Halloween Popsicle Sticks

The weather has been beautifully refreshing in our neck of the woods.  Perfect for taking strolls and taking in all nature has to offer.  My 5 year old loves to collect leaves and acorns this time of the year.  Our most recent activity was perfect for her as she was able to do what she does best.....fill a bag full of leaves to make a Pumpkin Leaf Bag.

Yesterday she asked to play in the leaves that have fallen onto our front grass and that led to walking our neighborhood and collecting more of nature.  One of our neighbors has a row of pine trees and the pine needles are falling off like crazy and all I could imagine was using them as hair for a scarecrow craft!  So, I scooped up a bunch of the pine needles and stuffed them into my very own bag!!

While at the pine tree my daughter asked if we could take a piece of the pine tree because she loves the way it feels.  I was able to pinch a couple of pieces and added them to the bag also.

It took me a day but I came up with a craft we could do using the goodies we gathered.  We find so many great deals at yard sales and one of them is when my husband came across about 3 boxes of popsicle sticks with like 1000 sticks per box, yikes!!  I guess you can say we have quite a few popsicle sticks!  So, you guessed it this craft involves popsicle sticks.

I am not a fan of painting although I deal with it for the benefit of my children.  Lucky for me no paint was necessary for this craft because the popsicle sticks we have are already painted....score 1 for Mom!

I had orange, green and yellow sticks so we decided to make a pumpkin, witch and scarecrow.

....And I was able to use some of the pine needles for the hair of our scarecrow:

......And a piece of the evergreen tree for the stem of our Pumpkin:

As for our Witch we did not use any of our nature findings on her.  Although, in hindsight I bettcha I could have used some of the pine needles as part of her broom instead of the foam :(  That's ok, I have plenty more pine needles and we already know that I have 1000's of popsicle sticks to try our hand at another Witch.

Materials to make your own Halloween Popsicle Stick Crafts:

• Popsicle sticks 
• Foam
• Black permanent marker
• Googly eyes
• Hot glue gun
• Evergreen tree piece (optional) you could substitute for a green pipe cleaner or piece of green foam for the stem of the pumpkin
• Pine needles (optional) you could use more foam or yarn for the hair of the scarecrow
• Flower sticker for the hat of the scarecrow

To get the popsicle sticks to stick together simply take a popsicle stick and cut to fit across the back of the popsicle sticks and adhere with a hot glue gun.  

These crafts were fun to make but the most fun for me was the enjoyable and memorable Autumn morning with my daughter.

Happy Fall!