My skin is still crawling….

This year Lexie is fascinated by SPIDERS! To say I am a little less than thrilled would be an understatement.
I. HATE. SPIDERS!
Here’s the latest incident to prove it: A couple of weeks ago I was online chatting with Brandon, it was late, the rest of the house was dark except for my bedside lamp. I told him I was going to grab something to drink and a snack. So I headed to the kitchen, flipped on the light and saw something out of the corner of my eye…it was a spider so big I had to look twice because I thought it was fake. I walked towards it saying to myself… I am going to get that girl…you know, thinking Lexie had pulled a prank on me.
Then….It MOVED! I jumped, let out a squeal, and immediately began scouring the kitchen for something to throw at it. I looked over and the shoes I wear to mow the lawn were at the back door. I grabbed one, got as close to the spider as I could, crouched down and swung the shoe down hard. Score! I had killed it before it killed me….UNTIL what I thought was only dead grass all over the floor from my shoe…. started moving…. it was straight out of a horror movie….baby spiders everywhere.  I kid you not, I thought I was going to die right there. I mean the heart attack I was having alone was enough to do me in, and surely these little babies were out to seek revenge against the person who murdered their mother, right? yep, I was going to die, for sure!
Not wanting this to be the way I died,  I jumped up again to go see what we could possibly have under the sink to spray them with. I grabbed the Windex, started spraying and they slowly began curl up and die, but just to make sure I smacked them with the shoe again. So…. apparently not only does Windex get your windows so clean that birds fly into them…. it kills baby spiders that are seeking revenge for their mothers murder.
All was well, or so I thought anyway. After telling a friend what had happened she told me that it was a wolf spider and she used to find them all the time when they were stationed here, after the lights went out. So guess what that means?…..no more snacks for me once the lights are out.
I also thought that was the last I’d see of any huge scary spiders for a while. I thought wrong, because Lexie has picked up every spider decoration, craft, you name it; this year for Halloween. So from now until November 1st, my house his slowly being filled with the spooky little things, thank God these aren’t real 😉
Which also brings us to the craft she wanted to share with you all this week:  A spider handprint t-shirt!
You’ll need a t-shirt (we used one of Brandon’s) black paint, black marker, something for the eyes( paint, rhinestones, googly eyes) and paper to put in the shirt to keep the paint from bleeding through to the back.

 
After you put the paper in the shirt and lay it flat with the neck of the shirt closest to you, put a ‘blob’ of black paint on your hands and rub them together covering your fingers. Lexie curled her thumbs in towards her hand before pressing them onto the shirt so she’d only have 8 legs. Press one hand down, lift it up, then over lap the other hands palm over the other. wah-la a spider on you shirt! After the paint has dried a little you can attach the eyes. You can then add a web or whatever you want to embelish the shirt. Lexie chose to write EEK! on hers along with her web.

This could easily be done at the beginning of a party as an activity and by the time the party is over they should be dry. I hosted a Halloween party when Lexie was almost 2 for all my friends with kids the same age, and this was a big hit. Another idea would be to make a shirt for yourself using your kids hands and then you can have all your ‘baby’ spiders (only I promise not to smash them with a shoe and spray them with windex).
Happy Spider crafting 🙂