As I told you before, my obsession for fall and Halloween is no secret. I milk this season for all its worth and this week we were all about pumpkins! Ashley decided she wanted to carve our pumpkin with a scary face, so I looked online for some inspiration, she picked the face she liked best and we got to work.

Pumpkin carving is absolutely one of my favorite past times. This year I put on a Halloween Pandora station and set everything up for us. Ashley was so excited and everything was perfectly festive. We had a great time and I love how our pumpkin turned out!

The next day we still had pumpkins on the brain, so I decided we would do some salt dough pumpkins! They are so easy to make and look incredibly adorable.

I mixed 1/2 cup of salt, 1/2 cup of flour and 1/4 cup of water. We kneaded the mixture until it formed a nice dough. If yours is too sticky, add a little more flour and if it’s too dry, add a little more water. This recipe worked really well for us and I didn’t need to add anything. Ash loved being able to help me add the ingredients and mix!

I let her roll it out and she did a surprisingly good job! I finished it off to make sure it was about 1/4″ thickness. 

I pressed the kids hands into the dough and cut out a pumpkin shape (complete with a stem!) around the handprint. I had a little dough left over so I decided to make one with our cat’s paw print as well :). I baked them at 200º for about 3 1/2 hours. All the information I found said to bake for 3 hours but ours were still a little soft so I left them in a bit longer. We used acrylic paint from Michaels to paint them.

We painted the whole thing orange and then I used a small paintbrush to fill in the handprints with black. I really like the way the acrylic paint worked. It covered the pumpkins well with only one coat and dried nicely with no bumps or creases.

I added some green for the stem and voila! I’m going to add some Halloween ribbon and hang them up. I think they are so cute, it’s going to be hard to put them away after the holiday! I made another batch to make a set for my mom and my mother-in-law. I’m going to wrap them up and attach a cute card saying “From your 3 little pumpkins!” I know it will be a huge hit. What are your favorite fall crafts? I’d love some ideas for what to make next!

XOXO-Kelly