Apple Nachos

3 medium apples, sliced 1/4 inch thick
caramel ice cream topping
1 1/2 cups mini marshmallows
1 Tbsp butter
1/4 cup mini chocolate chips
1/4 cup chopped dry roasted peanuts

In a microwave safe bowl melt marshmallows and butter; stirring occasionally.  Meanwhile, arrange apple slices on a large plate or cookie sheet. Drizzle with caramel topping.  Then drizzle with the marshmallow mixture.  Sprinkle chocolate chips and peanuts on top and enjoy.

Edible Eyeballs

Edible Eyeballs
1 bag round or square pretzels
1 bag white candy disks (In the Wedding Section at Walmart)
1 bag Chocolate Chips
1 container red sugar sprinkles

Preheat your oven to 350 degrees F. Place a single row of pretzels on a baking sheet. Then top the pretzels with the white candy disks. Bake for 3-4 minutes or until white candy is soften, but not melting through the holes in the pretzels. Remove from oven, sprinkle with the red sprinkles and place an upside down chocolate chip in the middle of the white candy disk. Place in your refridgerator for 20 minutes. They will remain hard after you take them out.

You could also use M&M's and put the M down. You could use green, blue, brown or even red.

National Apple Month

Here is a fun snack to feed your kids around Halloween. 

Apple Smiles

All you do is slice your apple, spread peanut butter on one side of the slice, place mini marshmallows on the peanut butter and then top the marshmallows with another apple slice that has peanut butter on it.  The kids will love it.  As you can see some of our smiles are missing teeth for the spirit of Halloween.

Enjoy!

Mason Jar Pumpkin Candles

Use a few old Mason jars to make some cute glowing jack-o-lanterns that you can use year after year. This is great project to do with the kids. They love to make funny and spooky faces on their jars. Plus they make awesome decorations on a table or in a window.
Approximate Time: 1 hour

Supplies:

• Mason or recycled glass jars
• scissors
• orange tissue paper
• black construction paper
• paint brush
• Elmer's glue
• small plastic cup or dish
• X-acto Knife (optional)

Instructions:

Cut the tissue paper into 1 inch strips. A little wider or thinner doesn't matter. We cut the tissue paper while it was folded. So the longs strips could each be cut down in thirds.

Pour a little glue in your container and add some water into it. I did about a tablespoon of glue with a half cup of water and it was more then enough for this project.

Mix the glue and water with the brush.

Then, one at a time, lay the strips of orange tissue paper on the outside of the Mason jar and stick them down vertically with glue wash. Overlapping them a little will give your finished jar a more pumpkin like look.

Turn the Mason jar upside down to dry. I used a mat with a couple paper towels on top to make sure no glue got on my table.

Use the scissors or X-acto knife to cut out Jack-o-lantern faces or other Halloween designs.

Stick the faces to the side of the orange Mason jars how ever you like. I used my extra glue mixture but a little dab of glue on the back of each piece of paper would stick them down just as well.
We put LED tea lights in ours so we can set them on our window sill and there is no fire hazard near the curtains. Votive candles would work very well in these also.


Thanks to our friends at http://www.thriftyfun.com/ for this great idea!

Amy

Monster Cookies in a Jar

We always get our nieces and nephews something for Halloween.  They are getting older now, so it is harder to come up with something for all of them.  This year I decided we would make Monster Cookies in a Jar and decorate the jars like monsters.  The kids and I headed to Hobby Lobby, bought some jars and found some stickers that you can decorate pumpkins to look like monsters.  When I bought these I thought they would be the same size as the pictures on the outside of the package, but they were much larger.  Here are some from Oriental Trading that would work great.  I have used these before on pumpkins, but didn't have time to order them this year.  They would be the perfect size.  We made due with what we had and I think they turned out great.

I let the kids pick out the monsters they wanted and decorate the jars.  We bought the smooth Mason Jars at Hobby Lobby and they happened to be 50% off that week too.

Here are the jars.  Next we added the monster cookie mix as follows:

2 cups old-fashioned oats

1 cup brown sugar

1/2 cup M&M's

1/3 cup sugar

1/2 tsp baking soda

1/4 tsp salt

1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Layer the ingredients in the order given into a wide-mouth 1 quart canning jar.  Make sure to pack the brown sugar before adding the M&M's.  We used the bottom of our ice cream scooper for this job and it worked great.  We also topped our jars off with more M&M's to add more color and fill the jars.

Then we added the rest of the directions to the top of the jar. 

Monster Cookies

In a large bowl, cream 1/4 cup softened butter, 1 egg, 1/2 cup peanut butter and 1/2 tsp vanilla.  Slowly add the Monster Cookie mix in this jar until well blended.  Form dough into 1 inch balls, place on a greased cookie sheet and bake at 375˚F for 12 minutes.

You can click here for a printable of these tags.

We decided to embellish the jars a little more with some pipe cleaners to make hair.

You will also notice the jar on the far left has already made cookies in it.  One of our nieces is in college and lives in the dorms, so I made her a jar with the cookies already made.  Then we just made one jar per family for the rest of the nieces and nephews.

 



Yarn Pumpkins

All you need is orange yarn, brown or green yarn for the stem, flour, water, balloon and a bowl to help keep the balloon in one spot.  Mix 1/2 cup flour to 1 cup water until it creates a paste.  Blow your balloons up to the size you would like your pumpkins.  Cut the orange yarn into long pieces and dip them in the paste.  Wipe off the excess and place the yarn on the balloon.

Once you are happy with the amount of yarn on each of your balloons, use your brown or green yarn and make a stem.

Let them dry overnight.  You will want to flip the balloons over at some point so that the yarn that was in bowl has a chance to dry too.  When they are completely dry, pop the balloons and pull out the balloon pieces.

Finished product:

Milk Jug Ghosts

My kids did not have school on Monday, so while my 2 year old took a nap, my older two kids and I made Halloween crafts.  I had been saving my milk jugs for awhile because I had seen this idea on another blog and knew my kids would enjoy it.  We cleaned the date and the label off with Goof Off.

Next was the fun part, decorating the milk jugs.  I let the kids draw whatever they wanted on the milk jugs with permenant markers.  My daughter also made a witch and Frankenstein jug. 

Next, I took a razor blade and cut a small hole in the back for the lights.  Then I used a string of 100 white Christmas lights and put as many lights in each jug as possible.  We positioned them on the buffet and plugged in the lights.  They are so fun to look at everyday!  I love how my son made the 2nd one in from the left looking at the middle jug.



Lego Halloween Costume!

My son loves Legos, so when I got the email from Tip Junkie with this Lego Costume, I knew that was what he would want to be.  I showed it to him and I was right.  For the details of how to make the costume, you can view the link above.  I did make a few changes. 

1. I bought my 4 inch round paper mache boxes from www.shindigz.com for $.99 each. 
2. We decided to make our Lego 2x3.  We wanted to make it a little smaller because my kids are some of the few lucky kids that still get to dress up and have a parade at school.  This way he will still be able to sit down with his costume on.
3. On all the little Legos, on the bumps it says: LEGO.  I wanted to make his costume as authentic as possible, so I wrote LEGO on each one with a hot glue gun before we spray painted the box.

Post a comment if you have any questions on how to make the costume.