Lilly's Cute Halloween Pumpkin Craft for School!

Lilly brought home a paper from school the other day saying that the kids in her class could bring in a small decorated pumpkin (NOT carved) just for fun if they wanted to, and that small prizes would be given.

So me, secretly being an artsy-craftsy-type person, jumped all over that.  I asked Lilly if she'd like to do a pumpkin for school, and she said yes. So Saturday night, me and Lilly perused Google Images for "no-carve pumpkin decorating ideas for kids" to get some inspiration.  Lilly had a hard time deciding what to do, but ultimately, she wanted to make her pumpkin look like a kitty cat (of course).

There were a few kitty-cat pumpkin designs to choose from, but there was one that Lilly liked the best.  So today, we went to Wally World, procured a small pumpkin and some pipe cleaners (oh, excuse me, I mean "fuzzy sticks" -- apparently it's not politically correct to call them "pipe cleaners" anymore, since that name is evidently affiliated with the unhealthy act of smoking pipes).  >:P

Anyway, we already had the rest of the crap stuff laying around the house that we would need to glue onto the pumpkin.

Well, as you know, Lilly has ADHD, and even though she is on medication for it, she still doesn't have the patience that it takes to do a craft from start to finish.  So basically (I know it's kind of crappy), but I did all the work on the kitty-cat pumpkin while getting input from Lilly, as she would run back-and-forth past me like a maniac from time to time.

I have a feeling that Lilly is going to grow up to be some sort of supervisor/manager/boss, because she does a lot better just telling people what to do, than doing the actual work herself.  :P

So anyway, without further ado, here is the finished product, with my handiwork, and Lilly's bossing:

I KNOW, RIGHT?!?  IT'S SO FREAKIN' CUTE!!!

(Lilly wanted it to have white whiskers, so that's what we did).

All it took was this:

• half a sheet of black construction paper for the ears, eye-backgrounds, eye-slits, and mouth
• one pink felt pom-pom about the size of a nickel (trimmed into a triangle-shape to make the nose, and the trimmings picked apart to make the pink fuzz for the ears)
• two old green plastic buttons we had in the button jar (I cut the loop-thingies off the backs of them with the scissors so they would lay flat)
• white pipe cleaners "fuzzy sticks" or "chenille stems" --take your politically correct pick--  >:/
• a tail from one of Lilly's old Halloween costumes (we rammed a cut-off piece of wire clothes-hanger down inside of it so that we could bend it into the shape that Lilly wanted it to curl)
• and to affix everything to the pumpkin --depending on the level of "stickiness" needed--, I used a variety of white glue, hot glue, and glue dots (the "permanent"-strength kind --those things are fan-freakin'-tastic if you haven't discovered them yet!)

The tail was the trickiest part.  The pumpkin had about a 2-inch stem on it, which I slid the tail onto like a sleeve, and then just hammered about 6 straight-pins through the tail into the base of the stem to hold it in place.  I shoved about a half-inch of the trimmed-off clothes hanger up into the center of the top of the pumpkin stem to help keep it in place.  Then since Jamie was the strongest, he man-handled the tail until it curved into the position that Lilly wanted.

Here I am, secretly pleased with my achievement, while Lilly acts 'Like A Boss' (and not in the good way)!

...leave me alone...can't you see I'm busy with my paperwork...what is it that you need?...do you need me to sign something?...*sigh*...fine, I'll pose for a picture, but only for a second; I'm very busy here...all right, off with you, already, peon!...

LOL!

P.S.  Lilly refused to smile for this picture (as she sometimes does), but then right after Jamie snapped it, the little terd grinned from ear to ear.  Terd.  >:{

Anyway, even though the optional pumpkin craft isn't due at school until the 14th, Lilly will go ahead and truck it on to school tomorrow.  I hope it survives to see the classroom!  (And I hope none of the glue fails, or the bits get picked off by curious little grubby fingers)!  :/

On another crafty note, Lilly's teacher sent another note home with all the kids saying that if we wanted to, we could send in treats for the kids' Halloween Treat Bags (nope; it can't be for "Halloween", lest we offend some anti-"evil"/"devil"/"pagan"/"witchcraft"/whatever/ nonsense people)! -- COME ON, WHO CARES ABOUT THE ORIGINS OF THE HOLIDAY; IT'S ALL ABOUT THE CANDY AND HAVING FUN DRESSING UP NOWADAYS!!!  Don't piss on our parade & make it out to be something it's not!  >:{  After all, the Christmas holiday itself has pagan origins and traditions, but the school still celebrates the heck out of that!  >:{

Anyway, while we were at Wally World earlier today procuring the little pumpkin for the kitty-cat craft, we also picked up some candy for the Treat Bags for Lilly's class.  We couldn't get anything with peanuts because Lilly's teacher's sons are deathly allergic to peanuts  >:{  so Lilly decided on Hershey's snack-size bars.  Perfect choice.  It sure beats the hell out of these sh*tty thingies that you always hated to see laying there when you finally got home from trick-or-treating and dumped out your bucket!:

(actually, the only things I would throw out now that I'm a grown-up --ha ha-- would be the Necco wafers, the Twizzlers, and maybe the Dots, but everything else, I would probably happily gobble up)... :/

Anyway, after I got through crafting-up the kitty-cat pumpkin, I was still in Craft Mode, so instead of just flinging the bag of Hershey's bars into Lilly's backpack for her to turn around and fling at her teacher for the Treat Bags, I opted to do something just a little bit cuter.

After perusing the good ol' Google Images again for "Halloween candy packaging" for just a few minutes, I ran across some printable templates.  I asked Lilly if she thought my idea was cool and wanted me to do it, and of course she said yes.  And Lilly also endorsed the template that I picked out to use.

I had recently broken down and bought myself a printer, because it's apparent that we really need one, and with me no longer working in an office (thank God, but therefore no longer having any easy access to printers, copiers, scanners, and other various *sweet* free office supplies), we just had to have one; there was no way around it.  So a few weeks ago, I got the cheapest printer/copier/scanner that they had at Wally World (which turned out to only be something like $30 -- WHAT, THAT'S CHEAP)!  ...only to discover upon unpackaging it, setting it up, and trying to use it at home, that the #$%^#$% thing didn't come with a #$%^#$% printer cable (I don't know what else I expected).  In my defense, Jamie was with me when I was purchasing the printer, and as we were placing it into our buggy, I told him to read the box and MAKE SURE that there wasn't some kind of double-secret cable that we needed that was SOLD SEPARATELY, and he looked briefly at the box and told me "it has a cable".  DING-DONG, HE WAS WRONG.  Again, I don't know what else I expected.  The "cable" he was talking about it "having" turned out to be the #$%^#$% power cord.

So upon my discovery of this, my expert (and very loud) enunciation of every cussword known to man, and one furious flying trip back to Wally World on my part to procure the necessary additional $20 printer cable later, then I could finally print things.  Whew.  When am I ever going to learn my lesson?  Never. Trust. Jamie.  >:{  NEVER.  NOT EVER!!!  UHH!!!!!!

Anyway, for Lilly's cute li'l treats for her class, I stacked up 3 snack-size Hershey's bars, and taped these little cut-out printed paper bands of spiderweb-&-spiders around them to hold them in place.  I added the "Happy Halloween!  From, Lilly", with fingers crossed that they won't be sent back home for being "offensive" and/or "inappropriate" by having the word "Halloween" on them!  (And if they DO get sent back home, then you will find me fat and bloated in the corner, with a ring of chocolate around my mouth, and 48 little snack-sized Hershey's wrappers littering the floor)!!!  >:/

Here's the template:

And it was awesome that it just so happened to fit perfectly taped around 3 of the stacked-up snack-size Hershey's bars!:

Pretty cute, huh?!?  :D

Now we just need to figure out what Lilly's going to be for "Book Character Day" at school, since they don't allow kids to "dress up for Halloween" at school anymore.  Nowadays, kids HAVE to dress up as a character from a book, and MUST also bring the book to school to PROVE that they are dressed up as a book character!

So for the past several years with Lilly, it's been like this:

"...Uhhh...hello there, Teacher.  I'm Tinkerbell.  Or maybe Barbie.  Errr, ummm...would you believe I'm actually Rapunzel?..."

I mean, seriously.  This is just about all the crap you can get in the stores, and HELLOOO, it's not 1940, and nobody's mom is an expert seamstress who has 10,000 bundles of every kind of spare cloth laying around and can whip up some kind of decent costume in a matter of hours!  Not to mention the fact that no kid these days would want to dress up as these boring, lame, old-@$$ things:

So I don't know what Lilly will end up dressing up as for stupid "Book Character Day" at school this year.

A year or two ago, I actually had in my possession an actual Madeline costume from the Disney store that I had acquired for free from some yard-sale trappings somewhere:

And I even had a book to go along with it, that was mine when I was a little girl!:

But would Lilly wear the Madeline costume?  Hell, no!  She wouldn't even consider it, and she wouldn't ever even try the #$%^&#$ thing on!!!  So I had to donate it to the thrift store!  >:{  Freakin' kid.  She absolutely refuses to do anything we want her to do, just out of spite!  GRR!!!

So we'll just have to be thinking about what we can get Lilly to dress up as and wear to school for Halloween Book Character Day (and also be something that we already have the stupid book for).  >:{  Thankfully we've got a few more weeks to go...

Why can't it still be like it used to be whenever I was in school?  It was called HALLOWEEN, and you could wear whatever costume you wanted to, and nobody ever even dreamed of wearing a costume that wasn't at least a little spooky!  And once we got into high school, and lots of students came up with really awesome and fun scary costumes, the only rule that they started implementing was that the costumes couldn't be "gory".  Ok, I can see that; you wouldn't want to scare the crap out of primary or elementary-school students that are riding the same bus as you: 

But changing Halloween to Book Character Day?  Stupid party-poopin' adults!  They've ruined everything, trying to be all politically correct and educational (a/k/a afraid of getting sued...which is what it all seems to boil down to these days)!

Meh!  >:{