Is it too soon or too late to be thinking about Hallowe’en? As you can tell, by our Hallowe’en paperchains, we’ve only just turned our thoughts to this holiday.

Seems like every year it creeps up unannounced and the last minute costume panic causes circular headaches. Will the kids dress up as robots? Pumpkins? Doctors? Superheroes? Who knows? Well, I know. The answer is usually the same thing as last year with a tiny variation if we’re lucky. (Sometimes, it’s a nigh duplicate version if I’m forced to rush out and replace something that was outgrown.) I really don’t know why I put myself through the 20 questions game when I know the likely outcome. On the other hand, as they grow older, they are getting less concerned about costumes and more interested in the holiday itself. (Mostly, they’re concerned that it falls on a school night this year. Good luck to any teachers and year-round homeschoolers, dealing with sleepy sugar-slumped kids the day after!)

With that in mind, we’ll try to keep things as simple as possible this year. We’ll do a few crafts, put up some modest decorations, and maybe attend a local event or two. I’ll hunt through last year’s supplies, later this week, and see what can be reused or repurposed. And, I’ll just let the rest go. Life is too short to stress unnecessarily. I’m keen that this Hallowe’en will be uber relaxed and peaceful.

Hallowe'en paperchains and Funnybones dog skeleton collage.

Simple Hallowe’en Paperchains

You will need:

  1. Print the Funnybones display borders at 9 copies per A4 page with the “fill entire page” option selected (as opposed to “print entire image”). That forces the borders to overlap and print as continuous strips.
  2. Cut the display borders into strips, along the guidelines, and cut the construction paper into similar width strips too.
  3. Glue or tape one border strip into a loop. Next, insert a construction paper strip through the border loop and glue the sugar paper strip into a loop. Continue alternating border strips with yellow and orange paper strips.

We also made a skeleton collage with a Funnybones Dog Skeleton and some yellow tissue paper.

Twinkl printables are great for lots of different projects. However, we don’t necessarily use them in the suggested ways! We printed the dog skeleton on paper and cut it up for our collage; it’s actually intended to be used as a cardboard split pin (brad) model. While display borders are meant for framing bulletin boards, I think they work wonderfully for our Hallowe’en paperchains!

Do you use Twinkl? Have you got any lifehacks for Hallowe’en decorations? 🙂