I’ve never been much of a Halloween fan. I don’t dislike the season, just never paid much attention. That all changed once I had children as I feel this deep need to blow all holidays out of the water and make them as memorable as possible. When we bake cookies, we’ll bake pumpkin and ghost shaped cookies. When we paint, we paint bats and scary cats. I become a sweatshop boss that demands increased output of cute holiday decorations for our home. I found an activity on Pintrest where you paint your kids’ feet white, make impressions on black paper and decorate it to look like a ghost in the moonlight. Seemed like a good morning to get into the Halloween spirit and put those little blonde children to work try it. Here’s how it went down. {Thinking I should just rename this blog “Stuff I Tried on Pinterest” as it has nothing to do with me being a working mom. At all.}

Step 1: Sit the first kid on the ground outside and have them dip their feet into white paint that has been poured into a shallow bowl. I also used a small paintbrush to make sure we got good coverage. This will tickle the kid and make the kid spill paint. Beware.

Step 2: Lift up kid and put kid’s feet squarely on a piece of black paper. I laid out a couple pieces so I could do a little assembly line. Some turned out great, some didn’t. This way I have a lot to choose from.

Step 3: Rinse and repeat for additional kids. My second kid wanted to cycle his legs quickly while I was holding him over the paper. This didn’t bode well for my outfit or his first four ghosts. I got finally got him to stop running in place mid-air when I said “Noley! Where are your toes??”. He froze, looked at his toes, and I won.

Step 4: Clean-up. I go to turn on the hose and Avery immediately has to pee. This poses a problem considering she has paint all over her feet and can’t go inside. I (in retrospect, a little overzealously) encouraged her to pee in the yard, but she said that would be gross and waited until her feet were clean. {Avery 1; Mommy 0} Even though the paint I used was “washable” they must not have meant concrete patios. See exhibit A below. There’s nothing else I’d rather have permanently staining my back patio than my kids’ tiny footprints. It’ll come off eventually, but I’m in no hurry. How cute is that??

Step 5: Paint a yellow moon and tiny eyes and open ghost mouth on the heel part of the footprint.

These are keepers. I’m a sucker for anything that has my kids’ handprints or footprints on it.

Now we’re working on our Welcome Home sign for when we pick up daddy at the airport tonight. YAY!

Related articles

• Making Freaking Crayons (outofsickdays.wordpress.com)