Pickle Jar Jack-o-Lanterns

Halloween! I love it almost as much as my 3 year old does.
Amazing that someone who has experienced 3 Halloweens knows the significance of a pumpkin with a face.  I guess when about 25% of your life focuses around candy, Halloween is a big deal.  (I would say the remainder of his life focuses around his bike, Popsicles, and apple juice, in even percentages.)

Anyway, the other day I was cleaning out the fridge and emptied 3 jars of pickles with one pickle in each jar (I like pickles, ok?). While I was dumping the juice down the drain, I thought that it would be a waste throw the jars away, and I searched online for something to make with them. Most of the results were for flower vases, but they made me think of painting the jars, and since Halloween is around the corner, Jack-o-Lanterns were the natural stopping point for my brain.

First, to remove the labels, I tried to run the jars through the dishwasher. This removed the paper label on one jar, but the other two had plasticky labels that I had to scrub off with a dish scrubby.

 



I bought two colors of Martha Stewart Crafts Multi-Surface Acrylic Pearl craft paint: School Bus and Tiger Lily. I mixed the two of them to make a third "in-between" color, and dabbed the paint on the jars with a sponge brush.

I let this dry for about 3 hours and then used black fabric paint to make faces on the Jack-o-Lanterns.
I used planter's wire to create handles (it is very easy to bend) and tied a Halloween ribbon around it to cover the lip of the jar, which I did not paint.

In goes some tea lights, and below is the result:

 

Happy Halloween!!

Fall!

I love September for many reasons... my birthday, warm days, cool nights, backyard fires, jeans, sweatshirts, leaves, my cowboy boots, apples and pie, and the list goes on and on.
For some reason the fall gets me into the crafting mood. Lately, my mind has been full of ideas for old pickle jars, hemp, vintage picture frames, fishing poles, beads, and the list goes on.
The other thing I want to do is make apple pie. Which leads to finding an apple orchard to pick apples, which leads to finding a pumpkin patch, which leads to Halloween, and so on.  All great things! Best time of the year!

On my drive home from work the other day (where much of my thinking time occurs), I remembered that I also have a blog! So when I went to it this morning, I was surprised that I had actually posted 5 times. It is funny to read through the posts from 6 months ago.

Since then, we have moved halfway across the country from Virginia to Kentucky, changed jobs, sold one house and bought another, and all of the little details that go along with such a move.  Jace started preschool this month, and Logan is now walking all over and sleeping through the night for the most part.

 Now we are settled and I am going to resurrect my blog and hopefully my creative skills!