Halloween Party

Welcome to our Halloween Party. First, set the tone by decorating your entrance. Can you tell that we enjoy Halloween? ;) Anjeanette has this banner and sign that she puts our for her entrances.

Next, decorate inside of your house. I love these dollar store buckets! Just nest a glass bowl inside the plastic bucket (as the dry ice will melt the plastic bucket). Add dry ice and water and you have the most fun decorations. Seriously, we can’t get enough dry ice throughout the house. For decorations don't forget to fill your crocheted pumpkins with candy corn! And if you made this table runner and banner, or this hand towel, make sure they are out!

These are crafts that the kids made, and the top bucket was one of the cute buckets that Anjeanette gave us when she “Boo’d” us. I just filled that bucket with treats for the kids to go home with (spider rings and other Halloween trinkets, you could also include pencil toppers).

A MUST have for us is the meal in the pumpkin! Oh it’s sooooo yummy. Not only do you cook the meal in the pumpkin, you then take chunks of the pumpkin with your serving. Delish! I think this is my favorite tradition of Halloween. Other Halloween foods are dry ice root beer, skeleton cookies, candy corn rice krispies, pumpkin cookies, white chocolate ghost suckers, apple pie spice drink, oreo cookie spiders, popcorn fingers, edible gross body parts, etc!

On to the games. This is my favorite. Dangling Donuts. Because who doesn’t need more food (especially highly sugared food) after our Halloween meal!?
All you do is get donuts (we get a variety). Tie a long piece of string onto each donut. Grab a dowel or long sturdy stick. Decide who is going to go against each other (don’t go against Anjeanette…she is the QUEEN of this game…that’s all I’m saying). Each person picks their own donut. Tie donuts on the dowel and go at it (without using your hands!). For our little kids we’ve let 3 go at a time, but otherwise we stick to 2 at a time. This is also best played outside as it leaves a mess below.

Another really fun game is this Pin The Hat On The Witch Game I made one year. I love variations of Pin The Tail On The Donkey. Don’t forget the other games like bobbing for apples (no pictures because I don’t want to show our kids)!

You could do this as place settings for the party (though this was what I had for my kids on the first day of October). I just printed out a pumpkin on orange paper and wrote out Happy Halloween _______ using my awesome Halloween fonts. That was for their placemat. Then they got Halloween cups to use all month, that were filled with Halloween pencils and toys. I also give them their Halloween shirt for the year, on the first day so that they can wear it the whole month long. These were shirts that I added beaded Halloween designs to.

The Gals here at Roots And Wings Co just love holidays and Halloween is right there at the top of the list. We have Halloween parties every year. We just had ours last weekend (thank you Anjeanette for hosting an awesome night). I am holding another one for the kids on Friday. So many things to do. I love doing the same things year after year, and I also love adding new things every year. Some things for the kiddos party will be tossing bean bags into my large cauldron and crafts. We always make Haunted Houses at this party (like gingerbread houses for Christmas except we use chocolate frosting to make it spookier, and you construct your house funny so it's a crooked haunted house). For crafts we will be making fingerprints in orange, green, and black. Then, we draw parts on them that turn them into witches, pumpkins, and monsters. I turn these into stickers and then the kids make Halloween cards for family using their fingerprint stickers.
Hope you enjoyed the party. For those of you that are still hosting a Halloween party this week (or for your fun Halloween night dinner) I hope this gives you some fun ideas to try.

Rebecca

{Adorable Gingerbread Skeleton Cookies}

Aaak! Sometimes I kill myself with cuteness/easy factor of things. This is both adorable AND easy. I mean easy. The hardest part is finding Gingerbread cookies in October. The last two years, the only place I have found these Pepperidge Farm Ginger Man cookies was at Target.

You only need two ingredients to make these! Gingerbread cookies which you can buy premade, and white frosting, cream cheese flavor just happens to be the favorite. ****Katrina here with my two cents..... If you plan to travel with these then using white chocolate would be the way to go.****

Place the icing in a ziploc baggie, then cut a SMALL hole on one of the bottom corners. Smaller is better because you can always make the hole bigger but you can't make it smaller. (Speaking from experience.) Then carefully ice the cookies to look like skeletons. I did the bodies first. Then I cut the hole a little bigger and did the heads.

Really this is my favorite picture…there are little fingers waiting to grab one of these up. Can you blame them? There are just too cute!

Oh my, the icing, the little sugar granuals, the gingerbread. These taste so good. Go ahead and dip the cookie right in the remainder of your icing, if you must. Actually, you MUST. Just try it. Or stick your finger in the tub. Don’t hold back. Get a spoon. (Ok this was added by Anjeanette and I can’t have this specific icing. Oh my, do I miss it.)

We did all of these fun things together with Rebecca and her kids. We had an early Halloween party in celebration of the start of October.

Erika (With Anjeanette butting in for fun.)

Dry ice Root Beer a fun and easy Halloween treat!

One of our most beloved family Halloween traditions is our homemade root beer. When the older siblings grew up in Utah, our elementary school had an amazing Halloween party. The kids would dress up and walk from class to class in their costumes. To this day that elementary school still has the Halloween parade. Another great part of the celebration was a party. The room mothers would always make root beer with dry ice! This is such a fond memory for us. And it couldn't be easier to make! You only need a few ingredients:

• Water
• Sugar
• Dry Ice (This is a little tricky and has to be handled with care, plus you have to be over 18 to buy it)
• Root Beer Concentrate (which you find at any grocery store)

Anything that comes with a big warning sign is going to provide for some good fun;) Our little disclaimer is that you need to read the warning and take heed of it. When you serve this up, you want to make sure you don’t serve up a piece of dry ice, no matter how fun it seems. No mouth burns for you!

A hundred years ago, when we were in elementary school we could buy the root beer flavoring in a powder packet right next to the Kool-aid. But now we are only able to find it easily in the baking area as concentrate.

In a large bowl, mix together the water, root beer concentrate and the sugar (there are plenty of recipes online, although you can just add ingredients to taste as well Here is a good resource we found with a recipe) You can use this as an exercise in chemistry if your kids are geeky like ours;)

We mixed our root beer in a large punch bowl. We placed it carefully into a large black cauldron to get a more Halloweeny feel. We had a large chunk of dry ice so we put some bowls in smaller cauldrons with just water in them for the foggy effect.

Finally just add in the dry ice (while wearing gloves!) And let it bubble and fizz away. You only have to wait a few minutes before you can start serving it up! If you want your root beer more carbonated, you need to use a lid after you put in the dry ice. Be careful not to let the pressure build up too much. Our kids were too excited to wait for it to get very carbonated. We also added a few small pieces of the dry ice to the small containers with water at this point.

See what I’m talking about? Halloweeny! Enjoy and don’t forget to let us know if you try this yourselves. It really does add that wow factor to parties.

Erika

Caramel Apple Spice Drink-AKA Apple pie in a Cup

Last year I fell in love with a Starbucks drink called Caramel Apple Spice. Oh my!!!! It is like a little slice of heaven. Close your eyes and imagine a warm apple pie with whipped topping and caramel syrup drizzled on top. You are sitting in your favorite comfy chair with a blanket over your legs (feet propped up) a fire blazing and this drink in your hands. Oh and you can imagine that the kids are with Grandma for the day. ;)

I last year I started a new tradition. At Thanksgiving I made these for dessert. It was the new favorite for just about everybody. If you like spiced cider, whipped cream and caramel then you will LOVE this.

We also served this at Erika’s baby shower last December. We dubbed it “Apple pie in a Cup.”

Ingredients:
Cinnamon syrup (You can buy it from Starbucks)
Apple juice or Apple cider
Whipped cream
Carmel syrup drizzled on top

Directions:
Pour Apple Juice or Apple Cider into your mug and stir in about 1 teaspoon of the Cinnamon syrup. Heat in the microwave to desired temperature. Top with whipped cream and drizzle caramel syrup on top. Enjoy!
This recipe is from CDKitchen for Starbucks' Caramel Apple Cider serves/makes 1

By the way Starbucks does sell the syrup in a sugar free version. You can also get the caramel in sugar free too.

They have it on their menu in the fall and winter months so you should be able to get the syrup now.

Katrina

~~

Anjeanette here. Oh my! This is HEAVEN in a mug. I wanted to point out that you can do this for a bunch of people. When Katrina did this for Erika's shower, she put the cinnamon syrup and the apple cider in a crock pot to warm. Then serve individual servings, add the whipped cream and drizzle the caramel sauce on top. While you are at it, serve up another one and enjoy it for me. Sadly I can't have them anymore. Now I am going to curl up and cry. This is THAT good!

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Movie Star Themed Birthday Party

My daughter swears she is a Tomboy. To her, being a Tomboy is kind of like wearing a costume. It’s something to dress up as, and play pretend. I always let my kids choose the theme of their parties. She chose a Movie Star Theme. Can you guess who is nowhere close to being a Tomboy?

Welcome to the party! Guests walked up our “Red Carpet” runway. It was also the Hollywood Walk of Fame, as it had gold stars on it and then the kids put their handprints, in Black, next to the stars. We also had star confetti all over the walkway for extra “bling”. I have stakes that I use along my walkway for hanging holiday lanterns. I set those up and we strung out movie reel garland through it.

We went with the colors Red, Black, and Gold. I found boas on sale and strung them up my hanging lights. I LOVED how this turned out!

Other decorations that were hung high were bought from the local party store. The party store had an amazing and extensive selection of everything for a movie themed party. The pinata was so cute! If you look carefully along the top of my sliding door there is more of that movie reel garland. I have a secret to tell you about it...It’s real! (haha, bad joke) No, seriously! We went to the movie theater and talked the manager into giving us real film from a movie. They gave us about 10 minutes worth from a movie (Pearl Harbor, oddly enough), and it was a TON. That’s what we strung along the front walkway. We used it all over the place and still had lots leftover! I love finding special tricks like that!

The treat bags were red, with gold vinyl names on them and then tied off with black bows. Have you seen Walmart’s party section lately? It’s a must see. They sell candy by the color! I had sixlets, gumballs, and malted milk balls. Then, I bought a giant bag of licorice, which isn’t just known for being a staple at the movies, it also color coordinated perfectly for my party! I love when things work out like that!

Sorry you can’t see the beautiful picture of my daughter there! I can’t even show you many of my decorations because they incorporate pictures of my daughter. However, I had to show you my mini movie reels. I made these up myself. I cut out the red and then glued that to black circles and glued that all onto peppermint patties. They were so cute.

My kitchen island is always so much fun for me to decorate. There are a few decorations from the party store tucked in here. I cut strips of black and white patterned paper and then layered a thinner red strip on top. The red strip said Happy Birthday to my daughter. These bands I then taped around mini water bottles.

This was my table. There was other food lurking around the kitchen (such as salsa and guacamole which are must haves at my parties!!).

Did you notice those awesome cupcakes? You really should see them in person! My little sister (well, actually she’s bigger than me…but she is quite a bit younger than me so I can still say that!) made these for my daughter! Wasn’t that sweet? Oh, yes they were quite sweet and yummy! It’s hard to see but those stars were made of fondant and then had edible gold glitter on top which made them sparkle! So nice of her to do that for us!

I got plastic champagne glasses and dolled them up by cutting up a boa and glueing it around the bottom of the glass. Then, I made sparkling jello to go in the cups. They were a huge hit, and I love how the boa looked on them.

We ate star shaped sandwiches. Mmmm, I love swiss cheese!

Using the same cute black patterned papers as I used on the water bottles, I made scalloped cones. I filled them with red jello popcorn that I made. So sticky, but yum! I put newspaper in the bottom of the basket as a filler, then covered that with tissue paper to hold the cones up. The boa along the rim of the basket finished it off perfectly.

One of my favorite decorations was a hanging centerpiece. I always like to hang things from my chandelier over my dining room table. This time I had a fluffy boa with feathers (oh, I must tell you how much I really loved this). I dangled popcorn buckets filled with real popcorn, stars, and wires that I beaded in red, black, and gold.

Rebecca

PS Many fantastic people in my life helped me with this party! I had lots of ideas and got lots of decorations ready to go. Then, “my people” help me get it all put out! Not only do they do a great job figuring where and how to put stuff up, it makes it so much more fun to get ready for the party with people! You guys know who you are, so thank you!

We are joining the fun party at

Dinosaur Themed Party

My oldest daughter has been into dinosaurs for ever. Every year she said she wanted a Dinosaur themed Birthday Party. Then, she’d push it off until the next year. Last year she finally had her Dinosaur Themed Party. A twist on ours is that it wasn’t plain Dinosaur, it was because of my daughter’s love of the book “Dinotopia”. On that invitation I added those pictures from the book! My daughter loved that touch. The dinosaurs right behind my daughter are from when we went to the show “Walking With Dinosaurs”. I knew we were doing a Dinosaur Themed party and so I made sure to get a picture of my daughter in front of some of the great posters there. Perfect.

We like to make a big deal of walking up to the house. It’s fun, plus then people know what house the party is at. Here my youngest was helping to draw the dinosaur tracks that we had going up to the door. I love having the kids involved as much as I can. The results are less professional, but so much more memorable for them!

We had so much fun after we cut back a tree of ours, we hauled the branches to the front yard and made a Giant Dinosaur Nest. **True story, after the party the eggs were gone and it was just a huge empty nest. It attracted an eagle to my yard! We don’t live in an area that this is a normal thing at all!! **

The main reason for this nest was because what my daughter wanted most for this party was huge dinosaur eggs. The thing about having kids that have grown up with me, they assume I can make anything crafty and so they ask for some interesting things (you should hear the Halloween Costume Requests!). She and I made these together. They are just paper mache balloons! We got the large size of balloons, blew them up, and went to town covering them all! I did a lot of layers because we wanted these to be really sturdy. When they were all dried we cut an opening. We then inserted all the goody bag stuff into these balloons. We covered them in green tissue paper, which nicely covers up the cuts made for the openings! We filled them with everything dinosaur we could find. There were dinosaur build a scene stickers, glow in the dark dinosaur skeletons, inflatable dinosaurs, plastic dinosaurs, and more.

Dinosaur Treasure Hunt. This started off with tiny dinosaur eggs. These were just regular eggs that I had hollowed out when I needed them for cooking. We boiled them all with green food coloring. Some I left in longer then others so that they were all different. I also added salt to one pan for an extra cool look on some of the eggs. I had 2 dozen of these. In just 2 of them I put a clue. One clue for each team. I scattered these eggs all over the backyard. The clue before this one told them they had to stomp on the eggs to find the clue. This was especially tricky because it was night time! Another clue told them that each team member had to dig up one dinosaur fossil to receive the next clue. We had dinosaur skeletons hidden in the sand box. This was a slightly older kids party so the clues took them through the neighborhood a little bit. The prize was the giant dinosaur eggs in the nest out front. The kids so loved their eggs that they carried them around a bit before they tore into them!

We had dinosaur eggs that you had to break open with a hammer, to find the dinosaur inside.

There are also those dinosaur eggs that you put in water to dissolve the shell and then the dinosaur pops out!

The cake was easy peasy, once I found a dinosaur set at the dollar store! Score! My kids always love to help me make their cakes. This was just a chocolate cake with chocolate frosting, then the dinosaur set was put on top. My daughter loved how it turned out!

Rebecca

PS I think we chose to do all of our Birthday posts now because we have a ton of Birthdays during the next week (thinking back 9 months I guess it is cold in November, in Utah...thanks Mom and Dad!). So, I have to say Happy Birthday to those wonderful people (and my parents for even bringing me into this wonderful family) in my life who make it all worth it! ;) I love you all!

~~

Anjeanette here. I had to laugh at the part where Rebecca's kids think she can make anything. My kids do that to! It was a great party Rebecca with lots of fun ideas. Oh and Happy Birthday to Rebecca, myself and Erika all within a week...August 19th through the 26th!!! And we have a nephew with an August birthday too. Love you too!!

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Ballerina Birthday Party

My second child loves all things girlie. So it was no surprise when she HAD to have a Ballerina Birthday Party. This was such a fun theme to run with. These pictures were taken just for remembrance for my daughter and I, not for a blog post. So, bear with them. ;) Obviously, the gift of the day had to be her first jewelry box! These are harder to find than I thought they would be!

I know you can’t see this banner very well. However, the part that I love about this banner is that it shows a picture of my daughter on each of her Birthdays. I always love have something that shows my child through the years!

I find it a good idea to have a staging area. This is where the Birthday Child can sit while opening presents. Group shots are great here. Those ballerina shoes are actually 3 feet tall! I just found a picture of some ballerina shoes that I loved (do a google search for coloring pages on any theme). I used these shoes on the invitation, backdrop, cupcake toppers, gift bags, etc. I enlarged the shoes and printed it out on pink paper. It took quite a few pages that I had to cut out and piece together. I laid the finished piece on top of foam core and glued it down, use a razor blade to cut it out, paint the edges black to seal and give a more finished look, and your done! This now hangs above my daughter’s bed.

I used that same ballerina shoe image for my cupcake toppers. I just made up a template with the shoes all over a page and then another page that said, “(Child’s Name) is 6”. I circle punched all of this out and then sandwiched a toothpick between 2 circles. Make sure to have one side be the words and the other side be the picture.

Those are her ballet slippers that I used for decorations. I also used her dance bag, her super cute dance box, and all other dance stuff for the decorations. I’m a big advocate on using what you already have. I find it to be more personal, besides economic and “green” to boot! ;)

For some of the activities I had the kids make wands and crowns. These were princess wands from a kit I found. For the boys I had painted some wands black and painted a white band around one side. So, they were magician’s wands! The boys also got to decorate visors instead of crowns.

I always make my own gift bags. This year the main give away gifts were the crowns and wands they made, and skirts that I made for each of them. As soon as they arrived they got one of the skirts, so they could wear it for the rest of the party. I just took pink tulle, gathered it, and then sewed ribbon to the top. I left long sides on the ribbon and that was used to tie the skirts on. I knew we had girls of all sizes and so I was not going to guess on all their waists! ;) This is a perfect solution to that, plus having a large bow in the back was cute. For the gift bags I took that ballet slipper, printed up a bunch, cut them all out, and then ran them through my xyron and stuck them all on. I also painted up a bunch of clothespins pink. I had made some extra (smaller) ballet slipper stickers and attached one to the top of each clothespin. Then, each clothes pin had a child’s name on it. I find it helpful to always have the gift bags be labeled or there is unnecessary confusion. I also backed each of these clothespins with magnet so they could go on their fridges once the goody bags are long gone!

I understand why food is not a big deal for a lot of my family due to dietary restriction. However, for me I still get really into the food and always have a huge spread. I just went with pink details. Malt balls, rice krispies, cake oreos, muffins, and even the ice cubes were all pink. Also notice the cups with the name tags in front of them. When a guest gets their first drink, they just find their name and put it on their cup (they were stickers!). Keeps everyone’s drinks straight. I don’t know why but it grosses me out to share drinks.

We also had all of my traditional games, but I’ve already posted about them! ;)

Rebecca

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