Bats and Neon and Vampire Pumpkins OH MY!

This weekend is the last one in September, which means at my house it's time to decorate for halloween! Yay I love this time of year, the weather is getting cold, the menus are getting full of baked goods and its time to start planning all the winter holidays.

The theme for halloween this year is Glowing! My kids are a little too young for anything spooky so the front porch light is getting a black light lightbulb and the decorations will be neon. I am also buying up tons of fun glow in the dark items from places like Target and Dollar Tree.

I found a few amazing ideas on Pinterest and here are two that made the cut, with a few minor changes to make it work for my family.

Neon and Bats

This pin was created using a bat cut out and sponging neon colors over it. I love the look. On sunday my family will be using white butcher paper (which we usually have in the house) and we will let the kids basically paint long sheets with as much neon paint as they want. Then the older kids (and those of us who still behave like kids as often as possible) will cut and paste black construction paper (which we also have on hand) bats to the background. The plan is to hang these all around the front porch to make a pretty large decoration for almost no cost. I will post pictures of our version next week.

Vampire Pumpkins

Aren't these the cutest things? I feel like I saw somewhere that this original idea came from Martha Stewart, but i am not positive, I couldn't find a link to it on her website. 

My boys helped me make a few pumpkins like this:

These are the carve able pumpkins from the dollar store. I loved the price and the fact that they won't decay but they definitely looked like the cost a dollar, so i will probably invest in some white pumpkins that are real a little closer to halloween. Anyway we sprayed them white and added glow in the dark fangs and glow in the dark mustaches that both came from Target. The eyes I had in my craft kit but I believe they are available in a huge pack at the dollar store. All told I make 6 pumpkins like this for $9. That includes a new can of white spray paint. This was easy enough for my kids to help with, but it wasn't very labor intensive so they we're happier playing with the finished project than making them.

We will also add a few big pumpkins to the front porch and maybe one of those wreaths from pinterest and the house should look fairly festive!