We have been decorating our home this week. There are Scooby Doo Halloween decals on windows, silly banners in the kitchen, and even purple and orange lights strung up here and there. Too cute! My littles wanted to also make some Halloween decorations, they are still in the midst of gluing and painting and getting sticky with more ideas, but here are a couple we did this week.

The clothespin bats were our inspiration for our bats. We didn’t follow all the directions, because one of my children is 4 is just wants to attack everything with glue. 😉

All you have to do is paint a wooden clothespin black, cut out two bats from black construction paper (using this template) and glue the bats to the clothespin! Super easy and so cute. My two littlest ones made these themselves! Secure the bats to the clothespin by gluing down the middle of the clothespin, and once bats have been glued to both sides, glue the tips of their wings together. Voila! Done!

 

This black widow balloon took literally 5 minutes, maybe less. You need a black balloon, black streamers and red construction paper. I found that this looked best in a corner, but you could really put it anywhere. I taped the streamer ‘legs’ directly to the balloon, and to the wall in two places to mimic their little knees. Are they knees?! You know what I mean. 😉 My very literal 7 year old pointed out that it didn’t really look like a black widow because there were no markings on it….so we fixed it. When we lived in the woods, we had about a zillion spiders in our lives and man am I ever happy to be away from them all.

Stuff from this post: Wooden Clothespins, Tempera Paint, Construction Paper, Onyx Black Balloons and Black Crepe Streamer

Whenever we count down to something that is a month or more away, the kids never have a hard time being excited. It might be harder for me to muster enthusiasm if theirs was not so infectious. They are legit hyped about every holiday we celebrate and every birthday between them all, I love it. So with 21 sleeps to go until Halloween, you’d think they’d be fizzling out for a bit but no, not even close. Especially when I busted out the gear for a haunted gingerbread house. You can get a kit like this Wilton one or of course you can make your own. Usually at Christmas I make one big one from scratch but when they really want to whip one up, I’ll bring home a ready to go kit. With this, we used a kit for the house and I added a bunch of sugar embellishments that I bought for cakes.

There are a few silly ideas I’d like to try out this month that are usually reserved for Christmas, but after watching The Nightmare Before Christmas yet again, it really makes me want to do Halloweeny versions of Christmas fun. Which I guess is exactly like when I have the urge to Halloween-up Christmas stuff in December!

This afternoon we’re working on decorating and some kid’s crafts. They saw all the orange, black and purple gear and got really excited!

 

 

 

Stuff from this post: Haunted House Gingerbread Bake Set, Wilton Halloween Icing Decorations – Pumpkins

Rainbow cupcakes are so fun to do and you can make them fit any occasion. The first time I made them I used primary colors for Wee One #3’s kindergarten classmates. This time around, I used black, purple and orange. Since black mixed with white or an off white is usually gray and not actually black, we used chocolate cake for that part and vanilla cake for the purple and orange. It worked perfectly!

If you have your own favorite vanilla and chocolate recipe feel free to use those. It really doesn’t matter. I’m pretty partial to these though, and I’ve been using them both for a long time. If you are going to use cake mixes, please don’t tell me about it. 😉

I used my stir and bake chocolate cake for the black portions and the vanilla cake recipe from The Red Hen.

Whip up your cake batters, whichever ones you choose. Then add black food coloring to the chocolate batter, and divide the vanilla batter in two. Add purple to one and orange to the other. Then layer the colors however you like, I went with black, orange and purple. Following the baking time and temp for your recipe. Once they’re cool, melt some candy melts or tint some white chocolate to drizzle over top!

 

 

I know, I know. This is gnarly. Not even just gross, but gnarly. Fun too though, right? Especially for the littles. I think the very first time I saw this was on Noble Pig, and since then I’ve seen it all over the place. My kids thought they were equal parts gross and amazing.

There is so much Halloween insanity going on around here. Pumpkins galore, like whoa we have a lot of pumpkins to carve. Big ones, small ones, medium ones, white ones – even those neat bumpy ones (they’re called knuckleheads, for the record). There’s also a lot of costume preparation, though again, the littles want something specific they have seen and considering I left my sewing machine in Canada, I’m not really arguing with them about it. When I get my hands on a sewing machine though, watch out!

In the meantime, I’m all about the festive food. This is not really a recipe, all you’re doing is dressing a graham cracker up like a band aid and you know, finishing it off with a little smear of blood. No biggie.

-graham crackers
-cream cheese (or icing)
-seedless strawberry jam (or red decorator’s gel)

 

Just break the graham crackers along their ‘perforated edges’ (though really, do they ever break clean?!), use a knife to clean them up a bit. Then spread on a little cream cheese (or frosting) just in the middle. Try to level it out into nice little rectangles.

Now just add your little dollops of blood. I had seedless strawberry jam on hand and it’s yummy with cream cheese. The recipes that call for the decorator gel will work just as well though!

What to make when you’re meeting up with some mommy friends mid-morning and your littles are busy doing cursive and Lit? You whip up some donut holes, of course! The prep time was maybe 10 minutes and total baking time was 15. I pointed a fan at the kitchen counter and they only took a few minutes to cool. Then I mixed the glaze and used a fork to cover and lift out each donut hole, immediately covered them in festive sprinkles and put them back on the counter in front of the fan. They dried super fast and everyone who had one really liked them. I had two left on our way home when we ran into a neighbor and gave them to her to share with her little.

Fast. Easy. Yummy.

3 cups all-purpose flour
1/2 cup cocoa
1 teaspoon freshly ground nutmeg
1-1/2 teaspoons baking powder
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup (2 sticks) unsalted butter, softened
1 cup sugar, divided
2 large eggs, room temperature
2 teaspoons vanilla extract
various festive sprinkles

Glaze:
1 cup confectioner’s sugar
2-3 tablespoons milk

Very straightforward. Mix all the dry, then cream the butter and the sugar and add the wet ingredients. Once it’s all combined, slowly mix in the dry ingredients and voila! Roll into balls, and bake.

While they’re cooling, mix the confectioner’s sugar and milk for the glaze.

 

This is not really a recipe, it’s just an idea and comes together with 5 ingredients. You don’t even have to turn on the oven, the microwave will work for this too! Totally perfect for a last minute addition to a Halloween party or potluck.

-square pretzels
-green candy melts
-black icing
-assorted M&Ms
-red sprinkles

Arrange the pretzels on a baking sheet (or a plate), then place one green candy melt on each pretzel square. Either pop the tray in the oven for about 10 minutes at 300 or microwave the plate for 5 minutes. Whichever method you choose, make sure to check on the candy melts so they are just melty and not burny. 🙂

Once they’ve melted and you’ve taken them out of the oven, push one M&M (‘m’ side down) onto each candy melt and then dot each M&M with a tiny bit of black icing. Now sprinkle the red jimmies over all of them and voila! Creepy zombie eyes!

Stuff from this post:Wilton Black Icing, Wilton Green Candy Melts, CK Products Jimmies/Sprinkles

Truthfully, when my littlest tossed the orange and dark chocolate chocolate chips in the cart last week I had no idea what I was going to do with them. I did know however, that there can never be enough orange and black around this month. I’m trying to avoid random baking this month since I want to do up as many Halloweeny treats as possible, and when I saw that one of my favorite Canadian chefs, Michael Smith posted what he claimed to be the best chocolate chip recipe ever, I was tempted to just go off course and bake them because I wanted to see if they really were the best ever (so far each of his ‘best ever’ claims that I’ve tested have absolutely been the best). Then, I remembered those seasonal chocolate chips and started making them pretty much right away because now that they could be deemed Halloweeny, there was no reason not to make them! Right?! I know!

As I was making them I realized I had used the last of the brown sugar on some butter tarts and though I swear there is an extra bag (there is always an extra bag) I couldn’t find it anywhere and ended up using granulated sugar instead. Guess what? They’re amazing. I’m going to do them again with brown sugar and I have no doubt they’ll be even better.

1 1/2 cups all purpose flour
1 teaspoon baking powder
1/4 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup butter, softened
1 cup brown sugar
1 tablespoon corn syrup
1 egg
1 teaspoon pure vanilla extract
1 cup chocolate chips

Fairly simple. Preheat to 375 and whisk the flour, baking powder and salt.

With a mixer or food processor cream the butter and sugar until smooth. Then add the corn syrup, egg and vanilla. Scrape down the bowl before slowly adding the flour mixture. Now stir in your chocolate chips and you’re ready to go!

  

I scooped out the dough with a 1/2 tablespoon and overpacked it a little. I rolled it into a ball and then flattened it out with the bottom of a glass dipped in sugar for a little sparkle and crunch on the top of the cookie. I baked for exactly 13 minutes and my kids have nearly eaten the whole batch already. That’s a win!

When I find a recipe that works for run of the mill things like brownies, I tend to stick with it and only deviate when it changes the flavor. I don’t know how many times I’ve made this recipe, but I know it by heart and didn’t even bring the cookbook it’s in with us to California. I love that cookbook too, The All New Good Housekeeping Cook Book. My go-to chocolate chip cookie recipe is from the same book. 😉

I love how 1953 it is to point to a Good Housekeeping recipe as my family’s favorite. Probably more than a person should, really.

via The All New Good Housekeeping Cook Book

1/2 cup flour
1/2 cup unsweetened cocoa
1/4 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
1/2 cup butter
1 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1 tsp vanilla extract
+ handful of candy corn

The brownies are crazy simple. Melt the butter in a small saucepan and mix all the dry in a medium bowl and set aside. Add the sugar, eggs, and vanilla one at a time, stirring until each ingredient is mixed in. Whisk in the dry ingredients and pour it all into a greased brownie pan. Bake at 350 for 25 minutes.

Let the countdown to Halloween begin!!

These little cupcakes are so cute!! I really like to get crafty with kid food, and holiday kid food is my favorite! I used one of my go to chocolate cake recipes. This one is from Robin Hood and I’ve been baking it since 2009 at least. It is one of those wonderfully simple ‘dump all the ingredients in one bowl, mix, pour and be done’ recipe. However, unlike most of those recipes, this one actually comes together with no lumps and it comes out just perfect.

via Robin Hood

1/2 cup flour
1 cup granulated sugar
1/4 cup unsweetened cocoa
1 teaspoon baking powder
1 teaspoon baking soda
1/2 teaspoon salt
1 cup warm water
1/3 cup oil
1 tablespoon vinegar

Start with the flour, sugar, cocoa, baking powder, baking soda and salt. Whisk it all together. Then mix in the water. Then mix in the vinegar. Whisk, whisk, whisk and pour into 12 cupcake cups (cups you have previously lined with black or otherwise Halloweeny liners) and bake for about 30 minutes.

To make them witchy you’ll need:
green buttercream icing
decorative chocolate wafer cookies
Hershey kisses
black sprinkles
M & Ms
black shoestring licorice
candy corn

  

First I frosted the cupcakes, then I made their little hats by ‘gluing’ the Hershey kisses to the chocolate wafer cookies with a little dab of buttercream icing. Then I piped orange frosting around it to secure it.

  

Next I added their black sprinkle eyebrows, M&M eyes and their candy corn noses! The personality is all in the eyebrows, amirite?! Some of them look confused but I think the overall effect of grumpy witches worked out.

Starting tomorrow, I’m going to get into the spirit of Halloween and celebrate by counting down the days with silly and only slightly scary ideas. Before we get to that though, I want to do a little homeschool catch up post on what structure we’re working with in 3rd grade this year. Today is our 40th day of school for 2013/2014. I only know because we’re going to celebrate the 100th day of school this year and I figured that we should be counting so the days don’t get away from me. This will be our second full year homeschooling and I really feel like I have a better way of running our days than I did when we started. This was our schedule and our materials last year.

We work a standard schedule 5 days a week, taking Wednesdays and Saturdays off, though the weekend is usually when our 8th grader reads his assigned literature and our 3rd grader finishes all her art.

Since our youngest isn’t 5 yet, she can’t be enrolled in the same homeschooling program as our other two children. Obviously, she can still do a kinder program at home with me. The program I’ve set up for her is very similar to the junior kindergarten program in Ontario, it needs it’s own post. Our 8th grader works on a three classes per semester schedule and since it is technically an independent study program, he also has options open to add more and more onto what was assigned. I’m really impressed with the way he has chosen to build onto this system, and this will get it’s own post as well. For now though, the grade I think I end up spending the most combined hours on…3rd.