Day 31: Not Your mummy's meatloaf

Not your mummy's meatloaf at Gourmet mom on the go

Basically I made meet loaf in a glass bowl (my pampered chef batter bowl to be specific) and then covered it with lasagna noodles. if you want the recipe i used, you can go to the gourmet mom on the go. as for me, i'm 31 days of halloweened out!!

Day 30: Edible Eyeballs

Get our your plastic easter eggs (luckily cole never stopped playing with is so they were easily accessible), put them in an empty egg carton to hold them upright, spray them with pam, put in a small round candy (smartie for me), a larger round candy (soft lifesaver for me), and fill with the instant pudding you just mixed together. let it chill in the fridge for at least 3 hours. Then kind of spoon them out.

Edible Eyeballs from family fun magazine.

Day 29: Hot Dog Mummies

This made for an easy dinner. I got the idea from good old family fun magazine. You just wrap hot dogs in 1/2 of prepared pillsbury breadstick dough. Stick it in the oven for 15 minutes at 350 and then dot the eyes with ketch up or mustard.

Day 28: Monster Paws

I've seen this many times but have never made it. Take a glove, stuff candy corns in for the fingernails, then stuff with popcorn. I added some spider rings. If you really want to have fun making these, you can ask your 4 year old to help put the fingernails in. That was a true test of coordination!

Day 27: mini candy pumpkins

Ah. Yet another installment of "it looks cuter in the family fun magazine". oh well i try. the kids thought they were fun.

I used circus peanuts and dots. And I used frosting to help glue it together. I'll link you to the family fun site, because they give pretty detailed instructions. . .family fun

Day 26: Worms in Dirt

John made this for his dessert night. Its the classic worms in dirt. He made instant pudding, divided into cups, used crushed oreos for the dirt, mini chocolate chips for some rocks, and of course the worms. There's no way to go wrong with this one.

Day 25: Pumpkin Seeds

This is always Bryan's thing to do after we've carved our pumpkins. He does it a little different every year, but basically he puts 2 tsp of melted butter on the seeds and this year he just used all purpose seasoning. He cooks them at 300 for 30 minutes. and they are yummy.

Day 24: Pumpkin Meal

I tried this at an enrichment night years ago and was so excited about the idea of cooking a meal in a pumpkin. It's been a while since I've made it and I have to be honest and say that the family is divided on it. The rice eaters (cole, lily and me) love it. But who cares if its not everyone's favorite? Isn't it just so cool to put a pumpkin on the table and spoon out at meal?

Ingredients:

• 1 yellow onion
• 2 lbs ground sausuge
• 2 tbs soy sauce
• 2 tbs brown sugar
• 1 can cream of chicken soup
• 1 1/2 C cooked rice
• 1 can sliced water chesnuts

Directions:

Brown sausage and onions. Add all other ingredients except rice. Simmer 15 minutes. Add rice. Put in hollowed out pumpkin. Cover with tinfoil and cook at 350 for one hour, until gold and bubbly, and the pumpkin soft.

Day 23: Spooktakular Cupcakes

Ever since John was 3 and i had to bring something to his play group, we've made halloween cupcakes and had a cake walk to decide who gets which one (ok some years we didn't do the cake walk). Each year I try a few new ones. I'm excited about my tombstone one this year. Their not the most professional things, but the kids get a huge kick out of them. I think most our self explanatory, but if you have questions, let me know!

Day 22: Halloween Popcorn Balls

Alright, I cheated again. Every year my mom sends me a package from the popcorn factory for halloween, and today we dug into it! She sent us popcorn balls with all the fixings to decorate it. John constructed this witch. I thought it was apretty clever use of tootsie rolls for the hat. So if you were going to do this, you could hope your mom sends you a popcorn factory kit, or you could click here for a recipe and some super cute examples of halloween popcorn balls. The site does a great job showing and explaining how to make them!!

Aren't they fabulous?

Day 21: Monsters on a stick

After school my kids came home to skewers, apples, marshmallows, raisins, cherry tomatoes, cheese, and pretzels on a plate and were instructed to make monsters. It goes without saying that they loved making them,and I loved having a healthy (well, minus the marshmallows,) snack. I got this idea from little nummies which i originally found on gourmet mom on the go. I used their picture at the top because they came out much more monstery than ours!! But we had fun with them as you can see:

Day 20: Butter Beer

This recipe was presented at an Enrichment Night by a sister who was into throwing Harry Potter parties (Butter beer is what they drink at the tavern)

Ingredients:

1 pt vanilla ice cream

1/2 stick of butter

1/3 C brown sugar2 tsp cinammon

1 tsp grated nutmeg

1/4 tsp clove1 qt apple cider

Directions:

Cream butter and spices together. Beat in vanilla ice cream. Re-freeze mixtures. Scoop out the frozen mixture into a glass. Pour hot apple cider over the ice cream mixture. Serve with a Harry Potter Movie and your kids will think you are fabulous!

Day 19: Pumpkin Rolls

Alright, so mine are not as cute as the ones at Family Fun Magazine, but here is my attempt at their pumpkin rolls. I stuck these in the kids lunch boxes today!

Cream Cheese or American cheese

Sun dried tomato tortillas

Toothpicks

Cilantro or parsley sprigs (i used celery leafs cuz thats what i had)

Spread cream cheese or lay american cheese slices on the tortillas. Tol them up and cut into 1-inch sections. Secure with a toothpick topped with your sprigs or leafs.

Day 18: Spider Cupcakes

I'm kind of into making halloween cupcakes, so tonight was the first of i'm sure many cupcakes to come. These would work as just ore

o cookies. Infact, if I didn't' have cupcakes in the freezer from John's birthday, I'm sure thats what I would have done. For the oreo spiders I just cut 4 pieces of pull apart licorice (about 3/4 of the length) and placed them between the oreo cookies. Then

I glued on m & m's for the eyes and added frosting for the eyeballs (both left over from the day of the dead skulls). Finally, I placed them on frosted cupcakes.

To make the spiderweb cupcake (had to for Sophie. she claims not to like oreos. as if that's even possible), you just frost concentric circles and run a tooth pick through them. I photographed the technique so you could see what i mean!!

circles. . .

toothpick. . .

and wallah!

Day 17: Bobbing for Apples

This was my easiest and most successful snack to date!! We put this on the table and let the kids go crazy! Note to self: make sure all the apples have good stems next time;)

Day 16: Rice Krispie Day of the Dead Skulls

This may not be the most relavent snack, but we celebrated the Day of the Dead on Saturday and made these fabulous sugar skulls:

The kids really wanted to eat them, but we thought rice krispie skulls would be tastier!

Day 15: Caramel Apples

I like to do these the easy way, I just buy caramels and melt them in a sauce pan. This year was made even easier because I found caramel dots which meant no wrappers to unwrap. While the caramel was hot, we dipped our apples in toffee bits, crushed oreos, and mini chocolate chips.

Day 14: Pizza Mummies

I got this recipe from Family Fun Magazine. I didn't have any olives so i used white onion for the big part of the eye. Which is good because my kids aren't into olives anyway. They thought it was fun and it was tasty!!

English Muffins

Pizza Sauce

Black Olives

Scallions

Cheese sticks or slices

Heat the oven to 350. For each mummy spread a tbl of pizza sauce on to half of a toasted english muffin. Set olives in place for eyes and round slices of green onion for pupils. Lay stips of cheese across the muffin for the mummy wrappings. Bake for about 10 minutes or until the cheese is melted.

Day 13: Rebecca's Pumpkin Bread

Ok, my kids think I was cheating on this one. To me, pumkin means Halloween right? But they think it should be more spooky or creative. Whatever, I just saw it as a good excuse to make the pumpkin bread recipe that Rebecca posted last year. And let me tell you, Halloweeny or not, it was tasty, and if you haven't made it yet, make it. Thanks Rebecca!!

What you'll need:

3 1/2 cups flour
2 1/2 cups sugar
1 1/2tsp salt
2 tsp baking soda
2 cups pumpkin
1 tsp cinnamon
1 tsp nutmeg
1 cup vegetable oil
4 eggs
2/3 cups water

Instructions:

Mix all dry ingredients in one bowl
Mix all wet ingredients in another bowl
Combine wet and dry ingredients
Add chocolate chips until your hearts desire!
Cook in bread loaf pans for 1 hour at 275-300 degrees

Day 12: Witch's Brew

It was Lily's night to make treats and she came up with witch's brew. It's very easy-apple cider with some worms thrown in. Easy's good sometimes.

Day 11: Snack-o'-lantern

from family fun magazine

We put a little fruit in these oranges for an after school snack. the kids were impressed. i'm tempted to carve oranges instead of pumpkins this year. much easier.

Day 10: Potato Skin Ghosts

from family fun magazine

This might be my favorite on this list. It was tasty and I like new ways to do potatoes.

• washed unpeeled potatoes (expect about 3 ghosts per spd)
• olive oil
• seasoned salt
• onion poweder
• garlic salt
• sour cream
• scallions

Cut each potato lenghtwise into 1/2 inch slabs. Cut the rounded tip off one end of each slab to create a ghost shape. Grease a baking sheet and lay potato slabs on it (pieces with skin go skin-side down). Brush the top of each slab with olive oil and season with seasoned salt, onion powder, and garlic salt. Bake at 400 degrees for 30 minutes or until a fork pierces the potatoes easily. Remove the potatoes from the oven and cool for 10 minutes, then ice them with sour cream to create a tasty white ghost. Add slices of scallion for eyes anda mouth.

Day 9: Lollipop Ghosts

Take lollipop. Put a kleenex around the top. Rubberband it. And draw the eyes and mouth!

I'm sure I don't even need to post a pictures of these. So easy, but so necessary at Halloween right? I had to have something easy we could take with us today because we were in Pennsylvania for an apple festival. Incidentally, we crammed like 31 days worth of apple treats into our day to go with our lollipop ghosts.

Day 8: Pumpkin Krispies

I got this idea from Gourmet Mom on the Go. You just make rice krispie treats, but when youre marshmallows are melted, you add a small package of jello to both color and flavor. Then I just added a green candy on top to make them like little pumpkins. I think they are kind of cute.

Day 7: Apple Bites

from family fun magazine

These were fun to do with the kids. I quartered apples, cut out a wedge, and the kids added slivered almonds for the teeth. Then we put the mouths in our mouths!

Day 6: Spooky Dinner

the guts: spaghetti with olive oil, parmesan, garlic powder and slat and pepper.

the eyeballs: grapes

the fingers (hard to make out here): string cheese with bell pepper fingernails stuck w/ cream cheese, and knuckle lines carved in

the toes (so hard to eat because they looked really real): little smokies, with space for the toe nail ketch up carved out wrapped in tortilla strips and cooked for 7 min in the oven at 375.

The kids ated the meal with their hands. It was a big hit. Except for Cole who insisted we confirm that the guts were really spaghetti before he would eat.

(toes and fingers from Family Fun magazine-ofcourse)

Day 5: Mini Witch Brooms

This is how mini witch brooms were supposed to look:

This is how mine looked:

I thought this would be an easy snack. Just cut some fruit roll ups and put them on a pretzel. But the fruit roll ups were too sticky. Plus, my helper, Cole, was maybe not that much of a helper. But anyway, you try it-maybe you'll do it better. And the kids didn't notice. They loved them.

Day 4: Blood and Bones

So, this too is the Family Fun magazine, but I first heard of it last year, from Deja at Lani's Halloween Lunch last year. It's so easy to make these bone breadsticks and we added some spaghetti sauce for the blood.

1. Unroll a tube of refrigerated breadstick dough and seperate the pieces.

2. Stretch each piece of dough to lengthen the "bones" and the cut 1 1/2 inch slits in the center of each.

3. Roll the resulting four flaps of dough into knobs that look like the ends of a bone.

4. Place the dough bones on an ungreased baking sheet, spacing them a few inches apart. Bake the bones until they are light golden brown, about 12 minutes.

Day 3: Cheesy Corns

1. Heat the oven to 450º.

2. Cut two small round prebaked pizza crusts into wedges that resemble the shape of candy corn. Top each wedge with rows of white, orange, and yellowish cheeses, as shown.

3. Bake the wedges on a cookie sheet for 8 to 10 minutes, then let them cool for 5 minutes before serving. Makes 16 to 20.

Day 2: Black Bean Cat Crudite

Again, I got this idea from Family Fun magazine. We thought it would be the perfect thing to snack on during conference. We actually didn't eat it until we were done watching conference, but it was a nice thought. Lily and Sophie had a fabulous time putting this cat together. My kids ate up all the vegetables. Bry chose chips to dip in his bean dip.

Black Bean Dip

1 15 oz can of black beans rinsed

1/2 cup prepared slasa, hot or mild

2 tbl fresh lime juice

2 tbl chopped fresh cilantro

1/4 tsp ground cumin

Combine all ingredients in food processor. Salt and Pepper to taste.

Day 1: Banana Ghosts

(from Family Fun magazine)

Scary right??

Here's what you do.

1) Cut bananas in half.

2) Push popsicle or lolipop sticks into bananas

3) Freeze until bananas are firm (about 3 hours)

4) Melt white chocolate candy

5) Dip bananas in melted candy or use a knife to spread

6) Add chocolate chips, small m & m's, or raisins for the eyes.

7) Let the white chocolate harden and ENJOY!!

The kids loved doing this and they actually tasted delicious. I never knew frozen bananas were so good. The only thing the kids and I talked about changing was the candy coating. It was kind of difficult getting the consistency right and keeping it that way as we all took turns dipping the bananas. John suggested next time we could cover it in yogurt which would be more healthy. We thought about using cool whip, or frosting. I would love them without any topping. But don't let that discourage you if you want to try the candy topping. I'm sure you are better at using it then me. Even though some of the ghosts looked a little raggedy, they still tasted great and the kids liked being involved with the process.