Day 22: Mummy Pizzas

A friend of mine had made these mummy pizzas and I thought that it was such a cute idea.  We were going to a Halloween celebration with Big Bub's preschool, so I decided to bring these as my potluck dish.  The kids loved them!

Supplies:

• English muffins (I used 12 whole wheat ones)
• Pizza Sauce
• Sliced Olives (for the eyes)
• String Cheese

Directions:

Step 1:

Split the English muffins in half and lay them on a baking sheet

Step 2:

Put pizza sauce on the English muffins

Step 3:

Add olives to the English muffins for the eyes

Step 4:

Shred the string cheese and layer it on the English muffins to look like a mummy.  Cover a portion of the olive eyes to make it look more like a mummy :)

Step 5:
I wasn't sure how long to bake it and at what temperature, so I Googled it and most sites said to bake them at 350 for 10 minutes.  I think that I had to actually do around 12 minutes.

Day 21: "Funny Bones"

I did not make these "Funny Bones" this year, but I had pinned the idea.  We had a Halloween party with my MOMS Club group and one of the moms made these.  They were really tasty.  I think that white chocolate with some pretzels is a winning combination!

To get the recipe and see some photos go here to Epicurious :)

-Heather

p.s. I'm taking a break to go and shower!

Day 20: Fall/Halloween Photo Shoot

In October we did a Halloween/Fall photo shoot by Resolution Photographics.  I think the pictures turned out really cute of my boys!

Day 19: Halloween Ideas

I had pinned 50 Simple Halloween ideas from Tinkerlab and was planning on doing one of them, but you know my story.  This has some great ideas and some of them can be done all year round.  Check it out!

Day 18: Pumpkin Patch

One cannot miss out on going to a pumpkin patch in October!  We went to a new one that was just a few miles from our house.  Even though it was small the boys enjoyed it and we got some pumpkins.  Here is the Little Bubs riding the tractor that they had.

Day 17: Pumpkin Dip Bowl

Picture by Thayer Allyson Gowdy

I didn't do this idea this year, but I did it last year and I was happy with the results.  Take a small pumpkin (sugar pumpkins are a great size) and scoop out the insides of it.  Then you can fill it with your dip straight into the container or if your container fits, which mine did, you can just put the container in the pumpkin.  Serve with some veggies :)

Day 16: Mummy Dogs

Making mummy dogs was on my plan for Halloween, but I didn't get around to it.  I actually made them in January, but I forgot to take some pictures.  I have had some friends do these before and that is where I got the idea.  I did an internet search and found the blog Our Best Bites who gives a tutorial on these.  They also have a great picture of what they look like.

Day 15: Halloween Decorating

Okay, this is a really bad picture and you can't see much, but this is our house decorated for Halloween.  I ran out of time with everything this year.  We put up our lights and hung some spiders and ghosts.  We didn't do any spider webs with little spiders, which is something that we normally do.  Next year I will definitely have to step it up!

Day 14: Pumpkins

What is Halloween without some pumpkins?  The above we got from Trader Joe's and the below are pumpkins from a pumpkin patch.

Day 13: Felt Pumpkins

This is a super easy craft to do and my boys had fun playing with it.  Of course they also then had fun taking the scissors to it and destroying it.  Oh well, it was cheap and easy!

Supplies: 

• Orange felt
• Green felt
• Black felt
• Scissors

Directions:

Step 1:

Cut the orange felt into some pumpkin shapes

Step 2:

Cut the green felt into some stem shapes

Step 3:

Cut the black felt into eyes, noses, and mouths

Step 4:

Have the kids play with the felt and make their own pumpkin faces.

Step 5:

When you are all done you can put it in a Ziploc bag and keep it for the next year...unless your children get to it and destroy it :).

Day 12: A Birthday Boy

It was the Little Bubs 2nd birthday!  So hard to believe that he turned two.  For his birthday he got a Halloween birthday lunch.

We made this fun Halloween mac & cheese.  It had pumpkins, ghosts, and bats.  Of course I had to also add in some veggies!

The rest of his lunch was the candy corn cheesecake and the mummy juice boxes.

Happy Birthday to LB!

Day 11: Candy Corn Broom

 Ha ha!  I said that I would finish and I am, but really late!!!  We made these candy corn brooms from Woman's Day.  I just went back to the link and it doesn't look like the instructions are there anymore.  When I was making these I also didn't follow the instructions because I was being lazy.  I was kind of just guessing at what was done.

Supplies:

• Candy Corn
• Paper bags (2)
• Twine or string
• scissors
• stick

Finding a stick was hard for me since I don't live somewhere where sticks are abundant!




Directions:

Step 1: 

Cut the two bags in 1/2

Step 2:

Add some candy corn to one of the bags

Step 3:

Add a stick to the middle of the bag to look like the broom's handle.  Then tie off the top of the bag so that it holds the stick in the back.

Step 4:

With the second back cut strips all around it without cutting through all the way to the bottom or top.

 Step 5:

Add the cut back over the top of the uncut bag and tie off.  Now you have your candy corn broom!

Day 10: Candy Corn Cheesecake Cupcakes

We were going to go to an October birthday celebration and I was the one that was scheduled to bring the treats, so I came up with Candy Corn Cheesecake Cupcakes.  I got the inspiration for these from a couple of sources.  The actual recipe is from Skinny Taste.  The recipe is supposed to be a healthier version of cheesecake bites.  I made a slight variation to the recipe, which I will list later.  Then the idea to have it look like a candy corn came from Eighteen25 (it was a guest post from blogger Jamielyn from I Heart Naptime).  Well, it turns out that the playdate at the park didn't end up happening because it was rainy and stuff came up for everyone.  This meant that we got to enjoy these cupcakes all to ourselves!  It is a good thing that there were only 12 servings for this recipe!

Ingredients:
Filling:
-8 oz light cream cheese
-1/4 cup sugar
-1 tsp vanilla
-6 oz low-fat Greek yogurt (the original recipe called for nonfat vanilla Greek yogurt, but I already had plain low-fat on hand).
-2 large egg whites
-1 tbsp all-purpose flour
-yellow & red food coloring
-candy corn

*In the original recipe she had reduced fat vanilla wafers as the bottom of the cheesecakes.  I bought some vanilla wafers, but they were too small for the bottom of the cupcake liners so I did the following.

Crust:
-20 wafers (I would maybe do 30 wafers since 20 wasn't enough).
-2 tbsp melted unsalted butter

Directions:
-Heat oven to 350
-Line a cupcake pan with 12 liners

Crust:
-Chop of the wafers in a food processor until they are crumbles.
-Add the butter and mix until combined.
*They were too buttery so I should have added in more wafers or cut the butter amount down.
-Put a portion of the crust in the bottom of each liner.  Push down on the crumbs to make it firm.

Filling:

-Gently beat the cream cheese, sugar and vanilla until smooth with an electric mixer.
-Gradually beat in the yogurt, egg whites, and flour.
-Separate the batter into three bowls with each bowl have a little less than the previous bowl.
-With the bowl with the most batter add in yellow and red food coloring and mix until you get the desired orange color you want.
-The bowl with the middle amount of batter add in yellow food coloring until it reaches your desired consistency.
-Leave the last bowl the color of white.

 -Add in the yellow color first to the cupcake liners that are already filled with the crust.  I don't know how much for each because I just eyeballed it.

-Add in the orange on top of the yellow.

-Lastly, add the white batter on top of the orange.  I didn't have enough white batter to cover the tops of the "cupcakes," but I kind of like the look of them not being completely covered.

-Bake for 20-25 minutes until the center is almost set.
-Add in a candy corn in the center of each cupcake
-Cool to room temperature
-Chill for at least an hour in the refrigerator

-Take out and serve!  I wish that I got a picture of what they looked like layered!

Enjoy these because they were very yummy!

Heather

Day 9: Spider Lollipops

Here is another cute craft that doesn't take that long to make and the kids will LOVE them :).

Supplies:
-Lollipops (I used small tootsie pops)
-Pipe cleaners (4 per spider)
-Googly eyes
-Glue
-Scissors

Directions:

Step 1: Cut the pipe cleaners in half.  Each 1/2 of the pipe cleaner will be two legs.

Step 2:  Take one pipe cleaner and bend it in half.  Then in the crease mark where the half is put the lollipop.  Then bend the pipe cleaner around the stick of the lollipop to hold it onto the stick.  Repeat with the next three pipe cleaners.  Once all pipe cleaners have been attached then you want to bend them so that they resemble spider's legs.

Each lollipop is facing a different direction & how you want to do it is up to you.

Step 3:  Add some googly eyes to the front of the spider with some glue.  Once the glue dries the spider lollipops are good to go!

-Heather

Day 8: Mummy Juice Boxes

The Mummy Juice Boxes was actually an idea that I got from a friend that brought these to a Halloween party last year.  I thought that it was pretty genius.  I didn't look for a tutorial because it was simple enough for me to figure out.  I also happened to have all of the supplies on hand!  Good thing I like to have crafty stuff laying around my house because this challenge would have been even harder!

Supplies:

-Juice box(es)

-White tape.  I used masking tape

-Googly eyes

Directions:

Step 1:

Take the straw off of the juice box and then wrap the white tape around the juice box.  Wrap it horizontally and diagonally to give it the mummy look.  I decided not to tape the bottom and top of the juice box so that the straw could easily be put in and so that they would stand flat.

Step 2:

Add on some googly eyes.  I just used the tape and put some on the back of the eyes and taped them to the box.  Then I got some tape and partially covered the eyes to give it a more authentic look (see the first & last picture in the post).

Step 3:

Tape the straw to the back and they are done!  Easy peasy!

-Heather

Fail!

I have failed this challenge!  I did give it a good try, but I really should have looked at my calendar and seen that it would have been hard for me to do.  I guess that I just wanted to do another challenge since I haven't done one.  I will finish posting all of the things that I have done.  Any days that I did not do I will post to a link of some cool Halloween thing!  The reason why I did not complete this challenge is that for the past couple of weeks we have had visitors.  It is hard doing challenges when entertaining guests.  Then, the boys and I got sick :(.  Oh, the good camera that I was using broke, but I am hopeful that we can get it fixed.  Note to self, do not leave an unattended camera near a toddler!  Did I mention that Little Bubs turned two?  So, there was that too.  Anyway, enough with the excuses.  

Last night we were watching the office and they had this fail video on.  It wasn't super funny, but when I was writing this post it reminded me of the snippet.

Enjoy

-Heather

I'm Behind!

I got busy with other things and it was Little Bubs' birthday.  I have kept up doing things each day that is Halloween themed and now I just have to blog about it.  I will try and get that done later today!

Day 7: Ghost Footprints

This craft was a super easy one to do and doesn't take a lot of time, which is nice when you have two boys that are not that into crafts and would rather be building or digging something up.  I found this craft at Be Different Act Normal.

Supplies:
-Colored paper (I thought that black or a dark blue would look best)
-White paint
-Paintbrush
-Sharpie marker or black paint
-Feet


Directions:

Step 1:  Paint the bottom of some feet white.  Both of the Bubs really enjoyed this step and I got some good laughs out of them!

Step 2:  Step on the paper with the painted foot.

Step 3:  Repeat steps 1 & 2 with other feet until you have as many footprints or "ghosts" that fit on a page.

L-R My foot, LB's foot, and BB's foot

Step 4:  Add in some ghost eyes and mouth and any other little touches you want to the picture.

Happy Halloween!

-Heather

p.s. my children's feet are almost as big as mine!