Fall Craftiness

Last year, right about this time, we published our 31 days of October craftiness and y’all loved it, so here it is again! (We have changed the calendar to match 2017’s October, to make it easier and up-to-date.) These projects are (mostly) pretty quick and we hope you find it as helpful and inspiring as in 2016.

Last year we wrote:

So, someone in our idea room got the idea to create 31 days of craft projects for you, our dear Finderskeepians. And we did it. But it was really hard. And Rachel got the stomach flu. So, here it is. But on the 7th, instead of the 1st.

We really hope you enjoy this. So, go ahead. Bring a little October into your life. And please let us know how it goes! We’d love to hear from you. #31DaysOfOctober on Instagram!

Just click on one of the little squares, below, and be whisked away into a wondrous place. A place like none other. A place we like to call–Craftopia.

1Day 1 - 31 Days of October CraftinessGet Inspired 2Day 2 - 31 Days of October CraftinessPlan A Costume  3Day 3 - 31 Days of October CraftinessFill Your Home With Fall 4Day 4 - 31 Days of October CraftinessCreate A Fall
Planting
5Day 5 - 31 Days of October CraftinessMake A Pumpkin Topiary 6Day 6 - 31 Days of October CraftinessHang A
Garland
7Day 7 - 31 Days of October CraftinessUse Essential Oils
8Day 8 - 31 Days of October CraftinessMake Some Ginger-bread 9Day 9 - 31 Days of October CraftinessDecorate With Fall Colors 10Day 10 - 31 Days of October CraftinessMake A Campfire 11Day 11 - 31 Days of October CraftinessMake A Spooky, Spooky Picture 12Day 12 - 31 Days of October CraftinessGet A Pedi 13Day 13 - 31 Days of October CraftinessCreate A Halloween Playlist  14Day 14 - 31 Days of October CraftinessTake Autumn Photos
15Day 15 - 31 Days of October CraftinessGo Ahead, Glitter Some Bones  16Day 16 - 31 Days of October CraftinessDecorate With Leaves 17Day 17 - 31 Days of October CraftinessMake Some Butternut Squash Soup 18Day 18 - 31 Days of October CraftinessPlant A Succulent 19Day 19 - 31 Days of October CraftinessGet Some Bloody Washi  20Day 20 - 31 Days of October CraftinessMake Some
Hot Apple Cider 
21Day 21 - 31 Days of October CraftinessPlan Your Holiday Menu
22Day 22 - 31 Days of October CraftinessUse Our Party Planning Printable 23Day 23 - 31 Days of October CraftinessGather Your Pumpkins 24Day 24 - 31 Days of October CraftinessPile Some Pumpkins 25Day 25 - 31 Days of October CraftinessCarve Yourself Some Pumpkins 2631 Days of October CraftinessCreate A Horror Tableau 27Day 27 - 31 Days of October CraftinessSay It With Cheese
-cloth
28Day 28 - 31 Days of October CraftinessUse Old Lace
Table-cloths
29Day 29 - 31 Days of October CraftinessUse Spider Webs With Abandon 30Day 30 - 31 Days of October CraftinessHang Halloween Wreaths 31Day 31 - 31 Days of October CraftinessFill A Cauldron With Candy

Happy Haunting!

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01 Get Inspired

31 Days of October CraftinessSarah has been collecting the best Halloween ideas for food, costumes and home decor for years. And it’s all right there, on our Pinterest board. Help yourself!

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02 Plan a Costume

31 Days of October Craftiness

We come from the tradition that Halloween costumes are best when they are (a) homemade, and (b) super creative or, at least, just a little smart aleck-y. Check out these sites for this year’s winners of the FK Costume of the Year Award.

 

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03 Fill Your Home with Fall

31 Days of October Craftiness

Fill your home with fall candles and/or reed diffusers. For you to feel truly embroiled in the brisk, homey comfort of fall, you need your home to smell the part. Check out these sites for this year’s Autumn home fragrances.

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04 Create a Fall Planting

31 Days of October Craftiness

If you have a front stoop (lucky you! We love stoops!), flank your entrance with some pots filled with new plantings in fall colors. If you are afraid of plants (you know who you are), because you are always killing them, no worries! Use succulents in fall colors–they require almost no care–or go ahead and let them die and then–voila!–you have one more Halloween decoration! Check out our Pinterest board for some inspiration here.

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05 Make a Pumpkin Topiary

31 Days of October Craftiness

This was one of our ideas from last year and we loved it so much we wanted to include it again this year. Here’s our article from last year for more information on how to make this Halloween topiary.

31 Days of October Craftiness

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06 Hang a Garland

31 Days of October Craftiness

Hang a fall or Halloween themed garland. We created our garland from a kit by Stampin’ Up!, but you could also create your own, or….just clip some Project Life Halloween or Autumn themed 3×4 cards to some twine with some tiny clothespins. Easy!

31 Days of October Craftiness

31 Days of October Craftiness

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07 Use Essential Oils

31 Days of October CraftinessPut cinnamon or nutmeg or pumpkin spice essential oil on a cotton ball and put in your  vacuum cleaner bag and then vacuum your house. Sarah has been doing this for years (she matches the fragrance to the season–try geranium oil in the Spring) and her house always smells terrific. Added bonus: it makes vacuuming just that much more exciting.

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08 Make Some Gingerbread

31 Days of October Craftiness

Here is Sarah’s recipe for gingerbread. It is really, really, really good.

31 Days of October Craftiness

If you are not a cook, try the Trader Joe’s gingerbread mix, which is the best one on the market, in our humble opinion.

31 Days of October Craftiness

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09 Decorate with Fall Colors

31 Days of October Craftiness

Bring fall colors into your home with pillows, table runners, or bowls filled with colorful leaves, gourds, or even acorns! Check out our Autumn Decor Ideas board on Pinterest here.

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10 Make a Campfire

31 Days of October Craftiness

If you have a fire pit, have a campfire.

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11 Make a Spooky, Spooky Picture

All Hallows Eve Printable

Alter this All Hallows Eve Printable to make a spooky, spooky picture. (Click to view full size, then save image to your desktop to print.) We got the idea from Country Sampler’s Autumn Decorating magazine. But they wanted us to (we are not making this up) scour our local thrift store or flea market until we found a print that would work. Ahem. No time. And, frankly, every once and awhile we come across some terrific craft that calls for finding something at a thrift store–like vintage tea towels–and it makes us wonder where these thrift stores are that have beautiful, vintage tea towels or gently aged lace table runners or antique apothecary boxes. Our local thrift stores have smelly, stained terry cloth towels and chipped dishes. Seriously. So we created a printable, just for you!

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12 Get a Pedi

31 Days of October Craftiness

Get a Halloween or fall-themed pedi. ‘Nuff said. Check out our halloween pedi Pinterest board here.

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13 Create a Halloween Playlist

31 Days of October Craftiness

Put together a playlist. Here are some suggestions:

Uma Thurman by Fallout Boy

Thriller by Michael Jackson

The Prologue from Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone soundtrack by John Williams

Purple People Eater by George Thorogood

Honky Tonk Halloween by Captain Clegg and the Night Creatures

Witch Doctor by Sha Na Na

Love Potion No. 9 by The Searchers

Please, Please, Please Let Me Get What I Want by the Smiths

This is Halloween from the Nightmare Before Christmas soundtrack

The Addams Family theme by The Surf Dawgs

Hey Ho for Halloween from the Ultimate Kids Halloween Party Album

Ghosts Are Very Frightening by from the Ultimate Kids Halloween Party Album

Mr. Nobody from the Ultimate Kids Halloween Party AlbumGhostbusters by Ray Parker, Jr.

Time Warp from from The Rocky Horror Picture Show

Dark Lady by Cher

Do the Hippogriff from the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire soundtrack

This is the Night from the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire soundtrack

Magic Works from the Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire soundtrack

Livin’ La Vida Loca by Eddie Murphy and Antonio Banderas (our preferred edition–try Ricky Martin, too!)

I Put a Spell on You from the Ultimate Kids Halloween Party Album

Friends on the Other Side by Keith David (Princess and the Frog soundtrack)

Shadow Man by Keith David (Princess and the Frog soundtrack)

Poison Ivy by the Coasters

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14 Take Autumn Photos

31 Days of October Craftiness

If you are lucky enough to live in an area where the leaves change, take a stroll and capture that beauty! The pictures you take will make wonderful additions to holiday cards and memory layouts. Be sure to check out our Pinterest board for some inspiration here.

31 Days of October Craftiness

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15 Go Ahead, Glitter Some Bones

31 Days of October Craftiness

Sarah made this decoration by gathering a plastic skull and some bones, applying some multi-purpose glue in sections (using a paint brush), and sprinkling some fine glitter in different shades of green. Then she used some store-bought resin bones and sprayed them with a gold glitter spray. She filled a large, decorative bowl with dried moss and then arranged the glittered items on top of it. Voila! Beautiful and spooky!

31 Days of October Craftiness

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16 Decorate with Leaves

31 Days of October Craftiness

IMG_5276This was super easy. We just used a garland of dried leaves and berries and folded it up to fit into the ceramic swan that lives on Sarah’s piano. Last year we filled the swan with faux black roses, which was also pretty, and just a little bit spooky.

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17 Make Some Butternut Squash Soup

31 Days of October CraftinessThis is Sarah’s famous Butternut Squash Soup and everyone loves it. Enjoy.

31 Days of October Craftiness

31 Days of October Craftiness

31 Days of October Craftiness

31 Days of October Craftiness

31 Days of October Craftiness

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18 Plant a Succulent

31 Days of October Craftiness Too cute, right?? If you don’t have any Funkins lying around, just plant some succulents in fall colors, to add to that stoop arrangement we spoke of earlier.

31 Days of October Craftiness

31 Days of October Craftiness

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19 Get Some Bloody Washi

31 Days of October Craftiness

Add some bloody washi to your planner, and not just in the British sense. Although we don’t carry this washi in our online store, we believe in giving credit where credit is due–Snaps for you, Michaels! Best washi, ever!

Here is a collection of Sarah’s planner pages, done up with said washi:

31 Days of October Craftiness

31 Days of October Craftiness

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20 Make Some Hot Apple Cider

31 Days of October Craftiness

Put cider in a crock pot w cinnamon sticks, sliced oranges and star anise and let it simmer.

31 Days of October Craftiness

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21 Plan Your Halloween Menu

31 Days of October CraftinessPlanning ahead will make it so much easier to shop, cook and have a (reasonably) stress-free pah-tay.

Check out Food Networks Halloween Food Ideas here.

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22 Use Our Party Planning Printable

Party Planner imageOver the years, as Sarah planned various gatherings for friends and relatives, and as her compulsive organizational tendencies took over, she developed a system for putting all the little tasks that are involved in parties together into one place. In the end, she would take an 11×17 piece of printer paper and divide it into 4 quadrants, each for tracking 4 areas of planning a party:

  • planning a menu
  • timing the meal
  • tracking rsvps
  • tracking to do lists

We have created this printable for you (holiday-printable pdf), in case you might like to give it a try. Let us know how it goes! #HolidayPlanning on Instagram.

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23 Gather Your Pumpkins

31 Days of October Craftiness

We are kind of lucky to have a small, historic farm nearby that sets up a pumpkin patch each year. But it really doesn’t matter where you get your pumpkins, as long as you get them! They are a Halloween mandate!

31 Days of October Craftiness

31 Days of October Craftiness

31 Days of October Craftiness

31 Days of October Craftiness

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24 Pile Some Pumpkins

31 Days of October Craftiness

Create a pile of pumpkins on your steps or in your front hall

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25 Carve Yourself Some Pumpkins

31 Days of October Craftiness

Carve your pumpkins. Your jack-o-lanterns don’t need to be fancy to make people happy.  We love our kid’s carvings the most. And, if you’re not patient enough to make a face, check out Sarah’s “jail”–it only requires a rectangle window and some brown (plastic coated) wire she found in the garage.

31 Days of October Craftiness

31 Days of October Craftiness

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26 Create a Horror Tableau

31 Days of October Craftiness

Create a horror tableau on your front porch

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27 Say It with Cheesecloth

31 Days of October Craftiness

Cheesecloth is so cool for creating terrific Halloween decor. Check out our Halloween board, with loads of cheesecloth ideas on Pinterest here.

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28 Use Old Lace Tablecloths

31 Days of October CraftinessPick up tattered lace tablecloths at the thrift store (or, if you’re like us, you may have some of your own….ahem….) and drape them askew on table or chairs. Sarah has two old, mismatched lace tablecloths that just got a little worn out. Alone, they would be too small for her buffet table, but she just drapes them askew and overlapping in the middle for an “old, creepy house” look.

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29 Use Spider Webs with Abandon

31 Days of October Craftiness

Cover every surface imaginable with fake spider webs. Sarah here (Rach can’t stand spiders). We just use those cotton spider webs all over our house and then attach 3 large spiders we picked up at Target one year. Super easy. Very effective. Added bonus: When your house is covered in webs, we don’t have to worry about whether our windows are clean or our house need painting; it’s just part of the effect! Don’t you just love Halloween???

31 Days of October Craftiness

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30 Hang Halloween Wreaths

31 Days of October Craftiness

Hang wreaths up the stairs. This is super quick and easy way to add something fun to your Halloween decor. We bought some black wreaths (available at craft stores–we got ours at Cost Plus at an after-Halloween sale) and just tied them to the banister with wide, red, wire-edged ribbon. We tied bows and crimped the dangling ends of the bows for a Halloween feel.

Or even just a fall themed wreath for some added hominess.

31 Days of October Craftiness

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31 Fill a Cauldron with Candy

31 Days of October Craftiness

And, to finish off this month, as the sun begins to descend, fill a cauldron–or go the other direction and fill a fancy, crystal bowl–with Halloween candy. Then just sit back and let the trick-or-treaters roll in.

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