This past weekend Tom and I took the boys to the local civic center to make Scary Cottages. We did this last year too and the boys enjoyed it so much we signed up for it again.

When you arrive you have half a table reserved for your family and you sign up in advance for how many cottages you want to decorate. Since the boys are still so small one cottage is plenty for us to decorate. Each boy does half of it with help from mom and dad and it works out just fine. Once you find your table you have a cottage made out of cardboard and you are given two containers of chocolate frosting, all kinds of candy and some halloween decorations to decorate your scary cottage. Of course the boys had to sample the candy first!

The boys dug right in with the icing. Since the chocolate icing was pretty thick they took duct tape and taped two popsicle sticks together for added strength so that it was easier to ice the house without the stick breaking. The favorite part for the boys to decorate first is the roof probably because the roof is the easiet part for them to reach.

Mom and Dad enjoy making the Scary Cottage too so we decorated what we could. Once the boys were done and went to play with the other kids at some of the other activities that were set up, Mom and Dad were able to do a bit more decorating too! This year they gave each family some spanish moss to use as grass around the cottage so we added some of that when we were all done and it really tied the whole thing together. They gave us green cotton to use in the chimney so that it looked like smoke. Since so much of the decorations were edible we had to make sure that the boys understood that the cotton for the chimney smoke was actually cotton and not cotton candy!

In the end I think that we had a great Scary Cottage. However, I am having some doubts as to whether or not the Scary Cottage will make it to Halloween. Almost every time that the boys go into the kitchen and see it sitting on the table they try to take a little piece of candy off of it. By Halloween there may be nothing left!

My boys love to paint so when I found these Jar-O-Lanterns in the Disney Family Fun magazine I decided that we should give it a try.

I started out by collecting some jars in various sizes for the boys to paint. I like to can apples so we have a lot of canning jars so we just used those. I did not have any masking tape but I found double-sided carpet tape in my Husband’s workshop so we used that and just used one sticky side of the tape. I bought 2 bottles of orange acrylic paint from the craft store for 50 cents a bottle. I then bought the battery operated candles. I have never purchased those candles before and I thought that they were a bit on the expensive side. However, Gabriel was helping me to look and he found some on the clearance rack for 50 cents each. They were even shaped like little pieces of candy! The boys were so excited to start the project when we got home that I barely had time to get their paint shirts on them. I tried to cut out the faces for the jars but the boys were starting to paint faster than I could cut the tape so that is why our jar-o’-lanters have no mouths on them.

We used foam paintbrushes from the craft store which were only 20 cents a piece. We poured the paint onto paper plates and started painting. We painted over the tape and everything. After the boys went to bed and the jars were dry I peeled off the tape and put in a candle and the jar-o’-lanterns were so cute!

When the boys woke up the next morning they went straight to the jars to see if they were dry. We turned on the battery operated candles and they took them into the closet to see what they looked like in the dark. They each fell asleep that night with a jar in each of their rooms! We really enjoyed doing this project and are even thinking of doing some red and green jars for Christmas.