Life at a "Swell's" pace

After gathering up our scores of gourds at the local pumpkin patch, we carved away at them the night before Halloween. We apparently all have different personalities when it comes to carving the faces, as you can see. They are all unique in their own way!

(If you're here from Pinterest, welcome and thank you for the visit. Be sure to check out other posts on my blog)

Once Skylar picked his perfect pumpkin, the carving began.

Great compost for our garden.

For an added idea for Halloween, using eco friendly paints you can paint your house number on a pumpkin and display it with your other Halloween/Autumn décor. We used these paints.

We finished up Skylar's Max hat from Where the Wild Things are and made Halloween cupcakes and apple cider.

We also created these spooky eyeballs for the front window.

Here's how they are made:

1. One battery-operated push like such as, GE Battery Operated Push On/Off Round Closet Light 54807

2. Sharpie Marker Variety Pack, Sharpie Fine-Tip Permanent Marker, 24-Pack Assorted Colors

Design a scary eyeball on top of the light. We went with the vein-look of a regular eyeball, but it can be as scary or as fun as you want them to be.

Don't forget the batteries! I like the Duracell Coppertop

Now it looks like someone's watching you!

Skylar went as an Ewok last year. If you'd like the tutorial on how this costume was made, shoot me an email and I'll be happy to share. We always have so much fun making the yearly Halloween costumes.

Eco-Tip: Use food jars such as Ball® for food storage, or other reusables. Doing so will help cut down on the package waste and plastic usage. Keep in mind, plastic is not for the environment.

One of my favorite things is making Halloween costumes for The Bean. This year he wanted to go as a cloud. All I could think was, "how am I going to make a cloud?" The Mr. and I spend weeks thinking of how we could make this come together and while searching on Pinterest I found a cotton candy costume where the batting was the "cotton candy." So with that I bought a sweat suit in The Bean's size and started hot gluing white batting to the suit.

It was a night-long process, but it was all coming together the way he wanted.

I took a beanie hat and created the top of the cloud.

The Bean was having a blast standing and letting me fix certain areas of the cloud.

The shit part of the costume was really a fun task and he wanted to wear the costume before we were finished gluing on the cloud parts.

When it was all finished I hot glued "CLOUD" across the front.

Even with the word "CLOUD" on the costume people still thought he was other things-"abominable snowman," "stay-puft marshmallow man," and one guy even thought he was a "cotton ball."