Tombstones

Max has been begging and begging and begging me to make a "graveyard" for our yard.  Don't get me wrong, I love Halloween and would love to do a big Halloween scene in our yard, but we seem to have the bad luck of always being targeted by the low life's in town.   We've had flowers and  pumpkins stolen, and quite frankly I'm afraid to to put anything in our yard.  And we have no extra money to spend on Halloween decorations, so we make do with what we have ....or what is free.
 So Jarrett brought home some cardboard boxes from work to make some graves.  But then what if it gets windy or rains? Plus we have no black paint to paint it with, and cardboard is enough of a pain to cut, that it would suck to have them ruined, or stolen plus they wouldn't be long term.
About a year ago, Jarrett found some particle board in the dumpster. (Yes, the dumpster.  The same one we found the bike and sandbox in.) behind his work.  That thing is a gold mine! It was painted black already and we've used it to make a work table for the garage.  So Jarrett had the awesome idea to use his jigsaw (he got from his Dad and has been wanting to use) to cut the particle board and make tombstones out of it.  So I drew on grave shapes and Jarrett cut it out and I found some oil pastels and let the kids draw on the tombstones.
 *Although painting them with chalkboard paint and using chalk would be awesome and maybe some year when we have more money I may do that. That way you could change the words on the tombstone as often as you wanted.
Jarrett cut up an old curtain rod (in 3 pieces) and we stuck them in the ground and we leaned the tombstones against them. There you go FREE graveyard that won't blow away in the wind.

P.S. I'll be moving the graves before night fall....just in case.