Happy Halloween!

Okay, I KNOW it isn't Halloween yet, but in my little corner of the world Halloween was yesterday.  You see, where I live they don't like the little ghosties and ghoulies to be out on a weekend night trick or treating.  Come to think of it, on the rare occassions that the 31st falls M-Th they don't allow trick or treating that night either.  Anyway, that means that yesterday was the day for school "Fall" parties. 

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!)

These little pasta bites are called radiatore.  I boiled up a pot of these and added some spagetti sauce and dubbed the dish "Brain and Blood Sauce".  The kids loved it!

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,

 

Fall in Love with Jesus Giveaway

The lovely group over at the Internet Cafe are giving away two wonderful prize packages to help you "fall" in love with Jesus.  Personally I want to win one of the gorgeous necklaces!  Today is the last day to enter so be sure to take a moment and check it out!

Lots of luck to you!

Love,
 

Halloween Treats! (Wecipe Wednesday a day early)

Fall is my absolute favorite season of the year.  I love the colors, the weather and I love the yummy treats with Halloween and Thanksgiving!

This is the first year I have ever packed lunches for my kids for school.  In years past we just took the easy way out and had them eat whatever the school prepared.  This year, however, I went out and bought the lunch boxes, the juice boxes, and have been having a ball planning the meals and including a special treat for them just to let them know I think they are really awesome kids every Friday.  But this is Halloween week!  That means something creepy in the lunch box every day!

Yesterday they had mummy dogs only I am a cheapskate and didn't use refrigerated dough. I bought one of those cheap, just add water pizza crust mixes.  I mixed up a batch, rolled out some long logs and used those to wrap my mummies.  I ended up with extra dough so I took the logs, sliced one end into several strips to make it look like a broomstick and baked it with the mummy dogs.  Today the broomsticks were packed up with some pizza sauce pureed witch.

In addition to the broomsticks and dipping sauce, I wanted to share my witches boogers and pumpkin poop with you.  Do you remember the old-fashion candy dots that came of strips of paper and you just ate the little dots off of the paper?  I found a recipe for them!  It is really simple.  Just take 2 egg whites and beat them until very frothy.  Slowly add 2 1/2 to 3 cups powdered sugar.  That is it!  I tinted some green and some orange, put them in a piping bag and I used a star tip.  I thought it would make pretty little stars like you get when you use icing.  As you can see below you just get round buttons.

I guess this just isn't stiff enough to hold its shape.  So don't bother trying to get fancy with this.  If you don't have an icing bag and tip, just use a plastic bag and cut a very small hole in one corner.  I cut strips of regular copy paper 2 inches by 11 inches.  Be sure to leave a space at the bottom to label the strips if you want to.  I discovered that you will get tired of piping little dots long before you run out of stuff to pipe!  When that happened I simply drew little ghosties on some paper and filled them in.  I mixed up a small amount of black food coloring (just use one drop of red, blue and green liquid coloring) and used a toothpick to dot eyes and mouths.

 

It takes about 20 minutes for the dots to be dry to the touch.  Let them sit overnight to dry out completely.  Then I just rolled each strip, secured with a rubber band and tossed it in the lunch box.  Hopefully the kids will enjoy them.  

I case you missed them, look at the pic with the witches boogers again.  Yep, those are eyes!  Look for them to appear in a project coming soon!  Happy Halloween!

I plan to add this to Tip Me Tuesday!


Love,

Making a come back?

Bad blogger! (head hanging down and peeking at you with sad eyes)  I know I have been a bad blogger and disappeared with no forwarding address or anything.  I am not going to give you a big, long sob story about my life getting complicated (it did), or having family problems (we did), or being very busy (I was), or any of the other excuses.  If you are still here, thanks so much for sticking it out.  If you are just finding my little spot on the net then thanks for stopping by, check out some of the older posts for some inspiration, and please take a moment to "follow" me or become my friend on Facebook.  I hope to be posting lots of new ideas, projects and patterns in the future.

During my hiatus I have been crafting, primarily for the kids, but I have begun to work on some Christmas presents.  (If you know me in the flesh don't peek, or if you do peek at least act surprised when you open your present and you have already seen it!).  I picked up knitting (A technique that I thought I hated and discovered I love!) So today I just wanted to show you a few of the things I have been up to.

 

This little dude was a lunch box gift for my son one friday.  He is made from pipe cleaners, homemade yarn pom poms and google eyes

 

And I had to make one for H's lunch box also.  This cutie is based on a project from the Family Fun website

This shawl was my first knitting project that wasn't a hat.  It is Patons Pretty Triangle Shawl .  I admit that this one was problematic for me.  I took the time to actually do a gauge swatch only to realize after I completed my first attempt that while my gauge was correct for the swatch, the shawl was MUCH smaller than the pattern said it would be.  So I increased my needle size and ended up with this.  The leaf pattern isn't nearly as pronounced as the picture in the pattern and the pattern has some major problems with row 9 of the border that I had to play with to get it to work.  Over all though I am pleased with it and it is going to be a Christmas present.

I have also knit a few hats for Caps for Good a part of the Save the Children campaign.  The caps are included in care packages that are give to mothers in developing countries to help lower the number of babies that die due to preventable and/or treatable causes. 

And I have started on a cross stitch project from the Glorious Earth leaflet by praying hands

I know, bad picture but it was the best I could do.  I am working on the top center picture with the eagle.  I have also done the one with the elk at the top left and the path through the fall woods on the bottom left.  This particular project is hopefully going to be completed in time to be a Christmas gift also.

And we got a new furry addition to the family.  Meet Nibbler...

only been home a few weeks

cute as can be!



hanging out with her new best friend



prefers sharing with her friend to eating alone!

Wish I had taken more pictures of my projects.  I have been making something small to include with my kids lunches every Friday.  Unfortunately I didn't take pictures since I wasn't really thinking about blogging.  Promise I will try to do better in the future!

So, thanks for stopping by today and I plan to be around more in the future!
Love,