Sunday, October 31, 2010

Treats and Tricks

SALT DOUGH MAGNETS


You can find the recipe for salt dough in the recipe section above...These are so easy and fun to make.  I have made them for all kinds of seasons and holidays (St. Patrick's Day, summer flowers, etc.).  We used Halloween cookie cutters shaped like bats, ghosts, pumpkins and cats. 







FIVE LITTLE PUMPKINS SITTING ON A FENCE


Nathan is so in love with this story/song, that we just had to make another craft using it.  We took paper plates and painted three of them orange.  We also painted two with glue and sprinkled those with orange glitter (We called them glamazon pumpkins lol).  I found some foam faces to decorate pumpkins with at the Dollar Store, since we didn't use them on real pumpkins, I let Nathan decorate his paper pumpkins with them instead.  Then I cut out brown construction paper to look like fence pieces and taped it all to the wall.   Looks adorable, doesn't it??




CAKE BALLS!!!!


Red Velvet Cake with Cream Cheese Frosting and lots and lots of Halloweenie Sprinkles

FUN HALLOWEEN CUPCAKES



GHOSTS


HALLOWEEN SPRINKLES


PUMPKINS

MY MUMMY LUMINARY


Here's the story behind this little gem....

I have been seeing all these cute halloweenish luminaries all over bloggy world and in magazines and thought, I can do that. So, I headed to the Dollar Store and bought some clear glass vases. I bought two the same size and one slighty bigger. My first thought was to spray paint them all orange to make them look like pumpkins. But as I was telling Rich my idea, he said why not paint them with frosted paint. The idea sounded cool. I figured I could step it up a bit and make a face on it too. I went to work right away, I made a stencil for the face and got out the paint. Which turned out to be a disaster. The paint ran.   

Epic Fail....See what I mean?



(yeah, I know I have baskets of laundry in the background, which I should of been folding instead of playing around trying to make stuff.....sue me!)

My next thought was why not try to decoupage it instead....but I wasn't sure what look I was going for. Then it hit me - A Mummy! I went to the local pharmacy and bought some medical gauze, which I ripped and frayed the ends.  I painted some black and yellow for eyes.  Then I got out my trusty bottle of Mod Podge (LOVE that stuff), and brushed it all over the vase and started wrapping the vase with the gauze. 



Sidetrack - I also bought a white flower pot at St Vincent's thrift store, which I painted black (on the right)


I placed a pumpkin in the pot and it's sitting outside on my sidewalk...then it rained, and washed some of the harshness of the black away, it gave it a really cool look (you'll have to take my word on this as I didn't snap a pic of it).


Getting back to the mummy luminary - I think this is one of my faves this year....came out so awesome and spooky! 

I also made two more using the slightly smaller vases.  I made them into jack o'lantern luminaries.  I used ripped up orange tissue paper and Mod Podged the whole thing and painted faces on them.  They look cool too (again no pic of the finished look, unless you want to scroll down and look at the candy corn post, you can see part of them on top of the bookcase in one of the pics).

FUN PAINTED GOURDS


I took some nasty gourds from our garden (actually I had to pick through the garbage for them, because I threw them out before I realized I could use them). 

I painted two a bronzy/copper color and tied a simple black ribbon around them.  As for the other two, I spray painted them with gold sparkle paint, painted faces on them and then brushed them with Mod Podge.  Simple and Cute!


Stay tuned for more crafty fun and treats tomorrow......And perhaps a few more pics of some really cute kids too!

Friday, October 29, 2010

Books, Crafts And Trick or Treat Fun at the Library

We are still reading our Halloween books here....the kids love them so much.  Our favorite book this week was Minerva Louise on Halloween by Janet Morgan Stoeke.  Minerva Louise is a cute little chicken who thinks the ghost costumes are laundry hanging on the line....and that the pumpkins are her friends....and her favorite thing is the corn, she thinks the candy corn is corn, just a little on the sweet side.  Cute book! It was fun reading all her anecdotes of Halloween.  It was such a good book, that I ended up getting a few more Minerva Louise books to read.


For our craft we made candy corn flowers; using green craft sticks as stems, leaves cut out of green foam and of course CANDY CORN!! It was such a fun treat to eat thing to make, that I made one too.




I think we ate more than we glued on the paper ;-)


We also made some Candy Corn Garland

I saw this on another blog, but I can't remember where now.  We painted paper plates, Orange, Yellow and left the middle White.  After the paint dried, we cut them out in triangles (one plate made eight triangles).  I took some cute Halloweenish ribbon, and stapled the candy corn to it to make a "sweet" garland decoration.






We also made some cute pumpkin crafts using pumpkin seeds.  I just bought seeds, because I was cheating and being lazy (hahaha).  We painted some orange and some green.  Amanda drew some huge pumpkins on poster board for the boys to glue their seeds to.  She did such a great job, they were almost to pretty to glue a bunch of seeds too.









Nick's


Nate's

I baked a Candy Corn Cake for fun...just white cake, it doesn't taste like candy corn. But inside it looks like candy corn.  It was a teensy bit messy, the first piece always is.  Yummy!



I also made one of those Candy Corn Wreaths that have been all over the place, since Woman's Day magazine had one on their cover.


I bought a green wreath at the Dollar Store and painted it black.  I covered the entire thing with a coat of Mod Podge (Glossy).  Then glued all the candy corn on and added another coat of Mod Podge to finish it off. 

Originally, I was going to use a wide black ribbon as trim.  But then, I saw this cute black ribbon with a candy corn design on it....It was so cute I had to get it.  And it went so well with the finished wreath too.


Nathan goes to a story group at the library called Stories Under the Moon for ages 3-6.  This week they did some trick or treating at our favorite place.....The Library! It was really cute.  There were some cute costumes and they got a handful or two of candy from the staff.  The library is 3 stories, so they got some exercise too, walking all those stairs LOL! Perfect for all that sugar and candy hahaa!




Look Mom, a Kit Kat!


They hid "ghosts" in the stacks



Sometimes, SuperHeroes need a little rest too.....

Happy Halloween!!

Linking to....


The Girl Creative Join us Saturdays at tatertotsandjello.com for the weekend wrap up party!


Don't forget to sign up for the EcoMom GC (below) ends Oct. 31!!