Crafty Halloween: How to Make a Pumpkin Garland

I love Halloween, always have done.  Perhaps it's the child in me, perhaps I just like a good excuse to dress up and eat sweets, who knows.
Either way, having a small person in my life has given me reason to really indulge in the fun & silliness of it all - at 6 months I may have dressed Dylan as a pumpkin for my own amusement, but I'm pretty sure he enjoyed it too.

This year, at two and a half, little legs is a bit more aware of what's happening - he's picked his own costume (a skay-ton - that's skeleton to you and me), he can say pumpkin and is very much looking forward to going out to 'tick or tee!'.  So, I decided this year we should indulge in some creepy crafting too.

And, as I keep thinking about trying my hand at tutorials here on the blog, I've decided to kill to birds with one stone.  Without further a do, here is how we made a Halloween Pumpkin Garland!

You Will Need: A humble potato, a sharp knife, some paint (yellow + red = orange!), paper, and something to stick all your pumpkins together with (we used ribbon & sticky tape as you'll see later, but I forgot to put them in the photo - can you tell this is my first tutorial?!)

Cut the potato in half, and using the tip of the knife (carefully! clearly, this part is not a job for toddlers!), cut out a spooky pumpkin face.  I found it easiest to do an outline, then used a cocktail stick to 'pick out' the insides - you want to take out reasonable deep chunks - at least half a centimetre.

Don't forget to use the other half of the potato too - experiment with different faces!

Squeeze some paint into a shallow tray - we used a plastic one out of the recycling box to avoid washing up - a paper plate would also do the trick - dip your potato pumpkins into the paint, press down onto your paper, and voila, painty pumpkin prints!

Keep going til your paint runs out or your toddler gets bored, whichever comes first - play with different colours of paper, try embellishing the faces - can you tell Dylan is very into googly eyes and glitter right now?

When all your pumpkins are dry, cut them out & add any other embellishments you fancy - Dylan though feathery stalks/hair would be cool.

Next, you need to string all your pumpkins together - you could use a needle and thread, punch holes through each one & thread together with string, but I knew Dylan wouldn't have the patience for either of those, so we opted for a long piece of ribbon, and old faithful: sticky tape.

Keep adding your pumpkins in whatever order you (by which I mean your toddler) likes, until your ribbon/string is full.

Hang 'em up in the window, and tah da! The funkiest handmade way of scaring off any loitering spooks and ghouls.

So there we go, my first tutorial - what did you think?  If you make a garland of your own, I'd love to see it - or are you making another spooky craft?

Oh, and incase you're wondering - that up there, is Dylan's scary face. Don't have nightmares!