Keep Out

Now that Thanksgiving is done for another year (for us Canadians), I am starting to think about Halloween decorating.  As you've heard me say more than once before, our front door needed a wreath.  I love our navy blue door, but it just needed a little somethin' somethin' to make it less boring.  I was in Michael's last week picking up supplies for Fin's Halloween costume (I posted a pic of the supplies on Facebook - any guesses as to what she's going to be?) and saw this little skeleton garland. 

I was happy to see that Halloween supplies were for 40% off, so for $3 I picked me up some skeletons.

I thought about trying to make these little guys into a wreath, but I just wasn't super excited about the idea.  I wanted them to be hanging, looking quite dead and all.  So, like I always do when I am lacking inspiration, I wandered around the garage until I found something that would work.  What I found was a piece of beadboard left over from the little end tables in our kitchen (my hoarding tendencies paid off again!).  

The board was a bit of a mess with some glue stuck to it and some scratches.  I embraced the roughness and engaged in some stress relief by distressing it more.  I slammed the ends of different screwdrivers into it and pounded some small nail holes.  Once my aggression was pretty much gone, I applied a coat of American Chestnut stain (that we had left over from the sideboard).

It was looking pretty good, but it needed something more.  A warning, maybe?  

Yes, a warning.  I used a small screw driver to carve the letters into the wood (a knife just seemed way too dangerous for a klutz like me).   Thankfully my goal wasn't to make it pretty.  Carving with a screw driver doesn't exactly lend itself to sophisticated and pretty.

To make the letters stand out a bit more I applied another coat of stain and then used a skinny Sharpie in the grooves. 

To attach the little skeletons I just hammered some mismatched nails along the bottom of the board.  Then I took apart the garland, wrapped some twine around their necks and then tied them onto the nails.

I drilled a couple of holes at the top and used fishing wire to make a little hanger.  I had planned on using a Command Strip, but figured it might not stick with the cold weather, so fishing wire was plan B.  

Our door is quite tight so we don't have room for a wreath hanger.  Our solution was to bring the fishing wire over the top of the door and then use a heavy duty magnet on the inside of the door to hold it in place.  

Mr. Swell decided that to make it more realistic (if skeletons on a door can be realistic....) there should be a few broken bones and missing appendages.

This guy was so scared he couldn't even look.....

Here's how the front porch is looking as of today.  

I picked up the ornamental kale at Home Depot a few weeks ago and it was doing pretty good until this weekend.  We are getting frost almost every night these days, so not much is surviving.  We had planned to make it out to the pumpkin patch over the weekend, but Fin was having a rough weekend sleeping so we scratched the plans and laid low instead. Hopefully I can find some good pumpkins this week to try and bring some colour to the porch.  For now the skeletons will just keep guard.