The tiny person totally digs shadows these days.

She follows hers around, has lengthy conversations with them on the walk to library, thinks that our bedtime routine is nowhere near complete until a round of shadow making commences.

She’s also right into the whole spooky Halloween tale universe – insisting that Eve Bunting’s “Scary, Scary Halloween” and “The Bones of Fred McFee” (reviews to come) make the daily rounds of playgrounds, errands and events along side her in the truck.

So, when I asked her what kind of craft she wanted to make this week, it’s no surprise that the response was “A spooky shadow craft.”

While I’m here, I should admit that this was not exactly a crafty week around our house. We usually bust out at least one keeper in a 7-day period. But, heck if we weren’t sitting at the craft table at about 3:30 p.m. yesterday afternoon sans crafts.

I went pawing around – thought stencils, paper, anything I wouldn’t have to buy. Out popped these fun little lanterns that you can pretty much do any design you want on and have something fun, sweet and – of course – able to cast a killer shadow.

Here’s what you need:

- Glass jars with the labels taken off
- Construction paper
- White glue
- Scissors
- A pencil
- tealight candles
- matches

Directions:

1. Go through the recycle bin and find old mayo or pickle jars, soak them for a bit to remove the labels, dry thoroughly.

2. Take your construction paper and eyeball the measurement to cut it just high enough to cover the wide part of the jar completely.

3. Draw your creatures, ghosts, apples, pumpkins, anything really, with a pencil on the paper and cut out.

4. Put glue on the back of the paper and paste it around the jar.

5. Paste the cutout shape back onto the jar to give it a 3-D effect.

6. Have an adult light the candles and put them into the jars. Set outside or in a dark spot to get the full lantern effect.

These were a HUGE hit at our house today. I have visions of depriving ourselves of a trip to the glass recycling bin in the name of long lines of lanterns for the next month or so.