I love this time of year. The mornings are crisp, the days are shorter, and little child witches end up on my doorstep, upside down in a pile of rocks.

Oh, I just smile every time I think of it.

When I ponder on how in a few short days 100’s of tiny little plastic spiders will be crawling all over my front door, well. . .I just get all choked up.

Isn’t it enough that we get to have one glorious day where our children can run amuck in our neighborhoods pillaging for candy and trinkets?  Oh, I think not.

We must go the extra mile to make people scream with delight, laugh at our ingenuity, and believe in make believe.

This is the stuff storybooks are made of. Where regular little girls become princesses for an entire day,  little boys gain super powers of which they only dreamed, and Mom’s make potions that would bring any ordinary witch to her knees.

Come with me on my journey all month long, as I turn our abode into the Nasty little place I call home.

This week, the subject will be decorating. We’ll call it HOUSE UGLY, OR Worse Homes and Mortuaries. Click back everyday this week for a new Halloween Decorating Project.

Have some great ideas of your own?  I’d love to hear about them. Post a comment below, and tell me how you get the spook.

Up on the block first. . . . A Buried Witch Topiary.  Here’s what you do:

You’ll Need :

2 plastic feet or legs (I purchased these a the Dollar Tree for $1.00 a piece) :

2  26″ long sturdy sticks (I used bamboo sticks w/ 1/2″ diameter) – You can buy these at any Home Improvement Store or just use a stick from your back yard.

Other things:
2 Large Trash bags
Stapler
Newspaper
Duct Tape
Scissors
little girl striped stockings ( you can find them at Wal-Mart in the Halloween Dept. for $2.50)
Old black slippers, shoes or boots
Bag of pebbles
15″ Flower Pot

1. Remove the feet from their plastic bag, and pierce a hole at the top of the bloody calf/ankle. The hole should be large enough for your stick to fit through.

2. Force one end of your stick through the hole at the end of each bloody calf/ankle. Set aside.

3.Lay your plastic bag, flat on an even surface.

4. Using your scissors, cut the bag in half lengthwise from the opening of the bag all the way to the bottom. Place the foot with stick attached, inside one of the halves.

5. Using your scissors, cut off the bottom portion of the other half of the trash bag.

Position both halves together so that you are able to make one long, cylindrical bag. The halves should be positioned so that together they are longer than length of the stick.

6. Staple the sides, along the length of the bag so that you can later fill it with newspaper.

7. At the base of the bag, where the plastic foot is, gather up the excess and staple so that the bag fits tightly around the foot.

8. Once the bag has been stapled tightly around the foot and ankle areas, tightly wrap the duct tape over those areas as well.

9. Now it’s time to stuff the bag. Crumple the newspaper and begin to stuff it snugly into the cylindrical plastic bag.

10. Fill the bag all the way to the end of the stick, and then staple to close off the bag.

11. Form the bag filled with newspaper into the shape of a real leg. The easiest way to do this is by sitting on the ground, holding the bag up to your own leg, and then taping off the knees very tightly. The bags knees. Not your knees. Then it would be a ‘Your Leg Topiary’. Not very scary.

Anyway, once the knees are formed, you can work your way out and form the calves and thighs accordingly.

12. Next, stuff the legs into the stockings, and you’ll have something that looks like this.

13. Next, prepare the pot.  Fill the pot 2/3 of the way full with soil. Cover with a thin layer of pebbles.

14. Place your witch’s legs inside, and cover with pebbles. Add shoes, and tell your kids this is what happens to kids who don’t listen to their parents. Kidding, kidding.