorating, I’m going to start off the Halloween season with a quick round up of some of my favorite projects from Halloweens past.

Anatomy Banner:

anatomy banner tutorial

This was our first Halloween in this house and my most serious foray to date into serious Halloween decorating (i.e. more than carving a pumpkin and maybe hanging something seasonal on the front door). I still have these around somewhere, but they haven’t come back out the past couple of years. Maybe this year is their year again!

Raven Printables:

Our second year here is when we introduced themes to our Halloween decorating. Edgar Allan Poe! The Raven, specifically. I still really like what I put together on the buffet that year. I made an adorable tiny book leaf “nevermore” banner for the Halloween tree and found some free printables to stick in thrifted gold frames. So gothic. And our jack o’ lantern that year was rather epic, if I do say so myself:

Snake Wreath:

The next year I really hit my stride. First there was this very creepy gold snake wreath (which, it turned out, didn’t weather the elements (or its repeated falls off the hook onto the brick below) very well, so it was a one year thing). And then….

Miss Havisham’s Wedding Feast:

Excited as I am about this year’s Halloween plans, I’m not sure I’ll ever top 2014’s Great Expectations theme. There’s really nothing creepier than a wedding cake covered with cobwebs, being munched on by rubber rats, right? No, there is not.

Spooky Paper Trees:

Even thought last year was my not really feeling it year (still in mourning for Miss Havisham, perhaps?), I was pretty happy with how these spooky little paper bag trees came out. Someday maybe I’ll do a full scale Halloween village type thing, and these can come back out (actually, I think I recycled them. I’d need to make new ones. But that only takes a second. So.)

And there you have it: my top five projects from Halloweens before this one. Now off to work on this year! It’s only a little over a month away, Halloween is!

Save

Save

Save