Call me a party-pooper, Scrooge or cold.  But, I’m sorry, I really don’t like blatant holiday decor. That being said, I have 2 kiddos that I don’t want to deprive of holiday fun.  So with Halloween right around the corner, we worked together on spookifying our living room…for FREE.

NON-SCARY LIVING ROOM

I asked my boys to tell me a few things they thought were scary.  I got spiders, BOO! and bats out of them.  So, I sketched out a picture of each onto a scrap piece of poster board we already had on hand and them cut them out.  {I also drew the boys their own things to cut out while I worked on mine…a good distraction!}

I used a small, folded-over piece on tape on each cut-out and stuck them to the insides of our living room lampshades.

LIGHTS OFF

The shapes aren’t noticeable with the lights off, but when you switch them on they cast nice shadows on the shades.

LIGHTS ON

My boys think this is just about the coolest project we’ve done.  And they don’t seem to mind that our scary lampshade spiders only have 6 legs.  {For the life of me, I can’t draw a non-freakish looking 8-legged spider.  Plus, 6 legs were plenty to cut…my hands were starting to cramp.}  I’ve found the living room lamps on during daylight hours just about every day since the spooky silhouettes made an appearance.  Oh well, it’s gotta cost less than powering one of those outdoor blow-up jack-o’-lanterns.