Pumpkin Mouth One of the things we always hear from people who visit this site is how much they like our craft/gift ideas. We think you will like what we've come up with for October. We have found a new use for all the used tennis balls we have at our house. We made cute little pumpkins and filled them with candy to put in the lockers of all our cheerleaders. This is one of the cheapest crafts we have come up with. If you know anyone who plays tennis they always have dozens of old tennis balls lying around. They are usually very happy if there is someone who can take these off their hands. All we had to buy was a $1.29 can of orange spray paint and a package of green pom pons. I spray painted the tennis balls one at a time. I always use a large cardboard box for this. It keeps the spray paint mist from drifting all over everything. Make sure you do this outside. It will take two or three coats to cover all of the yellow. Once it is dry you will need to draw the pumpkin face on. I use a permanent marker for this. The nice thing is if you really mess up drawing you can just spray paint over it. Before you paint in the features you need to cut a line for the mouth. BE VERY CAREFUL OR YOU WILL END UP NEEDING STITCHES. Have an adult do this for you, preferably a dad. Wear a thick leather glove that cannot easily be cut through. Hold the ball in the gloved hand and use a cutting blade to cut the line for the mouth. The mouth will look a little jagged, but once you color it in black you will not see the jagged edges. You can use a black marker to color in the features. I used it for the nose on this one. It looks pretty good. I decided to use black craft paint and paint over the features I had already used a marker for The features stand out a lot more this way. Once the paint is dry you can glue the little green pom onto the top. Filling the pumpkin is very easy. When you squeeze each side of the pumpkin its mouth opens and you can fill it up. I always think it's fun if you can add a little note of encouragement with this. Five little pumpkins, sitting on a gate The first one said, "Oh my, it's getting late." The second one said, "There are witches in the air." The third one said, "But we don't care." The fourth one said, "Let's run and run and run!" The fifth one said, "We're ready for some fun." Then "OOOOOO" went the wind and out went the lights, And the five little pumpkins rolled out of sight! *Author Unknown* We got some pumpkin poems from This Website