Family craft- Halloween decor

I've never purchased Halloween decor before. As the logical result, we never did a lot of decorating for October. We'd cut out paper shapes of bats to hang from the ceiling, paint some windows, carve a pumpkin, and call it good. This year we wanted something more festive, so we made a family craft. I wanted to share it because it was a fun family activity suitable for a variety of age ranges.

We purchased a variety of Halloween fabrics from a local fabric store. I bought 1/2- 3/4 yard of each fabric, and picked about 5 different fabrics with a variety of prints.  We took these home and cut them into strips about 2 inches wide and 8 inches long. I didn't measure any of this, just go ahead and eye ball it.

Sarah loved organizing the fabrics as it was being cut. It was very serious work for her, like being the banker for Monopoly! She really enjoyed being in charge of all the fabric, and was very meticulous about keeping the edges aligned on the stack of strips.

Take a string of white Christmas lights (or buy the orange Halloween lights...I like white because you can buy them on clearance after Christmas and use different fabrics to make several garlands: one for each major holiday!) and tie the strips of fabric around the light cord. I put 3-4 fabric strips between each light.

 

I taught Sarah and Matthew how to tie the fabric stips onto the cord and they really enjoyed this part. We sat around the table tying fabric onto our own sections of cord, and we chatted about our week while we worked. Daniel was too little to tie the fabric, so he enjoyed picking out the colors of fabric for me to use. It was like a game for him.

We also attempted to make homemade fuzzy spiders out of pipe cleaners. I wouldn't recommend this craft for kids. It was much harder than I thought to make the legs look even and decent. After a LOT of frustration, Matthew made one spider that he was very proud of. 

After tying on all the fabric on the string of lights, we hung the Halloween garland over our front-room window. This string of lights happened to be one of the 'twinkly' kind, so it's been very fun to have it turned on. I'm surprised how 'magical' twinkly lights make me feel....Nathan's teased me a bit in this regard. The joy and excitement just bubbles up from inside of me and I can't stop myself from giggling. It's fun to share the joy of simple things with my kids!

I'd love to hear what family traditions you have for Halloween, whether traditions from your childhood, or ones you've started recently! I'm always looking for fun ideas, so please share!