knock, knock!

who's there?

BOO!

boo who?

DON'T CRY!!!

hahahaha!

that was my favorite joke in kindergarten; and for better or for worse, i think you will agree it is equally funny today as it was in 1969, lol. :)

i have to confess that in the last few years i've not been particularly interested in halloween. as apartment dwellers who did not get trick-or-treaters, it was sort of a non-holiday for us. but having bought the house this year, we're on a street with quite a few children, and on a corner lot that borders another fairly large family neighborhood, and suddenly it seems like we might be having a real halloween, and i'm kind of excited about that!

so when this week's shopping our stash challenge asked me to make something either orange and black OR halloween-related, i decided to do BOTH:

(ingredients used on all eight cards, as well as i can remember: patterned paper: ki memories, bo bunny, scrapworks, cosmo cricket, basic grey, 7 gypsies, making memories, gcd, love elsie, creative imaginations + some scraps too small to identify, lol; eye brads: oriental trading, i think; ribbon: michaels; ink: colorbox; adhesives: staples brand gluetape runner, scotch gluestick, 3m foam tape)

we love getting photos of the nieces and nephews dressed in their costumes, but we don't actually get to see them on the day; and i know they all ♥LOVE♥ getting mail, so i thought it might be fun to make them each a halloween card. as you know, i'm not a happy mass-producer, so as usual, i went for a "similar, but not the same" strategy. this not only makes it more fun to do, but also lets me use up loads of smaller scraps, rather than constantly cutting into big sheets of paper; and hey, there's a reason they asked me to come and hang out at SOS, right?! ;)

in addition to getting mail, i think kids really like to get things that are personalized. because let's face it the first word ANY child can recognize in print is their name, right? i used broderbund's print shop to print greetings for all on clear labels that could be stuck inside each card. since i didn't have enough BIG letter stickers or dies to create the oversized "BOO" i wanted for the front of the cards, i also printed out the word a couple of times to use as a template, which i stapled to 3 or 4 layers of black and white patterned paper scraps, so that my hand-cutting was reduced considerably.

yeah, it still took a little while, but at the end of an evening, when there's still 20 minutes left of tv-watching, and i'm too tired to start anything new, jobs like fussy-cutting or hand-stitching are the perfect time-filler. 

something else i didn't quite have enough of were the fabulous eye brads that i think came from oriental trading some time ago. when i ran out, i just punched circles from the leftover patterned papers and layered them together. again, this is a great argument for non-identical mass-production; i feel like there are enough other variations between the cards that there's not an a-team and a b-team. here are ALL the cards, together, ready to be mailed:

we accomplished our other goal of seasonal readiness this weekend, that of buying pumpkins to decorate. it turns out that lovely husband jeff has strong views on halloween decor (who knew?!) and in his mind, a house without decorated pumpkins is not a house which will be patronized by small be-costumed persons. in my own mind, having a light on and a variety of non-sugarless candy on offer is probably sufficient; but i'm game for trying out a bit of squash painting, and i think these three will serve admirably. if not, you are all invited over for pumpkin muffins next week, darlings! :)

somewhere you are invited right now is shopping our stash where there is an amazingly inspiring variety of projects in orange and black OR halloween-theme OR both await your delight! ♥