Yep, around here Halloween parties at school are politically incorrect. At first it shifted to "Fall Harvest" festivals. I guess that was still not appropriate so they started scheduling school spirit week the same week and gave the kids a different theme each day (wear red to show you are against drugs, 70's day, favorite sports team day, etc) On the day of trick or treat they can wear their costumes (as long as it isn't gory, scary, doesn't have weapons, meets the dress code standards, and doesn't offend anyone) to "scare away drugs".
And then, in an effort to improve the nutrition of the food the children eat they have eliminated pizza parties (unless you purchase pizza through the school cafeteria) and placed HUGE restrictions of what food parents can bring in. Gone are the days of cupcakes and fruit punch at the party and candies in the goody bags. (But your child can eat cupcakes for lunch from the school). You can't even bring in apples unless they are individually packages at the store! In other words, gone are my days of making cutesie snacks for school parties.
So that means today is the last day for cutesie Halloween lunches for a year. So in addition to the witches brooms, mummy dogs, witches boogers, pumpkin poop, and sugar ghosties I wanted to share these with you.
This little cutie is made from brownies that were baked in a mini cupcake pan. The legs are small pretzel sticks that were broke, dipped in melted chocolate and set on waxed paper in a "V" shape to set. I used melted chocolate to glue the legs to the body and to glue the eyes on. do you recognize those eyes? They are the ones I made from the candy dot recipe you can find here. Admittedly, these are a bit finicky and time consuming but they are so worth it!
These are super simple to make. Take pretzel rods, dip one end in melted vanilla bark or white chocolate. Set on wax paper. Add eyes using either the candy dots or use a toothpick to dab some melted chocolate on. Stop here for ghosties. Or you can take it a step further and put the remaining melted vanilla bark into a baggie, poke a small hole, and squeeze some mummy wrapping across the bodies being sure not to cover their little eyes. If you have any remaining vanilla bark or chocolate be sure to coat some pretzel stick with it and pack that in hubbies lunch. He will really appreciate it ( or at least mine did!)
Finally, a white witch finger (didn't have the wrinkles cut in this pic but did in the next one), a severed finger and a monster mouth.
These are both string cheese. The white one has several notches cut out to imitate wrinkles. Then I cut out a flat part for the fingernail. color this area in using a food pen or just do what I did, use a q-tip and some regular food coloring. The second is a cheese stick wrapped in a piece of sliced ham and I used a slivered almond for the fingernail.
This is two apple slices. On one side of each slice poke some slivered almonds in to imitate teeth. Then set them together. If packing for a lunch use a toothpick to hold them together. (You can see mine just barely poking through on the bottom right side of the mouth)
And they also got some circus peanut pumpkins. They didn't stay around long enough to get a picture of them but if you go here you can see what they look like and how to make them. I did discover that I do NOT like circus peanuts. Hubby, however, loves them.
And thus ends the week of Halloween lunches. I will end todays post with some pics of the kids before trick or treat
Love,
