Lisa: deck the halls with skulls and pumpkins

Since it's officially October and Halloween season, I thought I'd post photos of some of my decorations from last year. Maybe it will give you guys ideas for something easy and festive, and give me a little motivation to figure out something new.

For our dining table centerpiece, I drew some inspiration from the much more glamorous glittery version over at Martha Stewart. I bought two sleeves of styrofoam bones from the holiday aisle at Michaels, and arranged them on my cake platter with a few rubber mice from Nora's toy box. The sparkly black fabric around the base was a sample from the early days of Concert Black that's been sitting in my fabric stash for a few years.

The pumpkins on our porch are from the local grocery store and sold by the pound. I got a bunch of different varieties and shapes, and just stacked them together in a way that I thought looked cool. I had to break the stems off a few of the lower pumpkins to make them nest right, but I didn't try to attach them to each other or anchor the stacks--pumpkins are pretty heavy. I took a styrofoam skull (also from Michaels but too big to fit under my cake dome) and screwed it down on the stem of the topmost pumpkin of one stack. After Halloween, just yank that thing back off and you've got a perfect Thanksgiving display.

By the way, you don't have to worry about the pumpkins rotting--and real ones are so much prettier than the plastic monstrosities at the craft store. A month or two (UNCUT) outside in cool fall weather, and the pumpkins will look pretty much the same as when you put them out. Ours even froze solid as the weeks got colder.