More library blogs!

I know you think I've been neglecting you, Internet, and I totally have. But not really, because in the time that I haven't been writing lots and lots of posts for Twin Like Me, I have written 3 new posts for Pratt Chat, the official, award-winning blog of the Enoch Pratt Free Library! It's true, we won a Mobbie. Pretty exciting stuff. I'm going to put my award on the wall in my office.

The first one is about judging books by their covers, a time-honored (by me) practice. I was also excited by this one because I got 4 comments, which is a pretty good amount for our blog. BSP, please read these posts and comment.

The next one is about when I went to the Baltimore Book Festival and met famous authors. I tried to make it pretty professional, but if you want to hear a more accurate (read: sillier) version, I can tell you sometime.

The last one is about our new art wall at the library. I'm very pleased to say that this has been a success so far, and that it was totally my idea. Yay for the art wall! I'm currently planning our December wall. If you guys have any awesome ideas for the wall for future months, let me know!

Happy (late) Halloween! I made you these crafts.

So, I've been meaning to post pictures of my awesome Halloween crafts for quite some time (since September, when I actually made them), but I'm just now getting around to it. It was my birthday. I was busy. Just kidding, I was lazy. Anyhow, these awesome spiders are a craft that I made at Family Home Evening with a bunch of Young Single Adults. I've also made this craft with kids at the library, but I'm not gonna lie, I had a lot more luck with the grownups. They were able to follow the directions better.

This is my FHE spider. We had a special, Halloween themed craft pack, with festive pipe cleaners, puff balls, and googly eyes.

 The Spider I made at the library to show the kids how easy it was. It didn't work.

I also made these cute pumpkins out of old books. Don't be alarmed, they really were books that had seen better days. I was recycling them! Anyhow, basically, first you break the spine of the book so you can bend it all the way in half. Then you fold each page of the book in half. It takes a long time, but the one that turned out best was the one with about 500 pages. Then rip off the cover, and glue the spine together so the book is in a column shape. I painted the books orange and cut leaves out of the discarded covers that I painted green. Then I glued the leaves to the top and put a stick for the stems. Okay, I'm sure I just made it sound really hard, but it wasn't. Just time-consuming.

Ta da! Super cute and impressive.

 

My final crafty thing for the month was my costume. I'm a camper from Camp Half-Blood.  If you don't know what that is, Shame! JK, it's from Percy Jackson and the Olympians series by Rick Riordan. Technically, I wasn't any specific camper, although I guess I could have been.

Should have cleaned my room before I took this picture.

 

This is a super easy costume, and people who've read the books will for sure know what you are. I took an orange t-shirt (that's what they wear at camp), printed a camp logo off the internet, and taped it to my shirt. I also wore a necklace of clay beads (which we made at a different FHE once), because campers always get a bead at the end of the summer if they survive. I made up great stories for each bead, deciding what we had done that summer. You can't really tell from the picture, but the beads are a blue flower (from the summer those Demeter kids were completely out of control), a pink star (from the summer that Poseidon's kids took us on an underwater field trip and we saw starfish), the moon (from when we had a quest on the moon), a flat blue and green disc (when we found out the Earth really is flat), a pink horn (the summer we killed that crazy unicorn), and a lemon (the year we had that lemonade stand). I also carried around a magic pen. If you can't tell that it's really a sword, then you're not a half-blood. Lucky you. And, of course, I have my super cute Rasta hat that my sister, Missy made for me. I mean, I borrowed it from one of the satyrs. They were them to hide their horns, I wore it because it was cold. The hat is definitely the hardest part of the costume, but since I have a generous and talented sister, it was no problem. You could leave that part out though.

There you have it. My Halloween. I hope you also had an excellent and craft holiday!