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My sister asked me how I keep a six year old busy on a gray Saturday in October and the honest answer is a stack of printed paper and a cup of markers that have mostly lost their caps. That is it. That is the whole system.
I keep a folder on my laptop that fills up every September. Coloring sheets, little clipart I cut out for a paper garland, ghost faces my kid insists on naming. Most of it started as a file from an indie design shop, printed on whatever paper I had near the printer that morning. Some mornings that is good cardstock. Some mornings it is the back of an old school flyer. Both work. One curls more than the other.
A few of the files below are ones we used at the kitchen table last fall, juice spills and all. Some of the links are affiliate links, so if you grab one I get a tiny cut and you pay the same. Grab a coffee. Let me show you the stack.
The Halloween Activity Pack That Bought Me Forty Quiet Minutes
This is the one I print when I need actual time. Not five minutes. Real time, like enough to drink a hot coffee while it is still hot. It is a whole pack of activities, mazes and matching and the kind of busywork that a kid will hunch over with a tongue sticking out of the corner of their mouth.
I ran it on plain copy paper because we go through pages fast and 110 lb cardstock for a maze felt silly. Clipped them into a cheap binder so my kid could flip through and pick. He did the same pumpkin maze four times and got mad at it twice.
Nitpick: a couple of the pages are ink heavy near the edges, so if your printer is stingy like mine you will watch the black bar at the top go pale by page six. I just shrugged and called the faded ones the spooky fog versions.
A Clipart Set I Turned Into A Window Garland
I did not buy this to color. I bought it to cut. The set has these soft little autumn shapes, the kind of friendly fall art that does not scare the toddler next door, and I printed a sheet, cut everything out, and strung it across the kitchen window with bakers twine and tiny clothespins.
The nice thing about a set like this is you get a pile of pieces, so when my kid mangled three of them with the scissors we just reprinted that one sheet. No big loss.
One thing. The colors print a touch warmer than the screen on my printer, more amber than the bright orange I expected. I ended up liking it more. It looked like late afternoon light, which is the only good thing about the sun going down at five.
The Second Clipart Round We Used For Place Cards
We did a tiny family dinner the second Sunday of the month, nothing fancy, and I wanted the kids’ end of the table to feel like theirs. So I shrunk these little autumn graphics down small, printed two to a page, and folded them into name cards. My nephew could not read his own name yet so I drew an arrow. He was thrilled by the arrow.
Printed these on light card so they would stand up on their own. Regular paper flops over and lands in the gravy, ask me how I know.
The art itself is sweet and a little doodly, which is exactly what I wanted near a four year old who was going to scribble on it anyway. My only gripe is the file came in one big sheet, so I spent ten minutes resizing in a free editor before printing. Worth it, but not zero effort.
Round Three, Which Became Stickers Somehow
I have a little sticker paper habit. I bought one pack on a whim and now every printable in the house is at risk of becoming a sticker. This clipart got the treatment. Printed it on a sheet of full-page sticker paper, handed my kid blunt scissors, and let him cut his own crooked stickers for his water bottle.
The shapes are simple enough that a kid can roughly follow the outline without a meltdown, which matters when the scissor skills are still new and emotional.
Fair warning: cheap sticker paper does not love a heavy inkjet pass. One of mine smeared when a small thumb pressed it too soon. I learned to let them dry flat on the counter for a minute, away from the helpful hands.
The Enjoy Autumn Print That Lives On The Fridge Now
Some files you cut up. This one I just printed and stuck on the fridge with a magnet shaped like a tomato, and there it stays. It has a cheerful enjoy autumn feel to it, leaves and that cozy-but-not-creepy mood, and it became the unofficial sign that fall had started in our house.
I printed it once on copy paper, hated how thin it looked taped up, and reprinted on the heavier stock from the back of the closet. Night and day. The thicker one sits flat and does not ripple when the kitchen gets steamy from the kettle.
No real complaint here except that I wish I had printed two. My partner took the first one to his office and now I am protective of the fridge copy.
A Friendly Ghost For The Kid Who Scares Easy
My youngest is not ready for the scary stuff. No skeletons, no anything with teeth. This little ghost is round and soft and looks more like a marshmallow than a spook, so it passed the test. We printed a big one for the bedroom door and a few small ones for a coloring afternoon.
Because it is a PNG with a clear background, I dropped it onto a colored page in a free editor and printed it on light blue, which my kid decided was the ghost’s swimming pool. I did not argue.
The one nitpick is that printed solid and big, the ghost eats a fair bit of ink in the body. If you are running low like I usually am by mid October, scale it down or let your kid color the white parts instead of printing them filled.
Ghost Plus Pumpkin, The Combo My Kid Requested By Name
There is a specific kind of joy when a kid asks for a printable by description. Mine wanted the one with the ghost and the pumpkin together, and this is it. Two of his favorite things in one image, which to a five year old is basically a crossover event.
I printed it on cardstock and taped it to the inside of the front door so it greets us when we come in from the cold. Low enough that he can see it, high enough that the dog cannot lick it.
It is a clean print and the lines are bold, good for little hands with crayons. If I am picky, the pumpkin orange leaned slightly red on my home printer, so it looked a touch like a tomato wearing a ghost costume. Honestly that made us laugh, so I left it.
The Silly Goose That Made The Whole Table Laugh
I bought this purely because the phrase silly goose makes my kid cackle, and the goose with the little floral fall theme delivered. It is goofy in the best way, soft flowers and a bird that looks faintly judgmental, and it went straight onto a card I made for grandma.
Printed it small, folded a piece of cardstock, glued the goose on the front. My kid wrote the inside in marker that bled through to the back. Grandma kept it on her counter, bleed and all.
The art has nice detail, which is great until you print it tiny and the thin flower stems start to disappear. I would keep it at a decent size, postcard at the smallest, or you lose the little bits that make it charming.
A Gold Pumpkin That Looks Fancier Than My Printer Deserves
This one is for the grown ups, or for the corner of the kids’ room I am trying to keep slightly cute. It is a soft pumpkin with a gold glitter feel and a bow, very pretty, and I will be honest, I bought it for me and let my kid think it was a shared decision.
Here is the trick with anything that looks like glitter on a home printer. It is not real glitter, it is printed sparkle, so it reads best on a clean white heavy paper where the shine has room to look intentional. On thin paper it just looks gray and sad. Use the good stock.
I framed mine in a small gold thrift frame and put it on the kid’s dresser. The only catch is the bow runs pale if your printer is low on the lighter inks, so check your levels before you commit to a full sheet.
The Border Frame I Use To Make Anything Look On Purpose
This is my cheat. A pretty fall border frame that I print and then drop a kid’s drawing or a photo right into the middle of. Suddenly a scribbled pumpkin looks like art. We made a little gallery wall of framed kid drawings in the hallway and this frame did most of the heavy lifting.
The coquette fall border has soft edges and little seasonal touches that do not fight with whatever you put inside it. I printed several copies so I could swap the centers as the kids made new things through the month.
My nitpick is sizing. The frame is built for a specific photo ratio, so when I plopped in a square drawing I got an awkward gap at the bottom. I fixed it by taping a strip of orange paper across the gap and pretending that was the plan all along.
Frequently Asked Questions
Does decorating fall under cis?
If you mean does seasonal decorating count as a craft or hobby category, then yes, putting up printed fall decor and doing kids’ craft activities sits squarely in the home and hobby world. It is the same family of fun as scrapbooking or party prep.
In plain terms, printing a few sheets, coloring them with your kids, and taping them around the house is a craft activity, no special category or rule needed. You are just making your home look like fall.
What is fall decor?
Fall decor is the stuff you put around the house to make it feel like autumn. Pumpkins, leaves, warm colors, a garland in the window, a print on the fridge. It can be store bought, but a lot of mine is printed paper that costs a couple dollars in ink.
For a family with little kids, fall decor doubles as activity. The clipart you cut into a garland was a craft on Saturday and a decoration by Sunday. Two jobs, one file.
What is thanksgiving free printable?
A Thanksgiving free printable is a downloadable page, usually a coloring sheet, a place card, or an activity, that you can print at home for the holiday. Some shops offer a free one as a sample so you can try before you buy a full set.
They are handy for keeping kids busy at the table while the food finishes. I usually print a few coloring pages and a gratitude sheet, hand over the crayons, and buy myself fifteen minutes to mash the potatoes.
Can I print these at home?
Yes, that is the whole point of them. Everything here is made to run on a regular home printer. I print most of mine on a tired inkjet that complains constantly and they still come out fine.
If you do not have a printer or yours is out of ink at the worst moment, like mine always is, you can save the file to a flash drive and print at the library or a copy shop. I have done the quiet library printer run more than once.
Before You Print
The truth is none of this is fancy. It is a printer, a stack of paper, a kid who wants something to do, and a parent who wants ten minutes. The files just give the afternoon a shape.
Pick two or three from up top, print them on the heaviest paper you own, and let the kids loose with the markers. Last fall my favorite afternoon was a smeared ghost, a crooked garland, and a goose card with marker bleeding through the back. I would not trade it.