Halloween Tree

We haven't, traditionally, been a very festive family--when you're talking about a family who has spent the past two Thanksgiving weekends at a sci-fi convention, of all places, "festive" hardly seems to apply, especially in the face of other, so much more descriptive adjectives, like "geeky" (but hey--Tasha Yarr told Willow she was cute, and Matt and I each found ourselves working out in the same tiny hotel gym all alone with Darth Maul. Is that geeky? Don't answer).

But we can change, I swear it. And in the spirit of such change, I'd like to introduce you to...
...the Halloween tree.

Yes, of course it's dead--it's Halloween! Halloween is a little more of an autumnal celebration in our family, however, with less of the witchy-ghosty-skeletony business and more of the browns and reds and leaves and pumpkins stuff. So yeah, we stuck a big dead branch from our silver maple in a pot, filled the pot with gravel from the driveway, put it on the table, and started decorating.

See? Festive!

I made these ornaments from vintage linen pillowcase fabric that I soaked in Bubble Jet Set, then ironed to freezer paper, then ran through my printer, then stitched and stuffed. They're from autumns past but still remembered:
These are some spiderwebby thingies I made one afternoon in the summer while the girls were stringing beads. They're made from bent wire and beads from the girls' ridiculous bead stash: And here's what we did today, when I wasn't screaming at the girls (combination of my bad reaction to an extra-feisty visit from Aunt Flo along with the girls' completely expected reaction to a candy corn art project gone terribly, terribly awry):
#6 plastic + a full set of Sharpies = Of course, decorating may well be the best part:
Here's to a month full of making fun stuff to hang from the Halloween tree!