Yesterday Ripley and I went over to the old graveyard behind our house (we have 4 of them, actually – all on adjacent plots of land, surrounded by residential neighborhoods. Weird!) and gathered graveyard maple leaves from under this tree:

The first thing we’ve made from them are these. Ripley’s is Sharpie’d, mine’s cut out with an X-Acto Knife. Ripley’s been paying attention to Daddy’s style of Jack O’ Lantern, while I opted for a very traditional face:

There will be more to come…

Last year I discovered the Halloween Countdown and swore to myself that in 2010 I’d participate. At some point in recent memory, I also saw a fellow artist who posted a skull a day for a month. So, for my Halloween countdown, my daughter Ripley (8) and I are going to come up with and post at least one Jack O’ Lantern a day, every day in October. We’re going to be as creative as we can, and we’ll see what we come up with. Last night’s M & M’s were the beginning; tonight Ripley and I watched “Hocus Pocus” and painted these awesome paper mache masks we found at our local Michael’s:

Here’s a teaser for something I’m going to be doing throughout October as part of the Halloween Countdown 2010 – details will come this weekend.

This is Igor. He helped.