Halloween Calendars!

I am REALLY excited to post pictures of these awesome (if I do say so myself) Halloween advent calendars I just finished. I spent about 2 weeks working on them, but it felt like so much longer... I don't know why, maybe just because I'm getting burnt out on crafts and am easily distracted.  I think it was also because they were big and bulky (with 4 layers of felt), and it was hard to pull all that stiff material through my sewing machine.  One time I was angrily whispering bad words to the calendar I was working on and Tony heard me and said, "Maybe you should stop working on those now..."  But I finally got them done, just in time for October, and they make me so much more excited to celebrate Halloween!  I made one for me and Tony (and our future kids, I guess) and one for Kayla and Brighton.  Tony and I are really excited to give them their calendar!

Without a doubt the funnest part of making these was last night when Tony and I filled them up with candy and little toys and stickers for Kayla and Brighton.  It sort of felt like Christmas, only for Halloween.  It only took about ten minutes to choose stuff and put them in all the pockets, but it was just really fun, probably because Tony was helping me and we were imagining how Kayla and Brighton would be so excited to take something out every day (and they'll probably cheat and take stuff out early, as all kids do).  I got most of the toys/treats either from the dollar store or from the dollar section at Target (which was having a 70% off sale, so a lot of things were only 30 cents).  I can't wait until someday we can fill these up for our own kids.

I made some mistakes on both of the calendars, and the perfectionist in me kept telling me to go un-stitch and fix them, but then the lazy person inside me kept telling me that would be too much work.  So I listened to the lazy person and left the mistakes.  I won't tell you what they are, though, because maybe you won't notice them unless I do.  I sewed on almost everything because I want these to last as long as possible.  The only things I hot-glued were the very small things, like the cats' yellow eyes.  These are pretty heavy when they're filled up with treats, so I'm thinking I might need to get some thicker dowels to hang them from or find some made out of metal or something more sturdy than the wood ones I have now.

I got the idea for these from a picture my sister-in-law, Amy, pinned on Pinterest.  It was made by a lady who was selling them on etsy.  As soon as I saw it I knew I wanted to make it.  Mine isn't as nice as hers, and I changed and made up a lot of things to make it simpler, but I still like mine.  Here's a picture of (and link to) the original: