Useless Halloween Decorations: DIY Cement Pumpkins

A few weeks ago, one of my teenagers asked me, "Hey, what Halloween projects are we doing this month?"

OMG I was thrilled. Stockholm Syndrome has set in, y'all!

Also, you guys. My family has TRADITIONS. Good ones, too! Ones that the teenagers like and happily anticipate! I messed up on a lot of parenting stuff, but traditions I figured out all by myself from scratch.

So, since Halloween projects are clearly a tradition (that I didn't know until now was actually a tradition, but okay!), every weekend this month a kid or two and I have been doing a Halloween project together. A couple of weekends ago Syd, Matt, and I did this--

--which, more on that later, but I'll just say that 1) a Jack-o-lantern is actually quite painful to wear on your head and 2) it was TOTALLY WORTH IT. 

And last weekend, Will and I took a couple of pairs of Syd's old ballet tights and made cement pumpkins!

Coincidentally, these were also a little painful, but also totally worth it!

To make cement pumpkins, you need:

• legs from old tights. The parts that you use shouldn't have holes or runs.
• Portland cement, with assorted mixing and measuring tools.
• rubber bands.

1. Prepare your materials.

Cut a section of leg anywhere from six inches to a foot long, and knot one end.

Add a cupful of Portland cement mix to a bucket, then add some water and stir. You want the cement to be about the consistency of cake batter, so play around with adding more cement mix and water until it feels right. 

2. Fill the tights with cement.

Scoop cement into the tights and shake it down to the bottom. Add cement until you have the size of pumpkin you want, although remember to leave enough room in the tights to knot the top:

3. Add rubber bands.

Thump the cement-filled tights on the tabletop a couple of times to settle the cement, then adjust it so that the bottom knot is tucked into the middle bottom of the cement package and the top knot is centered at the top.

Begin wrapping rubber bands around the cement package:

Through trial and error, Will and I discovered that if the rubber bands are tight and cut really tight grooves into the cement, the tights and rubber band will be nearly impossible to remove from those grooves later. We highly recommend rubber bands that are wrapped more like the blue one that runs vertically in the photo below, NOT the pink one that runs horizontally:

4. Let cure, then remove the rubber bands and tights.

Allow the cement to cure for at least 24 hours, after which it should look something like this:

Loosen the tights by grasping the knots on each end and pulling them away from the cement:

Then, tear away the rubber bands and peel off the tights and discard:

They're quite dusty afterwards, so rinse them with the garden hose.

You can embellish these pumpkins in all kinds of ways, from shiny sealant to paint or decoupage, adding corks or twine or braided cord for a vine, felt or leather or book page leaves, etc. Will and I found, though, that all our pumpkins happened to look cute in a single stack on the coffee table, so that's what we did!