Guest post from Handy Man, Crafty Woman

Hello, I'm Laurie from Handy Man, Crafty Woman. My husband Rob is the Handy Man around here. We do lots of home renovations. Our first two homes were built in the 1800s, and we gutted them and fixed them up. We always tried to keep our renovations "true" to the period of the homes. Our current house is newish (1995), but still needed a lot of work! While this house is about 90% complete, we still have plenty of home and yard projects to keep us busy.

We have a nine year old boy (aka Handy Boy) who also keeps us very busy. I am an avid scrapbooker as well; I used to teach scrapbook classes, and I still attend scrapbook workshops. Some of the other crafts I do are simple ones that Handy Boy can do with me. Many of my crafts involve scrapbook papers and/or tools.

Handy Boy has been hounding me lately, asking "When's Halloween?!?!" He is 9 and has a better sense of time than younger kids, but a month still seems like ages to him.

I decided to make him a Halloween Countdown chain. I have made Christmas countdown chains for him in the past, so why not Halloween? This was very easy to do. You could also make a countdown chain for a birthday, or a big trip, using different paper.

I used 12x12" scrapbook paper. I chose Halloween colors, and cut them into 1 inch wide strips, using my Making Memories trimmer. You can buy this trimmer at craft stores. I LOVE THIS TRIMMER! I highly recommend it for any kind of scrapbooking or paper crafting.

Here are all of the Halloween colors I used. Different shades of orange, gray, brown, black, etc.

I stapled all of the rings together. After, I noticed that some of my scrapbook paper was white on one side, but Handy Boy won't care. He'll take one ring off every night before he goes to bed.

Here it is! I decided to make enough rings for the rest of September. Why not? Handy Boy loved it. I was going to work on this when he came home from school today, but I couldn't wait. ;-)

Thanks Laurie for Guest Posting!!