The Great Pumpkin Tradition solves the "too much candy issue"

Do you ever feel like you have too much candy around the house after Halloween? Do you have to remove certain candies from your child’s stash because of food allergies?

Last year I started a new tradition at my house. You know the Charlie Brown story “The Great Pumpkin?” Do you remember how Linus told the story about the Great Pumpkin coming to give all the faithful boys and girls gifts? Last year I elaborated on that story a bit. I told my boys that if we put out a nice sign letting the “Great Pumpkin” know that we believe and that we welcome him, he will come and trade their candy for a toy. This solves two things for me. 1. most of the candy is gone. 2. I don't have to replace candy my boys can't have because of food allergies (I have to replace something like 90% of the candy they get Trick-or-Treating).

Just before Halloween, I found this pumpkin decoration. I also purchased a small rectangular piece of wood that I painted up and put rub on letters to make a sign to welcome the great pumpkin. I Drilled a couple of holes in my welcome sign and into the bottom of my pumpkin. The night of Halloween we put this sign on our front door letting the “Great Pumpkin” know he is welcome. Why the night before? Because I have another Halloween decoration that also hangs on our door. ;)

I know, I know….my boys are a bit spoiled. ;) The toys they got were Bakugans. The “Great Pumpkin” left them with about 10 pieces each of candy they could eat. They still kept a little candy and were totally thrilled with the exchange.

Oh and by the way, I got my idea from Anjeanette. She was talking about the idea a couple of years ago. I have to give credit where credit is due.

Katrina

Pumpkin Carving Option

With Halloween coming around, many of us tackle the tradition of carving pumpkins.  I have always enjoyed carving them...or so I thought.  My jack-o-lanterns have never been great creations of art and so this year I decided to tackle something a little more complex.  I even went out and bought a special Pumpkin-Carving Dremel tool from some hardware store.  I spent hours scouring over the internet to find the PERFECT design.  

Then I started carving the pumpkin.  Not only was the dremel tool a bust (I'm sure it works great for some people) but I realized that I lack the patience to carve an elaborate pumpkin.  So I settled upon one of the patterns I had deemed too "EASY" for me to undertake.  Turns out it was the PERFECT way to go.   

I LOVE this Jack-o-Lantern.  I only had to cut out the windows and the moon, and then I painted in the house.  SO easy!  Did I mention that I love to paint?  Much more so that I like to carve, so this way I got an elegant design without spending all those frustrating hours carving it out.  And I like that it looks cool during the daytime as well!  Looks like this is how I will be carving pumpkins from here on out.

 

Erika

Mummy Loves You- School Lunch

Today’s lunch was “Mummy Loves You!”

 

English Muffin Mummies and Strawberry Mummies.  You could use black olives for the English Muffin eyes, however my kids don’t like olives!  The strawberries eyes are mini chocolate chips.  The wrapping is melted white chocolate.

Just a quickie today.  I snapped this picture of my kids lunches as we were heading out the door!

Rebecca

PS Do your kids ask ridiculous things of you because they are the children of a crafter?  My daughter asked me how the fruit cup (upper right corner of the lunch) fit the theme.  I told her it was all red (grapes, pomegranate seeds, and raspberries) so it was blood.  Gross, I know, but it was all I could think of on the fly!

Halloween Manipulative-Halloween Bean

Here is one of my fun Halloween activities for the kids.  Aren’t those cute Pumpkins and Ghosts?  They are just painted beans!  Then, use a sharpie to make the faces!

I actually got this activity from a garage sale from a teacher.  I'm not sure what kind of paint was used on these beans, but it's very shiny!  I'm going to guess it was spray paint.  I've had a few people tell me that they have used that on Pinto beans, and that's what looks like is going on here!  Thanks to everyone for helping us figure this out! ;)  I can see lots more of these for the future (Green christmas trees, or maybe as ornaments?).

You can use them as is for sorting, patterning, counting, etc!!

Or you can add a fun picture for extra fun and activities.  This is just a basic shape out of felt!
 
Aren’t those hands the cutest?  I do this with kids as young as 18 months (just watch them to not put them in their mouths!) 

Rebecca
We are joining the following parties; ABC and 123,

Let The Boo-ing Begin!

My BFF already Boo-ed us last weekend.  This was tricky to do because she lives in California, and I live in Arizona…and we were in Las Vegas.  But she’s one of those who ALWAYS is on top of these things no matter the distance, busy lives, etc!  She is amazing!  Last weekend she took me to see Garth Brooks, in Las Vegas.  (See, I told you she was amazing!).  It was my first concert ever!  And I LOVE music.  Crazy, hu!?

Anyways, she left that cute furry Halloween gift bag on the front seat of the car for me!  I can’t wait to drink that Scary Orange Hot Chocolate, from a coffin!  The ghost is soap-on-a-rope!  And then she had two Halloween spiced car fresheners for me!  How fun was that for a Boo Bag!?

Check out our post last year on Being Boo-ed.  Anjeanette Boo-ed the family with those Jack-O-Lantern baskets filled with goodies to make caramel apples!  It was soooo cute, and sweet! 

The year before that Anjeanette gave out these adorable baskets tied up with cute Halloween ribbons and filled with Halloween goodies!!  Can you tell that Anjeanette knows how to get her Boo on!?
Yesterday I did some baking for this year’s Boo-ing.  You’ll get pictures next week of those (they are going out this weekend).  There are so many fun things to do for these!  I hope everyone else joins in on the Boo-ing fun. 

I’d love to hear what others do for this, or have had done to them.  Pictures would be especially great!

Rebecca

I'm linking to the following fabulous parties; Someday Crafts,

Scary Halloween Garland-So cute!

Garlands are such a great holiday decoration.  This Halloween one is so cute, and easy to sew up.
Anjeanette came up with this garland, using Paper Crave’s Halloween template.

Anjeanette whipped these up from felt, using the technique she used with her Pumpkin Pencil Toppers, shown below. 

Click here for that technique.
Happy Haunted Sewing!
Rebecca

We are partying with the following: Sew Much Ado,

Halloween Table Runner

Hello October!

A super great Halloween decoration is Anjeanette’s Halloween Table runner!  So cute, right!?

Anjeanette posted this Halloween Table Runner last year when she was talking about what/who inspires her.  This is what Anjeanette said last year, “I thought I would share some fabulous blogs that have inspired me this month, to recreate something from their tutorial.
This is a wonderfully talented lady Kim of Bitty Bits and Pieces. I actually found her Charm Pack Quilt Tutorial sometime earlier this year. I thought it was just adorable. Then her blog popped up on my horizon again when she was on Moda Bakeshop. I love Moda Bakeshop. I bookmarked her Charm Pack Quilt Tutorial to come back to when I had some time. She also has an adorable Pumpkin Tissue Holder Tutorial that I have on my to-do list. I also found out that aside from having an awesome blog, Kim is a very nice person! Yay nice!”

Thanks, Anjeanette, for letting us know who your inspiration is, as well as giving us this Halloween eye candy!
Rebecca

We're joining the following parties:  Sew Much Ado,

Halloween Coasters

With Autumn and Halloween comes sitting back with a cup of hot cider, or other yum-e-ness! 
Enter-the need for a coaster.

Since it’s Halloween, why can’t your coaster be adorable?  These are made out of that counted plastic canvas and yarn!  Love them!

These are my Mom’s genious-ness!

My Mom made all of these, too.  I have more, too.  One set for each month to be exact!  Check out this post to see a tutorial on working with counted plastic canvas.

Now don’t your coasters need to be cute, too?!

Rebecca
Happy Drinking!

Lego Indiana Jones Birthday Party

OK here is where you start humming the theme song.  Cause that is totally what is going through my head right now. ;)  So go ahead and take care of that little sound clip for me. ;)

Now that we have the background music taken care of lets get on to party stuff.  I did a lot of searching on ye old’ web for ideas.  Boy! Did I ever find lots and lots of really cool ideas out there.  Some how with all that coolness I managed to put my own twist on things.  Seriously you hardly even have to do any of your own planning with how many cool parties there are out there with this theme.  I really did want to do each and every single idea and then reality set in.  There is no way that I could cram it all into one party.  Not even if that party lasted 8 hours.  Plus with my boys our parties can’t be too fussy.  They don’t do well when we try to micro mange the party.  All the transitions from one game or thing to the next causes them to be upset.


Google is a great place to start when looking for Lego Indiana Jones images.  All you really have to do is page through the images and find one you like.  Copy it and put it into your trusty photo editor, add a background and type up your invitation.  I saved it in a small enough file format to be able to email it to all the kids in my son’s class.  (His teacher was awesome!  At the beginning of the year she gave everyone a complete phone, address and email list of all the kids in the class.  It was complete with parents names.  She suggested we all get to know each other since our kids would probably be in the same classes through 8th grade.)

When I throw a party I try to come up with favors that are part of the theme.  Often times I will go with something that has a related theme.  For example I know that Indiana Jones was an Archeologist.  I know that he was some times after Egyptian artifacts.  So I went to Google and found  this website that allows you to write in Hieroglyphics.  Specifically they put it in cartouche format.  I made a key by copying the images of each of the alphabet letter.  By the way you can’t do them all at once because the program will condense it down.  When writing in hieroglyphics apparently it isn’t one symbol per letter at some point.  If you are doing 3 initials it is.  So get the initials of all the kids and paste them into your trusty photo editor.  I actually made up a sheet with all the symbols stacked for each name.  I also reversed the image because I painted the side you draw on with gold.  That way the front has a shiny surface.  To help me remember which was which, I put the initials on the master copy just below each cartouche.  The cartouches on the left are my Shrinky Dinks waiting to be cut out and put into the oven.  I used permanent markers to trace and color in the images.  I found that coloring in the images before tracing the out line was better.  When coloring over the black marker it tends to smear.

This one is my son’s initials.  I forgot to punch the holes in the top before I put them in the oven.  The one on the left is the back side of his brother’s cartouche.  As you can see they don’t all turn out the same size.  It all depends on the symbols for each letter. 

This is one of the finished cartouches for his friends.  Since the hole got really small (I used a regular size hole punch), I used a jump ring and put it on some gold boon dongle cord.  (I think that is what that stuff is called).  I have another observation to share.  If you over bake your cartouches a little it gives a slightly crackled look and makes the gold background look more shiny through the cartouche.  Also keep some chopsticks or something similar on hand when shrinking these.  You may have to open the oven and pry them open.  They curl as they shrink and some of them wanted to stick to themselves.  This was corrected easily by holding down one side and pulling back with the other chopstick to open it.  Then close the oven back up and let them straighten out.  I press them down with a flat spatula as soon as I get them out of the oven.  This helps to straighten them out a little more.  Once they were cool, I painted two coats of acrylic gold metallic paint on the rough side.   Once I had the templates made they were pretty quick and easy to trace out.
I had the key (shown in the top picture) out and had each of the kids figure out what the symbols were for their initials.  They then had to find the correct cartouche.  They loved it.  Their parents also thought they were pretty cool too. 

Dig out your memories of Raider’s of the Lost Arch.  In the beginning of the movie the Hovitos (sp?) Had poison blow darts that they were chasing Indy with.  Many people use straw with q-tips dipped in red paint and shoot them at some sort of picture of one of the villains.  I was ready to start working on that idea when I thought of all the extra PVC pipe I had left over from our Lego Agents Party last January (we made marshmallow shooters).  I had a few pieces that were 9” long.  I decided to take one of our tag darts and see if I could shoot it out of the pipe.  YEP, it worked.  Please not that not all 1/2 inch PVC pipe have the same inner diameter.  Be sure to take a dart with you to the hardware store to make sure it will fit.  I had picked up a few 2 foot pre cut pieces that ended up not working because of that problem.  So back to buying a 10 foot length of the stuff I bought in January.  Luckily we are only talking about $3 worth.  If you look closely at the above picture you can see all the info off the pipe I used.  I simply wound the duck tape diagonally around the pipe and trimmed the ends.  Another idea to help the kids know whose is whose is to label them with their names.  I used my trusty label maker for that.  It was kind of hard to see the names at a glance.  I would have liked to have had colored electrical tape to make colored bands that the labels could be put on.  That way the kids can see what color it is as well as their name.  Even the location of the tape could be an indicator.

Time to make some targets.  I purchased 5/8 of a yard of red felt and 1/2 a yard of black felt.  I also had a smaller piece of red felt for the circles.  I cut the red felt into 4 equal rectangles for the background.  For the silhouettes I printed out an image of Mola Ram on 13x19 inch paper.  I happen to have a printer that large but you can print him out in sections if you don’t.  I traced the image onto poster board for my template.  I found the image on www.bricklink.com and went to the mini figure section and then to the Indiana Jones figures and then clicked on Mola Ram (I did the same for all the other characters).  I then copied the image and pasted into my Photo Shop program.  I made the canvas size 13x19 inches and enlarged the figure as much as I could to fit the whole space.  I simply used my poster board cut out as a patter on the black felt.  I used no-sew Heat-N-Bond to adhere the silhouette onto the background and did the same with the target spots. 
Note:  Use a piece of paper between the felt and the iron otherwise the felt will melt onto the iron if you warn not using cotton wool felt.

If you don't know about www.briklink.com it is a website devoted to buying and selling Legos.  New and used.  When looking for specific items they have a picture of the item and list all of the shops that have that item in order of price.  Anyway, if you are looking for figure images it is a good place to go because all the pictures are front and center with the figures standing up.  We have shopped there many times for those hard to find items or for even replacement items. 


For each of the other figures I simple sized the head to the same proportions.  I cropped just the heads from the images and printed them out on standard 8.5x11 inch paper.  I cut the head off of my Mola Ram template and taped on the next head.  Since all mini figures have the exact same body this works. 

Here is my 6 year old demonstrating how to use these.  He is aiming at Belloq.  Put the dart in the mouth end of the tube and blow.  It does not work so well if you put the dart just inside the other end.  It flies straighter and faster if you put it in the mouth end.  Our tubes are 9 inches long.  We sampled shorter tubes and the darts didn’t fly as far or as straight.  I was able to blow the darts out of an 18 inch tube as well.  We went with 9 inches because I already had 5 tubes at that length.  If you are doing these then buy a 10 foot length and cut it down into 12 inch sections.  You will have 10 blow tubes for just over $3.  You can use Nerf tag darts that already have the hook side of Velcro on them or you could simply use 3/4 inch pom poms.  If you did that then you could probably try making the center circle out of the hook side of velcro for them to stick to.  We gave each child a tube and two darts to keep.
The boys got the camouflage “duck” tape and the girls got the tie dye “duck” tape.  I purchased the “Duck” tape from my craft store.

I had to do another mini figure cake.  I couldn’t do it for one and not the other.  You can check out my Lego Agents Party Post  for info on the head and hands.  For Indiana Jones I used food coloring to add his beard and eye brows.  His whip, bag, gun holster and belt are all made of rolled fondant (like the outer layer of the head and hands).  I used some napkins inside a plastic bag to help give his bag some shape. 
The frosting is regular white frosting from Wilton.  However, I did add some chocolate frosting for the pants.  So the top half of the cake is chocolate cake with white frosting and the bottom is chocolate on chocolate.  I used Betty Crocker’s gluten free cake mix.  If you want to make a 9x13 inch cake with that mix you have to use two boxes or you will end up with pancakes.
By the way our guests didn’t know it was gluten free and they were saying how good the cake was.
Note: I noticed that Wilton’s frosting says it may contain dairy.  I am not entirely sure but we think my oldest is reacting to possible trace amounts of dairy.  That or he is getting his Dad’s cold.  My 6 year old currently has the stomach flu with massive stomach cramps so it is hard to tell.

The whip and the bag were made a few days ahead of time so that they could dry out.  I added the strap to the bag the day I made the cake.  I simply wet one side of the bag so the strap would stick to it. 
I used embroidery floss to make the marks in the fondant to make it look braided.  For an added touch I tied the floss onto the end and braided it to look like the string on the end of an actual whip.  Yep you guessed it I Googled how to braid a whip.  I watched a couple of videos on it.  It is fascinating to watch.  I was going to try to braid the fondant but it likes to dry out quick and cracks when it does.  I like how it turned out don’t you?

I tried to do a tie in with all of the movies.  The kids used sticky dots and gems to make their own “Holy Grail” cups.  OK so we all know the real Holy Grail in the movie was as plain as could be but this was more fun for the kids.
My only note about this is that you need a TON of gems.  I didn’t have nearly enough.  I forgot that 6 and 8 year olds will load up the cups with as many gems as they can get away with.  So either have lots and lots and lots and double what you think lots is, of gems or give each child a set amount of gems to work with.  I put the gems on the sticky dots ahead of time.
 
There isn’t a whole lot that I would tie in with the Temple of Doom for 6 year olds but I had to do eyeballs.  I had been wanting to make eyeball ice cubes when I found someone that used truffle molds for the shape.  I decided to try using their girls marshmallow recipe and it worked great.  They were soft and squishy.  One mom said that she had to close her eyes before popping one in her mouth.  The adults couldn’t resist them.  The more adventurous kids also tried them.  All in all they were a hit and very yummy.  I can see making these every Halloween.

Click here for the recipe and how to make the marshmallows. 

To make them into eyeballs you will need:
The recipe from our Marshmallow Post
Truffle molds (like the ones Wilton makes) (I had two molds and they are only $2 a mold so get as many as you need so you can make all your eyeballs at once.  Each mold makes 14 truffles.)
Non-stick spray
A Pastry bag (or plastic bag with a corner cut off)
blue food coloring (the liquid type)
Black gel food coloring (for the pupil)
A Paint brush

Once you have made your marshmallow fluff put it into your pastry bag.  Spray the truffle mold  to give it a good coating (so the marshmallow won’t stick).  Then pipe in the marshmallow into each well.  Spray some foil completely with the non-stick spray and cover for a few hours so the marshmallow sets up.

I had a pan ready for the extra marshmallow fluff to make regular marshmallows.

Once your marshmallows have set up and can be handled it is time to “paint” them up.  They will be slippery at this point with the non-stick spray.  I made mine the day before and the slippery feel to them went mostly away.  Anyway.  Have a plate ready that is dusted with powdered sugar to keep them from sticking.

Carefully pull all the marshmallows out of the mold with the round side up.  Put a bit of blue food coloring in the bottom of a small bowl.  You will take an eye ball and dip the top of it in the food coloring.  It will have quite a bit on it.  You can then “paint” the others by dabbing the first eyeball onto some of the others.  When it no longer transfers much color put it down and start with another one.  Once you have all your iris’ done you can paint the pupil on with a paint brush.  I put mine in the fridge over night loosely covered with foil.

In the above picture you can see that I tried to paint one of the eyeballs with blue gel icing and a paint brush. (it is the one on the right almost in the bottom corner)  The others turned out so much better and took the coloring easier.

Other things we did for the party:

We also purchased some dates from the grocery store so that anyone who wanted to could try a date.  I was tempted to put a sign out that said “Bad Dates” but figured nobody would try them.

I found some big snakes at the dollar store and hung them from our tree and on the swing set in the back yard.  I also purchased sever bags of small snakes and put some around the food on the table and most of them in our sand pit area.

The kids took home the items that I had made for them plus gem lollipop rings, a twisty straw and mini packs of their own water balloons.

We had toilet paper on hand that we were going to do a mummy wrapping contest with.  We completely forgot about it since we were all having such a good time.


We also had a water balloon fight since it was 104 degrees out side that day.  I have to say that unless you plan to fill water balloons ahead of time I would go with those foam water bombs form the dollar store or water guns or they now have tubes that you can get for a dollar.  You put then end of the tube in a bucket of water and pull back on the plunger to fill.  They are awesome but don’t last very long (so get extras in case one breaks during water play).

We had a massive water fight on Memorial Day weekend with all the cousins.  They all got soaked with those water tubes and had a blast for hours.  Plus they got to take them home.

Totally unrelated to the IJ party but I have to share this.  I found this  set of plans on Instructables for making  water cannons out of PVC.  They would be fun for the kids to put together and then play with and last way longer then the ones I got at the dollar store.  The website makes them out of 2 inch and 1 inch PVC but you could easily use 1 inch and 1/2 inch PVC for smaller kids.  They would be very cheap to make up using the 1 and 1/2 inch pipe sizes.  I can totally see making these for a party.  It is a good thing I didn’t see this before the party or I would have had to make them. ;)  My darling husband smiles and goes along with all my crazy schemes.

You survived my extremely long post!!
Thanks for hanging in there with me!
Katrina

Technorati Tags: Lego,Indiana Jones,party,marshmallow,eyeballs,food,party favors,cake

We are joining the fun at the following parties; Tatertots and Jello, Funky Junk Interiors, Stephanie Lynn, 

Pumpkin Pie Spice Play Dough

I run a daycare. I have crafts and foods every day that pertain to a theme for the month. Yesterday I tried a new one and I had to share it! I absolutely LOVE pumpkin pie. Yum. I also make a delish Pumpkin Cream Cheese Crescent Roll* that is to die for. Really, anything sprinkled with pumpkin pie spice entices me. So, when I remembered a recipe that I had for Pumpkin Spice Play Dough, I just had to make it. Wow, it is fantastic. It really does smell great, and totally looks like you are playing with pumpkin pie. Awesome! We will be playing with this right up until Thanksgiving!

Here’s the super easy recipe:

2 C Flour

1 C Salt

4 tsp. Cream of Tartar

3 tsp pumpkin-pie spice (I did 4…cuz I wanted to!)

2 C Water

2 TBL Vegetable Oil

Red and Yellow Food Coloring (the more the better!)

Combine all ingredients in a large pot. Stir on low heat until mixture starts forming a ball and will pull away from the sides. Let cool. Enjoy.

Rebecca

Obviously you could eat this dough and not die, but with that much salt, I can’t imagine it would taste very good!

*

Easy Peasy Pumpkin Cream Cheese Crescent Roll Recipe:

Refrigerator Crescent Rolls

Cream Cheese

Pumpkin Pie Spice

Orange sugar or sprinkles

Take Pillsbury Crescent Rolls and unroll them. Spread Cream Cheese on them. I used to love Cream Cheese and would add a thick layer. Now my thighs are begging for a thinner layer, and that tastes great too! Sprinkle with Pumpkin Pie Spice (again, to your liking...my liking is a LOT). Then, roll them up and cook them as directed. For extra bling, sprinkle the tops with orange sugar or sprinkles. I actually do this last step to differentiate between crescent rolls with the pumpkin pie cream cheese filling, and those without (sadly some members of my family do not like cream cheese...what are they thinking?!)!

Technorati Tags: pumpkin spice,play dough,homemade,pumpkin,cream cheese,refrigerator rolls,crescent,recipe

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

Hot Spiced Orange Drink

Technorati Tags: Drink,Orange,Hot,Make-A-Mix,Thanksgiving,Family,Traditions,Autumn

Mmmmm, yes that’s me, sitting back enjoying a hot drink and thinking about all I have to be thankful for. Seriously, even through my hectic, chaotic life, I’m loving every minute. You will probably hear me go on and on during this time of year. But I have the greatest family on Earth (I swear, even the extended family members are so super awesome and amazing!), wonderful friends, and a new cute little house. What more could I ask for?

At this time of year there are so many things that I am thankful for. One thing I try to never forget about during the seasons is the smell and taste of the season. See this post of mine for more smells of the seasons. Because my Mom used to make the same things at the Holidays, certain smells or tastes will always remind me of that Holiday! I hope to pass these kind of memory invoking things on to my children. We make this drink, and another one called Wassail, during Autumn and Winter.

This drink is from a mix that you make and then just pull it out all Autumn and Winter long. When Erika got married, the sisters got together and made up a bunch of those Make-A-Mixes (we love making those together because you can get more bang for your buck! We’ve done them a couple of times over the years). This is one of the mixes we found. It’s great because I store the jar in my pantry and whenever I feel like just a cup of hot spiced orange drink, I whip it up!

Hot Spiced Orange Drink Recipe:

1 10 oz jar Tang orange crystals

2oz Lemonade Mix

2 C Sugar

2 tsp Ground Cinnamon

1 tsp Ground Cloves

Mix and store in a covered container.

Jar instructions:

To make into a drink, mix 2-3 tsp of Hot Spiced Orange Drink powder mix and 1 C boiling water.

Make a jar of the powder mix. Then, make yourself a cup. Then, put your feet up, relax, and enjoy. Hot drinks are always so soothing to me.

Rebecca

How to make your Jack-O-Lanterns last

This is my son’s Jack-O-Lantern from last year. We carved our pumpkins a day before Halloween last year. I tried a trick I had heard about to keep the pumpkin from shriveling up. I took this picture on November 7th. That is right our Jack-O-Lanterns lasted from October 30th till November 7th!

What did we do? I smeared white petroleum jelly all over the cut edges. I didn’t coat the entire inside just the cuts we made. At the point that I took this picture our pumpkin had white fluffy mold growing on the inside so you wouldn’t want to cut it a full week before Halloween but this method will certainly make this less of a last minute event.

Happy Halloween!

Katrina

Anjeanette here. I know this may be no big deal to those of you in much cooler areas. But here in Arizona, our Jack-o-lanterns have very short life times (a day or two is all). I'm totally doing this with our Jack o lanterns this year. Thanks Katrina!

Easy No Fuss Halloween Cupcakes-GF/CF

FYI...These are Dairy and Gluten free!!!

Peeps make the perfect Halloween cupcake toppers. A generous amount of frosting will keep your peeps standing upright. I made these for the first time last year with the ghosts after seeing some adorable ghost cupcakes made out of marshmallows covered in frosting. I even posted about them on my personal blog. Then I got a brilliant idea to just use peeps. No muss no fuss and they were thoroughly enjoyed.

When you pull the pumpkin peeps apart there is always a sticky edge. You can take care of this by pressing the exposed marshmallow in orange colored sugar crystals. You don’t have to do anything with the ghost peeps since they aren’t connected in the same way.

When I bought my peeps today I noticed that they also had “black” cats as well. If you have a few dozen cupcakes to make up for a Halloween party why not just top them with peeps and fun sprinkles? Even if you don’t have a party to make them for your children will no doubt love them as a special treat. They will enjoy helping you frost the cupcakes and decorating them with peeps and sprinkles.

Happy Halloween

Katrina

Technorati Tags: Halloween,cupcakes,Peeps,decoration

{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.)