I always decorate for Halloween (expect for the 3 years living with my MIL) but I don’t want to spend a whole lot of money of expensive decorations. So, I decided to makes some DIY Halloween decorations. The milk jug lanterns ended up costing me nothing since I had all the items on hand. Thanks to my mom and aunt who saved their milk jugs for me, I didn’t even have to make my family drink more milk than they normally would.

Things Needed:

• Milk Jugs
• Black Marker
• Knife or Scissors
• Christmas Lights

To start, clean the milk jugs thoroughly with warm, soapy water. If you don’t, the lingering milk will curdle and stink to high heaven. Once cleaned, rinse with water and let the jugs air dry for several hours. I turned my milk jugs upside down on top of a towel to dry. This way, you don’t have any water drops hiding at the bottom of the jug.

After the jugs are dry, cut a small opening in back of the jug. Make sure you are cutting the opposite side you will be drawing the face on. It is best to start with a small opening since you can always make the hole bigger if needed. Now comes the part where you get to be creative by drawing the face on the milk jug with a black marker. Draw whatever floats your boat, tickles your fancy, whatever!

Once you are happy with the way your jugs turned out, set them in place and stuff some Christmas lights inside the jug via the hole you previously cut out. I opted to pour birdseed in the bottom of the jugs to keep the wind from blowing them off the porch.

Here is how ours turned out.

My favorite is the mustache lantern.

Since my main client is a little dry at the moment, I know money might end up being tight for awhile and since Christmas will be coming up soon I need to start cutting back a little just in case my main client stays dry. So this year I am going to forgo purchasing a Halloween costume for myself and instead try to make one from things I already have on hand. I want to be zombie Alice in Wonderland and I already have a plain blue dress that might work. Actually the dress looks more like the dress worn by the Alice character in SyFy’s original movie Alice starring the oh so hot Andrew-Lee Potts. I have the black and white striped knee-highs, hair bow and makeup to turn myself into a zombie. Now all I have to do is add blood to the tights and maybe to the dress and I should be good. I also gotta go through my shoes and see if I have something that would work. What are you going to be for Halloween?

One of the things we love about our new home is the amount of deer that we get in our back yard. Even when London is outside using the bathroom, the deer are not too afraid to make themselves known. They seem to know how far London’s leash can go and stay out of his reach. Not that London would do anything but lick them if they would get close enough. Heck, I would wager that if the deer decided to rush London, he would turn tail and come running back inside as fast as he can. Throughout the day, it is not an uncommon sight to see 10 or more deer in our back yard eating apples and chestnuts from the trees.

Anyway, tonight is the homecoming dance and Raven is going. Actually, we are forcing her to go. She doesn’t like wearing dresses or dancing because it’s too girly but we tried to tell her that she will regret not going to school dances when she gets old. She has more than a few friends going so she will have some people to hang out with. When I took her dress shopping a few weeks ago, she actually enjoyed it more than I thought she would. This will be her first dance and I think I am more excited about it then she is!