Halloween Treats

I had to make something ultra cute for my daughter to take in to her Fall party at school, but I wanted it to be something she could be involved in. The trick now is when sending food in to school for public consumption you cannot send in anything homemade. Too many allergies and other issues to consider. This makes it difficult for a child to "help" make treats. So, I found a cute idea while surfing the internet and we gave it a go. I was very pleased with the results! I cut out the treat boxes with my Cricut using the Batman cartridge. Then I designed and printed the "Spooky S'mores" label and directions on my computer. Makenna then used various pre-made die-cuts to decorate the boxes. Then we placed pre-wrapped bags of Halloween marshmallow and small size, individually wrapped Hershey bars into the boxes. The only tricky part of this treat was the graham crackers. They don't come individually wrapped. We wrapped four squares of grahams into plastic wrap, then copied the ingredients label off the box and printed them out on computer labels and used them to seal the crackers. These got carefully placed into the boxes as well. Makenna took great pride in the fact that she had "made" s'mores for her friends. I love it that she will have these fun memories of making projects with her mama.

Pumpkin Carving

My daughters and I are the pumpkin carvers in the family. The men are just too wimpy to handle the slimy, stinky pumpkin guts. Really, when it comes down to it women are just altogether tougher. Don't you agree? I mean, it HAS to be done. Pumpkins MUST be carved. How could anyone fathom the idea of a Halloween without plunging a knife into a large orange gourd? Anyway, my 5 year old got her pumpkin when her class visited the local pumpkin patch. Upon bringing it home, she immediately "decorated" it with a huge purple sharpie. It looked, well, bad. Really bad. And she knew it. So we had to think of some way to salvage the pumpkin, because using a different one was out of the question-that was THE ONE she had selected. We decided to paint over the mess. The only thing that would cover it was three coats of metallic black acrylic paint- and it looked totally cool. Then she decided she wanted a Batman themed pumpkin. My older daughter did an awesome job of tracing and cutting out the Batman logo for the pumpkin. I have never used pumpkin stencils before, but after seeing the end result of my haunted house stencil I am completely hooked. And my girls and I had a wonderful time together. A stinky, slimy, totally gross and fabulous time together. :)

Big Fat Bacon Sliders

My sweet husband was gone for a week on a business trip and had to eat out for every meal. I wanted to try something new and fun for his first dinner home. I am currently on a huge Pioneer Woman kick, and when I saw these on her blog I knew they were definitely something a man would be happy to come home to. My 19 year old daughter and I made them along with her fried onion straws. They were SO fabulous! Delicious-full of flavor, juicy, filling. COMFORT food. I am having SO much fun getting out of my cooking rut. I swear, for about 5 years I just got in the habit of cooking only a few meals over and over and over again. I was bored and so was my family. I visited the Pioneer Woman's website after seeing an article about her in a magazine. I am completely hooked on her. Not just for the cooking and recipes, but she is so very, very real. She talks about her family, her expanding waistline, her insecurities, her faith. The good, the bad and the ugly. She is not trying to be something she's not. And I think I can learn a lot from someone like that.