DIY Haunted {play} House

I hope everyone had a wonderful weekend! {and yay for you who get today off as well!}.

 

We finally got around to putting up our Halloween decorations. I usually like to get them up early in the month so that I have the maximum time to enjoy them....we are running a little slow this year :)

 

The first project we tackled is actually a first for us. The kids have had this cute, little, wooden playhouse in the back for about 3yrs now (as you can tell in the photos!). Something clicked this past week, and I thought "wouldn't it be neat if we let the kids decorate their own house by picking up stuff from the dollar store?". Well. We got to the dollar store with every intent of allowing each child to choose 2 items (stating several times that candy did not count as decoration!). And they did really well sticking to those guidelines.

 

Um, me....not so much. Everything just seemed so perfect for a little house!

 

Here is what their playhouse looked like before:

 

 

And then after a few little dollar store finds (and one amazing tree we already owned), we had ourselves a little haunted house!

 

 

Isn't this doorknob awesome??! Pic #1 for Jay.

 

The black gauze fabric was Jay's second pic...made some great curtains!

 

Spiderwebs: Cayden's first pic, and always a good idea!

 

The lantern was Cayden's second choice...makes for the perfect indoor light :)

 

The cardboard "wood boards" were inspired by a pin found here.

 

Safe to say, the kids loved the entire project :)

 

Happy Monday!

 

xo,

Rachel

 

 

 



Paper Plate Gallery

Hello!

 

A couple of weeks back my son requested that we buy some paper plates for a specific craft that he wanted to do. We almost never have any paper plates on hand, so I bought a cheap pack of Target brand plates, 200 count. He did his craft...and there we were left with 198 plates.

 

I started handing them out instead of drawing paper for no other reason other than I am L.A.Z.Y. and the plates were already on the counter :) You know what? Paper plates are freaking awesome for art projects. They are thicker than paper for paint (nothing sadder than a wet, limp piece of paper filled to the brim with paint), and creates a nice raised border so that your little artist actually stays on the paper (plate).

 

Well, before I knew it, I had a bunch of little pieces of art. Each like a mini canvas, I knew I had to do something great with them. I started thinking about how people hang up plates as art all the time, and I thought why not?

 

We have this big, blank wall at the landing on the top of our stairs that I have had planned to create a gallery wall of our kid's art, since I love the idea that one of the first things you will see when you enter our house is all this colorful art. The only thing that has been holding me back is the price tag of the frames. I really want to use the Ribba frame from Ikea, but even at the $5 pricetag it adds up when you want 16 of them.... So I figured why not just go for a gallery wall of paper plates.

 

I went up there with no plan, just a stack of plates, and some thumbtacks I had lying around. I wanted to do a more abstract layout, but since I had so many plates, I went for a simple gallery look.

 

 

I LOVE the dimension they give to the wall.

 

Here's the view from the from door:

 

I have to say, that we really like how it turned out. It's a great substitution for the frames {for now}, and can easily be added to or substituted with new art.

And the kids loved it too, so I think we had a success :)

 

Happy Monday!

 

xo

Rachel

 

 

 

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