Horrorgami Review: My Grim Reaper is Better than Matt's

If you're going to do some origami, or rather some projects from my free review copy of Horrorgami: Creepy Creatures, Ghastly Ghouls, and Other Fiendish Paper Projects, then you might as well make a night of it:

• husband/partner/crafting partner
• Halloween playlist streaming on Spotify
• margaritas, heavy on the tequila

Oh, and you'd better put the kids to bed first, right?

Our confidence amply fueled by tequila, Matt and I skipped straight to the Level 2 projects, fought briefly over who got the black origami paper before realizing that the book came with plenty of black origami paper, then settled down to work, interrupted regularly by Matt's inability to remember the folding symbols from the front of the book (I should have copied that page real quick, but tequila inhibits my common sense).

I am quite proud to note that I am a much better drunk origami folder than Matt is:

My hooded grim reaper is coming together nicely.

Matt's having problems with his hooded grim reaper (he did mountain folds instead of valley folds, silly boy!)

 Although this might have been hindering Matt's folding skills:

His excuse? "There wasn't enough triple sec left in the bottle for another margarita, so I thought I'd just finish it off."

 I've never really done origami before, and I was a little surprised by how much I enjoyed it. I especially like when you have to fold and unfold something to make a crease that you then use later--so tricky!

MY hooded grim reaper can stand independently, while Matt's  deformed guy has to be held up:

 It's not going to take many souls THAT way, ha ha ha!

The bats turned out pretty great, too--

--although I should have let Matt cut my bat's head for me. I don't freehand too much, and my bat now has a Kermit the Frog head:

It was a VERY fun way to spend the evening with my Matt (You're going to think we're totally lame when I tell you that we usually just watch movies at night after the kids are asleep, NOT play Scrabble or read out loud to each other or bake together or any of the other non-TV, non-sex activities that healthy couples usually engage in). I'd set it aside as an evening activity to do with only him, however, not just to lure him away from Netflix streaming for the evening, but also because I assumed the origami projects would be too difficult for the girls, and I take no pleasure in "helping" a kid complete a craft project that is so difficult for her that the result is really my work, not hers.

That being said, look who spied the book at the breakfast table the next morning (also last evening's craft table), and jumped right into her own horrorgami!

With actually only a little help from me, Sydney and Willow both folded a pretty passable ghost, a Level 1 project, drew on its ghosty face, and hung it up to look spooky.

As I watched them work, seeing how much pleasure they were both taking in their folding, I thought to my self, "Mathematics! Logic! Fine motor skills!", and I immediately pulled up our public library's web catalog and requested several children's origami books. 

But by the time those books get picked up, I think the kiddos are going to be experts on origami ghosts, and jack-o-lantern faces, and witch's hats.