A Not-So-Scary Fairy Pumpkin House

Halloween is a time to celebrate things that go bump in the night.  It’s a time of candy, costumes, imagination, excitement, and all things scary.  But, if you have a child like I do, it can be a time that is exciting and terrifying all at once.  My daughter is thrilled about her costume, but less than thrilled about all of the spiders, ghosts, ghouls, and other things that are brought to life during Halloween time.  I’ve seen so many crafts that I’d love to do with Lil, but she quite literally trembles when she sees some of them.  She truly believes that all of the scary things are real, so I’ve had to get creative with our crafts.  I have a feeling that when her little brother grows, it will be a whole new ball game during H.  But, for now, I wanted to take some “Halloween” traditions and put a soft spin on them.  That’s how we came up with our fairy pumpkin house – all the joys of carving a pumpkin without a scary theme!

We used a white pumpkin because I thought that would be a nice change from the traditional orange.  Somehow, white just screamed fairy house to me!  I sliced the bottom of the pumpkin off to scoop out the insides – that also formed a nice, open base for the house.

Then, Lil drew where she wanted the door.  I love the shape she used.

 

**Note: I used the knife and always kept it in a safe place!  She was the designer, but I executed! 🙂

Then, Lil drew the windows.

After everything was cut, we brought the pumpkin into the house to paint.  Here’s what we needed to make puffy, white paint:

Materials:

• Shaving Cream
• Glue
• Glitter (optional)
• Brush

We mixed the same amount of glue to the same amount of shaving cream in order to make puffy paint.  I would certainly start with the shaving cream and then add glue so that you don’t add too much shaving cream.  Unfortunately, I didn’t have enough glue so our paint wasn’t perfect, but it still provided texture and was sticky!

Lil grabbed some of the natural materials we had gathered and sorted earlier in the week and added them to the puffy paint.

I loved using some of our natural materials to add color and texture to our project.  Lil also got to practice her cutting skills as she cut up the flowers.

We quickly ran out of flowers, so this led to many trips outside to collect more materials.  It was wonderful to see how engaging this one project was.  She was running as fast as she could to gather more flowers and then she would run quickly home to add them to her pumpkin.

But, my favorite moment while we made this was when she wrote on the house.  She had gathered a tiny reed from outside and she used it like a quill to write a message on the side of the house.  It read something like, “All Fairies Welcome.”  I will treasure this sweet moment for a long time.  It represents so much of who my daughter is: thoughtful and oh-so imaginative!

While Lil slept, the pumpkin dried and I added a few butterflies, jewels, and our wooden fairy dolls to the scene.  You can see how we made our DIY wooden fairies here.

When she woke up, she was thrilled to see her tiny fairies hanging around her pumpkin house.  I love how this was inspired by fall themes and Halloween, but how it grew into a project that was truly tailored towards my little girl’s interests!

Your Turn!

How do you and your children feel about Halloween?

 Thanks for stopping by!  Keep in touch by following along here: Facebook, Pinterest, Instagram, Twitter, & Google+.