Reusing Milk Containers for Halloween Fun: Part 1

On a good milk consuming day our family can easily go through 2 gallons of milk. So we always have these plastic milk containers ready to be recycled or reused. Our first project was inspired by one of my favorite blogs that I follow: Filth Wizardry. The blogger is the mother of two small girls and is super creative and crafty, she also happens to be a complete stranger to me but I love the stuff she does. She posted a lot of great ideas for Halloween crafts but this is the one we chose. Sally calls it Pumpkin Pam. (I thought Jack O' Lantern Jill would be cute, but Sally didn't go for that one).

Here's what you need:

• a clean plastic milk container
• orange craft paint
  
• black electrical tape to cut out shapes for eyes, nose, & mouth
• decorations for the top- we used ribbon (Sally wanted hers to have a bow), green pipe cleaner, and some cool leaf garland I had lying around, Filth Wizard used some green tissue paper, pipe cleaner, and some nice fake leaves- you can use what ever floats your boat :)
• items not shown: scissors, paintbrushes, and exacto knife
  

Sally had a blast painting it orange; it was a nice easy paint job for a preschooler.

After it was dry, I cut shapes for the eyes, nose, and mouth out of the electrical tape and let her put them on.

Jon cut out part of the back behind the handle with an exacto knife so it can be filled with candy while trick-or-treating or be used as a decoration with a flashlight lighting it up.

I made a little twisty vine out of the pipe cleaner to put on the "stem" but Sally said, "How I do that?" So, I let her make her own. Sometimes I forget how much she's capable of doing now.

Here it is with a mini flashlight- it'd probably look cooler with a different type of light, but I wouldn't suggest using a candle- unless you like the smell of burning plastic ;)


Sally's loving her new Pumpkin Pam
(thanks to Aunt Tammy for the awesome new pajamas!)