Eggs for breakfast is a good thing, on so many levels

I got rid of most of our Halloween decorations this year.

When I went through our orange storage bins and pulled out paraphernalia one-by-one, Princess Cupcake told me she “no like that one,” so I tossed it into the Goodwill pile. I am on a major purge streak so it felt good to lighten up. Do you know how much cubic space plastic pumpkins take up?!

What it did do though, is make decorating pretty easy this year. We just didn’t do it. Which is a shame because aside from Christmas, it’s my favorite holiday – tied with Valentine’s Day. Aside from a couple of carved pumpkins that rotted after about 2 days and the Halloween welcome mat outside, we were devoid of outside decorations. We WOULD have orange net lights on all the bushes but the annual discussion between me and the hubs goes something like this:

“Here are the Halloween lights for the bushes.”

“I’m not putting those out.”

“Why? They’re orange! They’re net lights. Just like the Christmas ones.”

“I’m not decorating for another holiday. Next you’ll want pink ones for Valentine’s Day. Christmas is enough.”

“Princess wants them.”

“She doesn’t know we have them.”

“Are you ever going to put them up? We’ve had them for years and you always say no.”

“No.”

He’s the Halloween Grinch. And we have enough net lights to cover the bushes for our house. Next time eBay has free listings, look for them. NIB. You’ll get a steal of a deal.

Secretly I was actually okay with the ‘less is more’ approach until I was watching Sprout with Princess and saw Kelly and Chica make ghosts on Saturday morning. In the time it took them to lay out the ingredients I deduced what they were making and I was already trying to figure out how to schedule it between the three parties she had between 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. that night. We were SO making a herd of ghosts. I mean, I already had all the stuff! I didn’t even have to go to Michaels! How often does that happen?

Here’s all we needed:

Egg carton
Pipe cleaners
Tissue paper
Glue stick
Googly eyes or marker
A pen or sharp pointy stick

And here’s all we had to do:

1. Cut apart the egg carton into 12 pieces.
2. Use the pen or sharp pointy stick (I used the sharp part of a compass) to poke a hole in the bottom of the individual egg carton.

And this is where Princess Cupcake was working ahead of me. She – shockingly – was paying very close attention to the show I guess and had started threading all the pipe cleaners through the holes. However, I recommend doing step 3 first.

1. Rub glue all over the outside of the egg carton.
2. Cut the tissue into 4 pieces and center one over the egg carton. Stick it down on the carton.
3. Thread the pipe cleaner through the carton.
4. Glue eyes on or draw them on with your pen.

The second we slapped the eyes on, we took the ghosts outside and hung them on our sad little Charlie Brown tree. It was a Hallmark moment when the wind blew ever so gently to make them appear as if they were floating. It was super cute if I do say so myself.

Even the one with three eyes.

As we were walking away full of pride, Princess looked at our big oak tree and said we needed to make some for it. Okay sweetie, right after I call the fire department and ask to borrow their ladder and run to the store and buy out their supply of eggs, LOL.

Now you’re probably thinking, “This would have been GREAT if you told us BEFORE Halloween.” Yep, would have. Had I known, I would have shared it, but that’s okay because I was thinking this would be cute for Christmas too.

How about taking white tissue paper and a Styrofoam ball or even just a punched out circle and making angels? Or taking green paper and adding a star and making Christmas trees? You can put glitter or sparkles or sequins or even garland with pretty floss or string on the tissue paper.

So here’s our version of the Christmas tree with — keep in mind — what we had on hand. NO TRIP TO MICHAEL’S.

Quit laughing. I know it looks like a sting ray. Princess added the large googly eyes and no, we didn’t have sparklies or garland laying around. I admit, it leaves a bit — okay a lot — to be desired. (Remember, it’s about making a memory and having fun… and I’m no Martha Stewart.) But I think we’ll go with the angels next go around since they have the whole floaty thing workin’ for them and that means we’re going to keep eating our eggs and stockpiling those cartons. Christmas is just around the corner!
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