Halloween Countdown for $1.00

We love Halloween in this house - dressing up is a favorite game around here and being able to dress up and go out in public AND score some free candy? It's like heaven on earth.

Despite the fact that I have yet to pull our Halloween decorations out (hubs has to do that - they are totally buried in that mess we call storage) we are already counting down. The other day I saw this post on the Silhouette Blog

I just loved the idea of a countdown for us. Silhouette was offering this as their free shape of the day but unfortunately I don't have a Silhouette (insert sad face here) despite my numerous efforts to win one so I had to get creative.

First I picked up a cheap frame from the Dollar Tree (because of the 10,000 empty frames I have stored I can't find a single one - yeah, I'm just organized like that). Then I came home and sifted through my stash to see what I had. Here's the version I came up with:

I don't have any chalkboard paint or vinyl but I knew I could use one of Tinker's dry erase crayons on the glass for the same effect (it would look better if I didn't "have the hand writing of a serial killer" - obscure movie reference 5 points to the first one to name that movie). I used some paper from Basic Grey, added some ribbon for a little detail, flocked Halloween stick on's from My Minds Eye, chipboard alpha letters from Heidi Swapp which I made black with PTI True Black ink, I die cut some PTI Kraft cardstock with my Mat Stack 1 die, stamped it with an image from PTI Everyday Treats using PTI True Black ink and added some words using October Afternoon alphabet stickers. The whole thing went together in under an hour and now I have a countdown calendar I can use year after year! The best part - since I used my stash, the whole thing only cost my $1.00*! Yeah for thrifty decorations!

(*yes, I know, technically it did cost more than $1.00 because I did at some point have to buy the other stuff  LOL)