Tricks with Treats

BOO!

Holloween is a fun craft time. It offers lots of possibilities, beyond the carving of pumpkins and making costumes. Decorating your home doesn't have to be costly. Here are a few suggestions that are fun for ages 10-100.

1. Shrunken Heads

Carve faces into apples or potatoes, and brush each one with a coating of lemon or lime juice. Then set them in a sunny window for a week or so. Watch as they are tranformed into tiny, rock hard, shrunken heads.

To make a string of them, (this should be dine before they harden) use an ice pick or kabob skewer to punch a hole from one side through the other. You can use binding string, kitchen twine, or a shoe lace to string them, but you might need a leather or millinary needle to draw the string through.

2. Ghosties

White plastic trash bags, some string, and some of those leaves you've been raking up make for a ghostie haven. Stuff a hand full or two of the leaves (or any other stuffing material) into a bottom corner of the bag, and use some string or fishing line to make several wraps beneath the stuffing wad, before knotting securely. Leave a length of about a yard or so on the end, so you can string your ghostie from a tree branch or the front porch eve. If you don't punch holes, the bags will be fully reusable after holloween.

3. Spooky Silhouettes

Cut shadowy sihouettes out of a roll of craft paper. Black paper is best, for this purpose. Use plastic adhesive putty to stick these to walls and windows. The hanged man is especially fun on a stairwell wall.

4. Cupcake spiders

Make chocolate cupcakes as usual, and decorate with black licorice for legs, chocolate sprinkles (makes 'em fuzzy), and red hots for eyes.

5. Brain in the punch

Mold the jello as directed, and float the jello brain it in a punch made from Hawaiian Punch and Sherbert.

I purchased a brain mold, these can be found at

http://www.sporks.com/ or http://www.prankplace.com/