zoo themed trunk or treat

On Friday, our church had it’s first ever Trunk or Treat! The trunks were so creative and well executed. I got my idea for a zoo themed trunk from Pinterest….just like all of my unoriginal ideas for everything ever. Sidenote: what did we do before Pinterest? Like how did we plan weddings? Those poor brides…

I started with the animals: stuffed animals are pricey and I didn’t want to just spend a ton of money on stuffed animals that I would only use once. So I bought these blow up animals from Walmart. Set of 5 animals for $15?? I don’t think you can beat that! Next I went to the teacher store to buy the laminated di-cut paper animals and paw prints. I used just regular packing tape to secure them to our car. My last stop was CCA (resale store) where I got the khaki button down shirts for Casey and I to look like zookeepers. I was hoping to find a cheap wooden baby gate for the fence, but no luck. I did, however, find these wooden sticks already glued into these terracotta pots. what? I didn’t ask questions. I snatched them up, glued some handcut leaves around them to cover up the empty space, and there you go. I added the leaf banner and “please don’t feed the animals sign” at the last minute and done!

The little kids loved the animals. After one kid touched them, he ran away saying “oh Mommy, they’re not real!!!!!!!” She looked at me and said “oh no?? They look so lifelike.” So naive, so cute.

I ended up buying Joel’s monkey suit from Once Upon a Child for 40% off the used price (so $5) because they were missing the pants. Who needs pants anyways?

So all-in-all I think our trunk was about $40…not bad. We also won the “Best Trunk” award!! #worthit