Halloween/Thanksgiving
Postholiday repurposing. After your jack-o’-lantern candle has burned out and you’ve toasted up all the pumpkin seeds, give your pumpkin another use. Carve a few notches to hold a simple perch made of chopsticks or dowels, fill the pumpkin with birdseed and set it out on a post, woodpile or garden stool. Who knows? A crow may come by and bring you good luck. After your pumpkin has finished its stint as a bird feeder, you can compost it by placing it in the dirt and putting leaves on top of it.
. Lay out a pumpkin tablescape. This tablescape gets its natural and pretty look from a row of white pumpkins wrapped in branches of bittersweet atop an orange runner. Simple votives with a few bittersweet berries sprinkled at the bottom add a warm glow. Always be sure to keep candle flames away from anything that can burn, and never leave candles unattended.
A Halloween-card garland is an easy one you can have fun making with kids. Get out the school glue, mount cards to slightly larger pieces of construction paper and add a glitter border. Clip the pieces to some twine or raffia with tiny binder clips. Or, as was done here, punch a hole in the top of each card and pop it right over an LED string-light bulb.
You can layer several strings of garlands and lights across a mantel. This one has an overall Halloween look because of the colors, but it actually combines three garlands for different things — “Happy Halloween,” fall leaves and the name of a favorite football team (the game-day TV is hidden behind that lift-up door.) It’s all good — they look good together.
Elegant Halloween tabletop: This lovely setup comes together in a snap, no carving or crafting required. Simply line up pale-hued pumpkins of various sizes down the center of a table runner, and fill in gaps with tea lights and sprigs of greenery. Materials: Assorted pumpkins in pale colors, tea lights and tea light holders, sprigs of greenery. Prep time: 30 minutes
A towering vertical arrangement of heirloom pumpkins wows passers-by.
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