About a month ago, I was combing through magazines and saw this in Martha Stewart:

And this in Better Homes and Gardens:

These lawn silhouettes are made from plywood, and secured in the ground with some spare pipe (acting as a stake) and pipe fittings. Needless to say, my Halloween obsession demanded that we try this, and of course I roped my husband, my friend J, and her poor husband into helping. Several trips to Lowes and a bucket of cocktails later, we went to work on this project. The first challenge was figuring out how to get the pattern from the computer to the plywood, since none of us has any particularly descent artistic talent. My husband solved this issue by hooking up a projector to a laptop, and we were able to capture most of the images on the plywood, while free-handing the rest. I am sure an easier solution could have been found, but we just were not willing to expend that much mental effort into figuring one out.

Once we traced the images with a Sharpie, the guys grabbed their jigsaws and went to work cutting:

I got to supervise. I love it when he breaks out the power tools…

But I digress. Along with the witch, cats and lamppost, we also cut out several rats from templates we found in Better Homes and Gardens:

After all the plywood was cut, J and I painted everything with plain, old black exterior house paint. We later picked up the lanterns at Hobby Lobby, and by watching the sales, we purchased them for 50% off. To secure the witch and lamp post silhouette in the lawn, my husband cut some spare metal pipe with a hacksaw, so that a foot of pipe could be driven into the ground, with about three to four feet remaining above. Once he drove the pipe into the lawn with a sledge hammer (the ground was REALLY dry), he secured the larger silhouettes to the pipes with screws and pipe fittings. The cats and rats only needed some wood stakes screwed into the backs, since they are smaller and lower to the ground. The end result turned out great:

At night, the eyes of the cats and rats are lit with those little LED votive lights. We just stick the bulb through the eye holes and duct-tape the base to the back of the cutouts. We also got a small spot light that we staked into the ground behind the witch, so she is back-lit at night.

Overall, we really enjoyed this project. We definitely had some issues in the beginning, as we figured out the logistics of it, but we loved the end results. Now that we know how easy this is, I think we are all looking toward Christmas, and wondering what we can cook up. If you want to try this, both Martha Stewart and Better Homes and Gardens have the instructions on their websites.

Tell your husband I’m sorry.