I love these little spiders, they make me happy inside.

I don’t typically do Halloween decor. I’m lucky to get fall stuff up and blogged. Cause every year it’s the same craziness: you have fall décor that goes up when it’s still hot out. Then you put up some Halloween, and BAM, BIG HOLIDAY! Then you take it down and put up some more fall, then BAM, another BIG HOLIDAY! Then it’s Christmas. BAM BAM BAM, BIGGEST OF HOLIDAYS!

That’s a lot of holidays and decorating for me, I’m exhausted just typing that out (and yes, I’ve had my coffee), so I normally bail on Halloween. But this year I have kids. Kids who flip out when they spot the tiniest of pumpkins and yell “HALLOWEEEEEEEEN!”

I felt bad. So I made some spiders. Cute, recycled, sparkly, googly eyed spiders.

Supplies Needed:

old caps and tops
black paint (I used MS Beetle Black)
black glitter
black pipe cleaners
glue
googly eyes
a kid to help (optional)

First you’ll need to collect milk caps, baby food caps, all sorts of caps without any real idea of what you’re going to do with them. Collect them for a few months, stash them away in a drawer, forget about them, then take them out and realize you’ve got to do something with these dang caps before they take over. :)

Next, paint the caps black. Don’t worry about the bottom, just the tops need to be painted. This is the part where you can get the kids to help you!

When the kids are done painting and far, far away, throw some glitter over the still-wet spiders. Warning: Kids and glitter are not a good combination. Heed this warning and keep the two separate.

Once the spiders are dry, attach googly eyes to the top. Cut your pipe cleaners in half and glue them underneath the cap for the spider’s legs. Tacky glue or hot glue works well here. Keep the tips of the legs straight or bend them to make little feet.

You can string the spiders up and hang them, or place them throughout the house. Our spiders are hanging out on our hutch trying to scare people away from our dry goods.

In addition to spiders, I put our garden-grown-pumpkins in a pot outside our door. Notice the nibbles? Picture me shaking my fist at the squirrels, channeling my inner old man.

I also have this little display on my desk:

That right there is a vase full of black-eyed-susan heads. The petals were falling off, I thought they looked Halloweenish, so I plucked off the remainder of the dying petals. The canning jar pumpkin idea is not my own, but it is Kristen from Simply Klassic Home. Genius, huh?!

So onto fall! I picked up a few pumpkins, scattered em across the house, and we’ll eat them at a later date.