As soon as the Halloween-themed Pottery Barn Kids catalog hit our mailbox, Zack got busy pointing out all of the things that he “wished he could have.” Yeah, you and me both, Kid.

One of the things that he kept going back to was the Pirate Build-A-Pumpkin kit.

Pottery Barn Kids

After looking at the photo in the catalog and reading the description, I figured I could make my own version of the adorable pumpkin accessories. Pottery Barn wants $12 each for the Pirate, Cat, Skull, and Spider sets, but I knew I could make all four of them for half of that.

Wanna know how? Yeah, of course you do. 🙂

1. I began by drawing out each of the pieces I wanted to add to each pumpkin.

Don’t fancy yourself an artist? No worries. I did the hard work for you and drew out everything you need for the four pumpkins. Click here to download the .pdf file of the artwork. The artwork is scaled for a medium sized pumpkin, so you will need to enlarge or reduce if you are using a large or small pumpkin.

2. Print out the .pdf and cut out the shapes for the pumpkin(s) you want to put together. For this tutorial, I am showing the Skull accessory kit.

3. At your local craft store, pick up some sheets of sticky-backed felt (about $1 each). You will need white and black for each set. I put all four sets together and only ended up using one sheet of white and two sheets of black.

I advise against using the “soft” sticky-backed felt. It’s a pain to peel the backing off of it.

4. Trace and cut out the shapes on each piece of felt. On the artwork, I labeled each piece with the color and the number of each shape you will need to cut out. Some are labeled front and back, which means you need to trace the front side (the side with the writing on it) and the back side (without the writing), so you’ll have mirror images of each piece.

Note: On the Cat set, you actually need to cut out 4 front and 4 back of the white rectangles, not 2 of each as noted on the artwork.

5. On the pieces that stick out of the pumpkin, I inserted a toothpick in between the front and back shapes to make a little toothpick sandwich. I just left a small portion of the toothpick sticking out to stick into the pumpkin. I had to break a few of the toothpicks in half so that they wouldn’t be too long. Once your little sandwich is put together, you will probably need to trim the edges so that the pieces match up nicely.

The pieces you will need to set up with a toothpick are:

• Pirate – Hat (I put one toothpick in the center and one on each side)
• Cat – Ears, whiskers
• Skull – Bones
• Spider – Legs

6. After assembling the rest of the pieces that layer on top of each other, draw in the faux stitching. On the white pieces, I used a thin black marker. On the black pieces, I used a silver metallic marker I found at the craft store for a few dollars.

Sorry that picture is so oddly lit. I’m not sure what’s going on there.7. Now, all you have left to do is to peel the backing off of the pieces and stick them directly to your fresh pumpkin or craft pumpkin. The pieces on toothpicks can be easily stuck directly into the pumpkin.

8. Display your new friends proudly!

I can’t believe how much my knock-offs look like the “real” ones!

You can create your own Pottery Barn-inspired pumpkin kits for under $5 for all four of them. The only difference between these knock-offs and the real thing is some polyester stuffing in some of the pieces and actual stitching instead of faux stitching. Oh, and $43.

Zack really wanted his picture taken with his new pumpkins. Here he is posing with his favorite, “Fat Cat.”

Our pumpkins will eventually be carved into Jack-O-Lanterns a few days before Halloween, but until then, we’re going to enjoy Fat Cat and all of his fun little friends.Will you create a set of your own?

***********

I’m in the mood to party! You can find this post linked to Rhoda’s “It’s Fall, Y’all!” party at Southern Hospitality and to Jane’s Frugalicious Friday party at Finding Fabulous!

When our 3 1/2 year old decided that he didn’t need to take a nap any more, the evenings in our house got considerably harder. Just about the time my husband got home from work, Zack took a trip to Meltdown City. It was all we could do to eat dinner as a family and get Zack bathed and in bed without multiple timeouts. Needless to say, we were all jonesing to get nap time back.

It wasn’t that I didn’t encourage Zack to take a nap every day. In fact, we had a 1 1/2 hour “quiet time” every day where he was supposed to stay in his room and play with his quiet time boxes, but it was very bright in his room in the middle of the day. Zack’s one of those kids who needs it to be completely dark to sleep, so this just wasn’t working for us. The faux wood blinds in his room were letting in too much light, even when they were closed.

I checked out the blackout panels in the stores, but it would have cost me $40 for a cheap set, and I didn’t particularly like the way they looked. So, naturally, I decided to make my own.

I started with a set of cheap navy blue curtain panels and an even cheaper black twin flat sheet. The pair of curtains was about $18 and the flat sheet was around $4. I definitely wanted to use darker colors, as I figured that would help with the light situation.

My curtain panels were each about 40 inches wide, so I cut the sheet to have 2 pieces that were about 41 inches wide. That made the sheet pieces about 66 inches long (because the dimensions of a twin flat sheet are about 66×96). It was okay that my sheet wasn’t as long as my 84 inch panels because the window doesn’t go all the way down to the floor and light doesn’t come through the wall. Did you follow that?

Because the sheet had four finished (hemmed) sides, I only had to hem one side of the sheet for one panel and two sides for the second panel. The sheet was longer than I needed it to be after my two 41 inch wide panels, so I had to make two cuts for the second sheet piece. I pressed a double hem into the raw edges and ran it through my sewing machine. You could definitely use no-sew hemming tape to do that, too. The most important thing is that the finished size of each sheet should be slightly smaller than the finished size of each curtain panel.

Next, I pinned the sheet pieces to the back of the curtain panels, making sure they both laid flat. I pinned the top and sides together but left the bottom open, since I wasn’t going to sew them together on the bottom side.

I seamed them together on my machine, following the original hem lines on the panel as best I could. Again, you could use hemming tape. And as always, I’m making this seem way more difficult than it actually is.

Lastly, I bought some cheap trim at Hobby Lobby and stitched it onto the inside edge of each finished panel. I wanted to make the cheap panels look a little more custom and fun. I think the trim was around $1 a yard.

I bought a longer curtain rod than I needed for the window so that the panels would stack nicely on either side of the window when they were curtains open. I found that with the “right” size rod on that window, the curtains were so full that they stacked over the window, thus making the window look tiny when the panels were open.

Now, for the true test. Here’s the non-nap inducing light with the curtains and blinds open.

And here’s what you see now in the middle of the day when the curtains and blinds are closed. This picture was taken around noon.

People, I kid you not. If his curtains and blinds are shut, you literally have to turn on a lamp in there to see anything! It’s like a little “Zack cave!” He has a lamp on his nightstand that he uses to read, so please don’t think I stick my child in the pitch black room all alone. He reads his books, turns off his light, and takes a restful nap.

And Mama does a little happy dance.

The evenings in our home are definitely easier because Zack has gotten some mid-day rest and isn’t Mr. Crabby Pants. Okay, he doesn’t nap every day, so he is still Mr. Crabby Pants sometimes, but not nearly as much as he used to be. Hooray!