Keeping the Holiday Safe: No Flame Halloween Luminaries From Taste of Home

If you're like me, you're starting to dig through your old Halloween decorations and many are starting to look tattered, nothing beats craft time with your kids to replenish your supply.  Especially when the craft you make can also serve a purpose.  These easy to make No Flame Halloween Luminaries  from Taste of Home will light your trick or treat path!

Think of it as a crafting recipe!  Traditional luminarias are small paper bags weighted with sand with lit votive candles, but we have become SO creative.  For example, at Christmas you may see the kind made from frozen water in a bucket, frozen with it hollowed out, so you have a place for the candle.  My sister and a friend make them and the candle burns for hours (the wind can't get at it)!

Taste of Home's version will not only decorate your landscape, but will give you mood lighting on Halloween!  They're simple to make, supplies are inexpensive and safe enough for the children to get involved.  Can you say FAMILY TIME!  Remember to use battery operated tea lights and it's safe, safe, safe!

MATERIALS:

• Containers: Wide-mouth glass jars, plastic soft drink or water bottles (2-liter and smaller), milk cartons
• Papers: Lightweight craft paper, copy paper, construction paper, paper twist, tissue paper, decorative papers and so forth
• Ties: Raffia; orange and black ribbons
• Light sources: Battery-operated candles or white Christmas lights
• Scissors, utility knife
• Tape
• Glue stick
• Sand
• Optional: Plastic spiders, netting, highlighting markers…be creative!

 DIRECTIONS:

1. Remove labels and carefully cut plastic bottles or milk cartons below the neck to a variety of heights.
2. Wrap paper around each container, so it's even at the bottom and several inches past the top edge. Tape the back. You can color in "eyes" with a highlighting marker for an extra-spooky effect, or fringe the top.
3. Wrap ribbon or raffia around bottle and tie a bow or knot; add spiders, netting or other accents.
4. Weight with sand to keep the luminarias upright and from blowing around the neighborhood.
5. Position a battery-operated candle or Christmas lights in the center of each bottle. If using Christmas lights, cut an X through the back (both the paper and the container) of each luminaria with a utility knife and push the bulb through.

Attend the Taste of Home Cooking School, October 27, at the Superior Middle School with B105!

Halloween Craft Recipe from:  Taste of Home