The October/Halloween decorations is the one month out of the whole year that I have been looking forward to the most, and I am so excited that it is finally here.

I have always enjoyed crafting and creating, and all growing up I did small random projects.  However I didn’t really get into it “full time” or to the extent that it is today until the fall of 2009.  I was just made the co-leader for our church activity’s committee and we were in charge of an appreciation dinner for the women in our ward and I was tasked with the responsibility of coming up with centerpieces for 8 or 9 tables.  That was really the catalyst for a chain reaction that made me realize how much I loved decorating.  Even though now I cringe a little bit when I see pictures of those centerpieces, at the time I was really happy with what I came up with and still love a few of those items.  The next year I made my first full on DIY project and it was this orange wreath.  I am pretty sure that when I finished it I sent a picture of it to everyone I knew, I was so proud of myself.  And I still love it so much.

Then last year when I pulled out the Halloween decorations I realized that I HATED how the whole thing looked together.  It didn’t feel at all cohesive to me, and it didn’t fit in the space we had at all.  So throughout the whole month of October I worked on many projects, and by the end of the month it was at a place that I was ok with (you can see it in this post), but I still had a lot of things I wanted to do that I just didn’t have time to get to.  I didn’t hate it any more, but I still had so much I wanted to add and change.  So even though October was counted as “done” for my monthly goal last year, I still had a ton of things I was working on this year.  And I now love it, and it makes me so happy.  Along with the fact that I can see an orange/red tree from every single window on the main floor.  I love the street we live, we have the best trees all along it.  I mean this time of year, it is seriously the best!

I wanted a Harry Potter spell book, so I found a black hard cover book at Goodwill, and made 2 potion pages in Illustrator and printed and cut them out on cardstock that matched the color of the pages and glued the edges into the middle of the book.   I used this site for the potion “recipes” and then changed and added things a little bit.

I bought a few potion bottles last year, but didn’t like the labels that were on them.  And of course I wanted Harry Potter labels, so I designed my own in illustrator.  I also saved a few random bottles and jars throughout the year to add.  I printed the labels on beige cardstock, cut them out, inked them a little bit with black and brown ink pads, roughed them up a little bit with sandpaper and then modge podged them onto the bottles.  I love how they turned out.  All of them are Harry Potter, except this one little one.  I saw this Iocane powder t-shirt forever ago and loved it and so of course I also had to have a little vial of it too.

I wanted to make a sort of shadow box, but wanted it to have some flexibility in the arrangement, so I made a few individual square wood boxes that I can move around and change out of the configuration however I want.  I do seem do make a lot of wood boxes…  I stained them with an ebony stain so they are dark, but not quite full on black.

I made this graphic in Illustrator last year, inspired by this one I saw on Pinterest.  But I wanted it with a witch.

The orange banner I made for Carrie’s baby shower last year.  I strung some black pom pom’s on some embroidery floss and hung that over the banner with some of this frayed kind of yarn.

I got a skeleton pack from Michael’s and spray painted it silver and piled it into a cookie jar and tied some skeleton keys around the lid with some twine.

This haunted house embroidery I made last year and it is another favorite.

I also made a few potion vials.  I created these labels in illustrator and then glued them on to the vials that I filled with colored water.  They are also all Harry Potter potions or potion ingredients… of course.  My Felix Felicis is not quite brewed properly as you can tell from the more yellow than golden color and lack of leaping droplets.  Apparently I need some remedial potion classes.  🙂

I bought a skeleton garland and pulled them off the twine and then spray painted them silver too add to this bowl of little pumpkins.

The little paper mice on the piano I saw on Pinterest and I drew them and cut them out and taped them onto the piano.  I also got a fake pumpkin and then covered it with some black and white houndstooth duct tape.  And I found some pirate books while I was in North Carolina.

This wooden witch tryptic is another favorite.  There are a lot of favorites for this month.  I cut 3 pieces of plywood and painted them orange and then white, then sanded them a bit to distress them.  Then I printed these images and shaded over the back of the paper with a pencil, taped them to the wood and traced over the image to transfer the pencil to the wood.  Then hand painted them.  I painted some scraps of wood black and then made them frames around the plywood.  Then I screwed in some eye hooks into the frames and attached them to each other with some jump rings.

This little witch scene I made a few years ago.  My mom has one that she made years ago that was always in our house when I was growing up, and her and my dad cut out the wood pieces for me and then I painted them.

And of course pumpkins!

I found some black and white houndstooth fabric and I thought I bought it before we went to Hawaii, but then I checked my email later for the confirmation and it wasn’t there.  So apparently I didn’t click the final purchase button.  I ordered it right before we came back and it took a whole week to get here, which made me very sad.  It finally got here Tuesday night and I sewed it into a table runner this morning.  I seriously love this month’s decorations so much, and I am sad that I will only be here to enjoy it for half of the month.  I just might leave it up a little longer in November…

January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, and September.