Halloween is coming, and it's coming quickly!
I have failed at getting my Halloween decorations out in a timely fashion this year - but my amazing mother has all of her decorations out, as does my grandmother. We were up at my mom's a few weeks ago, and my boys (one especially) was leery about passing a particular spider decoration she has up. He would eye it, and would avoid walking by it. Similarly, we were at my grandmother's this past weekend and she had a small spiderweb decoration up over a doorway with a little raffia witch in it, and he eyed that decoration, and made a big deal about it, then proceeded to avoid the area.
I had seen some hand print spiders circulating about on Pinterest, and decided this would be a good time to have them make their own spiders, and a giant spiderweb to squash any fears that might be developing.
We started with the paint - I have a generic acrylic I buy at AC Moore. I picked black since (as we all know) Halloween spiders are black. I painted one of the boys hands, then he printed it on the paper, I turned the paper, painted his other hand, and he printed that one. Then we had the leave the table to wash his hands, and repeated the same process with my other boy.
Here are some fun pictures.
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| My first guy wiping his hands after finishing making his prints |
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| Now it's my turn! |
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| I put the paint on his hand with a paintbrush. |
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| Press and lift! |
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| A nice smile with his hand prints before jumping up from the table to go wash his hands. |
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| Even the baby is posing with her newly done hand prints. |
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| To keep the hand prints safe, I have to hang them on the fridge to keep them away from the kiddos grabbing them while they are still wet. |
Now it was time to create our spider web. I picked out an area of wall that doesn't currently have any pictures, or anything on it. The space I found was one side of our hallway - right where the ugly and outdated telephone jack is!
I used the itty bitty Command Hooks and placed them on the wall in an almost circular pattern being sure to have the hook part face out.
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| The Command Hooks arranged on the wall space where are are going to build our web. |
I strung some black yarn from a top hook, and left a nice long tail at the bottom.
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| Our first strand hung from the top, with a long tail. |
Then I let one of the boys pick a bottom hook, and string the yarn around it. He did this easily (even if I
didn't get a picture of it)
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| My son picked the first spot to loop the yarn around at the bottom of the web. |
We then alternated, it was "my turn" and I strung the yarn up around a top hook, and then my other boy got to pick the next spot to loop it around.
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| Choosing the next spot. |
Even the baby got to pick where the yarn was getting strung. We repeated this, and alternated turns.
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| Continuing to create our web. |
The boys loved this part.
When we were done, I took the yarn and just strung it all around the outside of the hooks to make it look finished.
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| The yarn strung around the edges to look finished. |
I tied the long tail end to the end of our web with a knot, and cut the ends.
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| Our very fancy knot. |
After the spiders were dried, we glued googly eyes to each spider, and then I had the boys tell me where they wanted the spiders to go on their web. Of course, they wanted them "way up high" and all I did was tape the spider to the yarn (not the wall).
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| Our spiders in our new web. |
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| Our spiders in the web with the googly eyes. |
It really looks cute. And it's very festive. I like that it is in the central spot like our hallway, because the kids keep commenting on it every time they pass it.
My favorite part - is that my boy who was leery of the spiders and spider web at my mother and grandmother's house was the one that spent the most time with me building it and instead of being afraid of it has now told me several times: "Momma, our spider web is beeeeautiful!".
