Ready for a really easy Halloween decor with high impact? Let's make some Halloween Hanging Ghosts. These are an awesome addition to your party and interior decorations for the season.

Inspired by these twirling spiral ghosts, I created these ghoulish creatures that are now hanging from chandeliers and pendants all over our house.

I love how simple they are to create from cardstock, scrapbook paper, or posterboard. You need something that will give you extra weight so that gravity can do its thing.

You can cut the design with scissors or upload this ghost file on to your Cricut Explore. I mass produced these ghosts so that we could have some hanging from the chandelier in the dining room and the kitchen pendants. These were created from 12" x 12" white scrapbook paper.

This swirl can be transformed into candy corn stripes or the twirly stem of a pumpkin, too! The best part about hanging ghosts is that they catch the wind easily and spin in the air. I attached ours to the ceiling lights with invisible beading string for a fun "magic" appearance.

Have you decked out your home for Halloween yet?

XOXO, MJ

May is a busy month with birthdays, year-end celebrations, sports, and Mother's Day! Sometimes special dinners out and shopping trips don't make the final agenda before Mother's Day. And though I sometimes enjoy the quite solitude when everyone leaves our home, I really love experiencing all of us together in this space - making and creating.

So why not craft together as an activity for Mother's Day? Or have your children to create alongside special grandmothers or aunts for a sweet Mother's Day experience?

This is an incredibly budget-friendly (slightly time intensive) craft that all three of my children enjoyed. Gather together:

• Paper (we chose rainbow and only used one piece of each color paper to make all the beads here)
• Scissors or paper cutter
• Glitter glue (really, any glue is fine, but glitter makes everything better, right?)
• Pencil or pen (to wrap the paper)
• String or twine for necklace/bracelet/anklet creations

First step? Cut isosceles (ish) triangles out of your paper. Ours were about an inch at the thick end. Here's the important next step: begin with the thick end and tightly wind the entire triangle around the pencil. We made different shapes by doing this. Some beads were exactly symmetrical, some looked more like cones or party hats, and others looked like a wobbly top.

As you get close to the end of the wrapped paper, squirt a dollop of glitter glue on the front and back of the end tail and graciously smear it all over the end and the rest of the bead. This will help secure the tight wrap and spread the glitter around the whole bead.

Once the bead is secured, carefully remove it from the skewer and let it dry for a few minutes before crafting further.

String your handmade beads for necklaces and bracelets that are one of a kind. You'll have the finished product made from little hands, and the priceless memory of the entire experience as a special Mother's Day treat.

Happy Mama's Day! And happy crafting!

xoxo, MJ

Another Wednesday and another great Endless Summer Project to share with you! Today Miss Melissa of Lulu the Baker is whipping up some marbelized paper with her kids. If you have not had the experience of shaving cream + kiddos, you are in for a treat.

We plan on cutting giant letters out of these, and making a banner for one of the people we love the best!

An entire list of go-to Endless Summer Projects:

Mosaic Stepping Stones DIY by Lulu the Baker
Weeknight Barbecue by Alexandra Hedin 
Sharpie Dyed Tee Shirts by Pars Caeli
A Bug Habitat by Classic Play
Mini Masterpieces by Lulu the Baker

Bubble Painting by Alexandra Hedin

Memoir Boxes by Pars Caeli

Friendship Charm Bracelets by Classic Play

Next week we join in the party with Alexandra!

xoxo, MJ

Happy Monday, friends!! How was the weekend? We hung around and raked leaves, watched some football, and handled some crafting, too. As y'all know, I'm a great adorer of autumn (yo, Instagram friends are you tired of my leaf photos yet?), and I've been looking for ways to get my indoor spaces decked in color, too, as the leaves now begin to shed their brilliance and Halloween is coming right around the corner.

I don't do spooky or the darkness of Halloween, but I was inspired by the shapes and lines of Landee See, Landee Do's holiday post. And I thought it'd be fun to transform a great tray that I've had for a while and DIY it up.

Here's what I used. This great tray was a DIY present from a dear friend for our wedding. Chris converted a large frame into tray through handles and paint. I added some great colored cardstock in complimentary Halloween shades of orange, black, white, and gray. And pulled out the paper cutter and some glue!

Herringbone has been on the brain lately as I see fall fashions appearing in stores and catalogs. It's a simple geometric pattern that my daughters loved putting together with me.

I love the great graphic quality, and it's the perfect perch for the growing mounds of mini pumpkins and gourds we're accumulating.

I'm also planning on mounding it up with candy (way more than pictured here) for our adorable Trick or Treaters next week!

How do you deck your house for Halloween? 

XOXO, MJ

  

Well, hello, friends! How was the weekend? We were busy bees over here, and I'm excited to welcome you to a new Pars Caeli feature, Make It Mondays!!

Every Monday we'll kick off the week with a fun project for your home, your children, yourself, or something else magical. You then have the whole week and weekend to find some time to fit the fun into your schedule!

Why the new addition? Three simple reasons: 1.You beautiful readers have eaten up the DIY posts I've featured here and there on the blog. 2. I'm always looking for ways that this webhome can be more helpful to your life outside of cyberspace (there is still one out there, right?). 3. I can't pass up an opportunity for alliteration wherever I can find it. :)

So, on with the fun...

I carved out time this weekend, between football games and birthday parties, for some prep of our St. Jude DIY date with other wonderful blogger friends. You and I have until Wednesday to submit pictures to Louise. Special thanks to Paige(who is right now living it up in NYC for New York Fashion Week!!) for thinking up this crafty goodness. To sum it up, we're all making kits for the Happy Craft Cart of St. Jude's Research Hospital. These baggies will contain the supplies needed to make a simple craft and lift a child's spirit in the process.

I knew that I wanted to grab my kiddos and get them involved in the creation of these bags. I've started a  Pinterest board for anyone who wants some ideas (go, go visit!!). Introducing my 7-year old to Pinterest was a trip. She's hooked.

We were blown away by a few crafts by Minieco, and we decided to give them a go. Have you seen her photos and crafts(wo)manship? Outstanding!!

Our first batch of Happy Cart Crafts will be baggies of these glitter paper beads. Some of the kits will have the beads already made so that younger artists (under 7) will still feel confident in their results, and other kits will have the paper and glittler glue needed to make it all from scratch!

This is an incredibly budget-friendly (slightly time intensive) craft that all three of my children enjoyed. Here's what you need:

• Paper (we chose rainbow and only used one piece of each color paper to make all the beads here)
• Scissors or paper cutter (I bought my Xacto cutter many years ago, and it comes in handy for these sorts of projects)
• Glitter glue (really, any glue is fine, but glitter makes everything better, right?)
• Skewer (you could also use a pencil or anything with a small circumference to wrap the paper)
• String or twine for necklace/bracelet/anklet creations

First step? Cut isoceles (ish) triangles out of your paper. Ours were about an inch at the thick end.

Next, begin with the thick end and tightly (the key!) wind the entire triangle around the skewer. We made different shapes by doing this. Some beads were exactly symmetrical, some looked more like cones or party hats, and others looked like a wobbly top.

As you get close to the end of the wrapped paper, squirt a dollop of glitter glue on the front and back of the end tail and graciously smear it all over the end and the rest of the bead. This will help secure the tight wrap and spread the glitter around the whole bead.

Once the bead is secured, carefully remove it from the skewer and let it dry for a few minutes before crafting further. We spent an evening making all our beads and the next afternoon making accessories out of them.

My 7-year old REALLY got into this project. She's a talky crafter so I had the pleasure of hearing her elaborate on how good she felt creating something she knew would make other children–children who really needed it–happy. She alone made half the beads, and she made me very proud. Again.

She's anxious to make more Happy Cart Crafts, and we'll be sharing those with you, too! Beads like these work well when made from magazines, too. Maybe you and/or your kiddos would like to give them a try?!

And because little brothers like to get in on everything, here's little L's anklet.Thanks for stopping in on Make It Monday! It's gonna be a great week, friends.

XOXO, MJ