Thursday, October 28, 2010

Five Little Pumpkins...

...sitting on a gate...
...I mean mantle...
...or were there eight little pumpkins...
...or maybe it was five sitting on a porch...
When all else fails, consult the book.

We checked out the Five Little Pumpkins book last year, and I didn't even think about it for this year until Firecracker came home with the poem on her October calendar and read it to us so much she has it memorized now.  Then when we were at the library, one of the kids pulled this book off the shelf.  Well not this book, but one just like it...one that Becca fell totally in love with (because it's her size, and has a cat in it, and it just struck her fancy).  Grandma was really in tune this time and happened to send the very same book a few days ago, so we could take the library copy back and Becca is still free to carry this one around the house to her heart's content.
I saw the project for these mason jar pumpkins from Emily on Not So Idle Hands last year.  When she reposted about them this year, I thought they'd be fun to make.  My plan was to make them with Firecracker afterschool on a day when the other kids were still down for their naps...but we're running out of time before Halloween and I figured we better just do it.  Little Brother got in on the action, but Sweet Pea had to do something else.  This project was just too messy.  And I will say, it's not really a kid project.  It would probably work with kids slightly older than mine though.  This is a great way to use up old jars...especially the pickle or applesauce jars...the ones you buy stuff in from the store that you can't reuse in canning...although we used a few canning jars too.

Little Brother actually did better with it than Firecracker because she got frustrated with the tissue paper pretty quickly. 
You just lay the tissue paper down in strips.  Next time I could cut them a little wider just because it wouldn't take so many strips, and you want to go down all the way to the bottom (a little further than Firecracker is showing in our picture.)

Little Brother LOVES covering things with paint, so he loved covering his jar with mod podge. 
He wasn't interested in the tissue paper at all until he ran out of jar to paint and had to put tissue paper on so he could "paint" it some more.  I gave him little squares of tissue paper to put on because it was to hard to spread them nicely.
And leave it to the three-year-old to figure out that the best way to set them down is upside down since the top is the only surface without sticky stuff.

For the ones on Not So Idle Hands, she used vinyl...which I don't have...so I outlined my design with a permanent marker.  (I tried a pencil first, but it wouldn't write on the mod podge.) 

Then I painted over it with acrylic paint, making sure to paint over all of the permanent marker too because it's a lot thicker than the marker.  For Little Brother, he told me the shapes he wanted and I did outlining for him.  Firecracker drew her own shapes before painting.
And the last step is to paint the top rings with some green acrylic paint. 

Now I just need to pull out some Christmas lights to light them up at night.

And now our mantle is "decorated" for the first time ever...decorated for Halloween...just in time for the holiday to be almost over...but at least the kids' Fall Trees Art will still be in season for a little while longer.  And actually several of these beauties are going to get filled up with Rice Crispy Treat Bites or cookies or something and find their way to Katie's kindergarten teacher and the ladies I Visit Teach.
And last but not least...a BIG THANK YOU to my mom and older sister for tracking down and delivering some orange tissue paper for me.  Without you...we wouldn't have these charming pumpkins.

I'll be linking to:
Gwenny Penny - Point of View

8 comments:

  1. I love these! I remember seeing this project last fall. All year long, every time I washed out a glass jar to recycle, I thought--"I should be keeping this for a pumpkin!" I will have to do this next year! Your mantle is adorable! We love that story, too. :)

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  2. Beautiful mantle. Such a talented family.

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  3. LOVE these! The little one is so funny!

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  4. I love these! I saw these online a few years ago and always wanted to make them. I decided I would do them next year. They turned out great and cute too! I read that story to the girl I nanny :) it's a cute book.

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  5. Oh so super cute. Missed it for this year, but I'm totally digging it for next year. You could do white too.. and make ghosts. Thanks for sharing.

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  6. Hi Polly,

    I wanted to create these pumpkins but missed it this year. Then myself and my kid came up with a Fish Tank fun by using the same method. Please have a look.

    http://www.creativitymypassion.blogspot.com/2010/12/fish-tank-aquarium-fun-recycled-glass.html

    Esther
    http://www.creativitymypassion.blogspot.com/

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  7. I think I need to own that book. Your pumpkins turned out cute!

    Thanks for linking up to Point of View!

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