Design: Black Cat Bunco

This month I am hosting Bunco for our Officers' Spouses' Club. When someone hosts, they have the pleasure of picking the theme for the evening. My initial thought was Alice in Wonderland, but then I thought I should do something more in line with October and Halloween. Then I realized a black cat theme would be perfect! I already own a bunch of black cat decor items and I have two black cats. Perfect!

Fonts Used
Barkants
CoolDots
Quicksand

Mummy Pumpkin

We finally made time to carve our pumpkin from Bishop's Pumpkin Farm. After looking through several designs on Pinterest, we went with a mummy!

It was hard to get them both to look at the camera at the same time.

Huge headache

Do you ever have days that something so minor happens but it just gives you a massive headache? Today the minor thing is that Trick or Treating was cancelled for my neighborhood. I live in military base housing and the base decide things like that. Well, the weather is crappy and rainy today so they cancelled it. They didn't reschedule. A rational, sane person (like myself) wouldn't think this was a huge deal. There are a BUNCH of places for kids to get their candy fix. And it's only candy anyway. But I take for granted that not everyone is rational and not everyone is sane.

People are in an uproar about this. A literal uproar! It just makes me think what the heck would you do if something truly important or horrific happened? Would you just fall to pieces and not be able to function? It takes all sorts of people for this world to run, but sometimes I just want to slap the silly out of some of them.

For now, my head hurts from talking about Trick or Treating all afternoon. And all I really want is a huge, gourmet caramel apple. But, alas, I'll just tough it out in the cozy warmth of my house and forget that stupid people exist.

Ghostly fun

On Sunday, Charles and I visited a local farm stand. They had tons of pumpkins! We decided to pick one out for carving and roasting pumpkin seeds. Neither of us have carved pumpkins since when we were kids, so it was a little bit of an experiment. But it turned out really well.

I picked out the design and Charles took care of all the rest. Love him! Here are some pictures:

Calvin didn't really want to take a picture with me. Can you tell?

Halloween Wreath--Tutorial

I've been seeing some super cute Halloween wreath tutorials around blog land. I just have a fall door thing and wanted to make something for Halloween. I got a fun idea and wanted to share it with all of. Since we have two black kitties and since black cats are one of those typical Halloween icons, I thought it would be fun to incorporate that onto a wreath.

Items you will need:
- wreath form (I used a green foam one from Michael's...I think it was 12 or 14 inches)
- one white foam sheet, purchased at Michael's
- one black glittery foam sheet, purchased at Michael's
- orange ribbon (I used one full roll and some from a 2nd roll of a 1 inch sized ribbon). Instead of ribbon, you could use yarn. Since I had done a yarn wrapped wreath a few months ago, my husband thought I should use ribbon for a different texture. I love his input!
- an extra piece of ribbon to hang your wreath from (I had a piece of black ribbon, so I used that. You could use some of your orange)
- hot glue gun and glue
- something to make whiskers (pipe cleaners, wire). I used paper clips. 

Wrap your wreath form with the ribbon. I overlapped the pieces a bit to make sure none of the wreath form showed through. I pinned the beginning to start and then used the piece of tape that was at the end of one roll to secure the end of that roll and the beginning of the next roll onto the wreath. Then I pinned the end. You could also glue the ribbon in place. At the time I wrapped my ribbon, I didn't have my glue gun warmed up.

Find an image of a cat that you want to use. I found this one online and sized it accordingly in Publisher. Print out the image of the cat to trace onto the glittery foam sheet. I cut out two cats since I have two black cats. If you are doing two cats, make sure to flip the image over to trace for the 2nd cat. Otherwise, you'll have two cats facing the same direction. Trace the cat image on the foam sheet and cut out. The glittery foam sheet wasn't as thick as the foam I used for the lettering, so I stabilized the cats with Popsicle sticks on the back. I didn't want them to get droopy.

Print out the word BEWARE (or another word of your choosing). Make sure it's a hefty font so it's easy to cut out of the foam. I used the font "Showcard Gothic." Cut the letters off the sheet so you can trace them. Trace the letters onto the white foam sheet. Cut out the letters with an exacto knife. I ended up having to trim the letters a bit because they were too fat.

Hot glue the letters and cats to the ribbon covered wreath.

Hot glue the ribbon loop on the back of the wreath so you have something to hang the wreath from.

If you want to include whiskers, you could use pipe cleaners or wire. I forgot to pick up some pipe cleaners, so I just used two paper clips. I unfolded the paper clips and straightened them out as much as possible. Then, with some wire cutters, I cut the two paper clips into 3 pieces each and hot glued the pieces onto the back of the cats face. They worked out great! I forgot to include the whiskers when I took pictures of the wreath, so that's why you can't see them. 

I LOVE the way this came out and I can't wait until October 1st to hang it on my door.

* This post was shared on the following Link Parties:

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