Happy Halloween - Cookie Style

I have been dying to make new cookies and test out my decorating talents. I finally did! I am the room mom for my daughter's first grade class, and as such was in charge of her Halloween party this year. Along with planning crafts and games, I came up with some cute cut out cookies to decorate and take in for the kids to eat.


I already had several Halloween cookie cutters, but while hunting for a (cheap) cape for my third grade daughter's vampire costume at Goodwill, I found a set of brand new, still in the package, Wilton Halloween cookie cutters, three of which I did not have. I bought them for 99 cents and added them to my other cookie cutters.


I decided on five different cookie shapes: a ghost, pumpkin, black cat, two different bats, and a Frankenstein. I didn't actually have a Frankenstein cookie cutter, so I used a crimped round cutter and made the face myself. The cookies are chocolate sugar cookies, and the cookie glaze is an allrecipes.com cookie icing recipe. So simple!


The results were pretty much what I was looking for, and the kids all really loved them! I had a lot of fun, too. I think my favorite are the Franks and the ghosts. Now I'm dreaming about pretty Christmas cookies!

Chalk Drawings

What do you do on a beautiful autumn day, especially when that day is the day before October starts?

You fill your driveway with chalk drawings of spooky Halloween creatures, of course!

And that's exactly what I did this afternoon with my two daughters.

There were black cats (1st drawing - mine, 2nd drawing - Zoe (age 5):




And jack o'lanterns (1st drawing - mine, 2nd drawing - Emma (age 7), 3rd drawing - Zoe):





A couple of mummies (1st drawing - mine, 2nd drawing - Zoe):




A few adorable spiders (1st drawing - mine, 2nd drawing - Zoe):




Some scary bats (1st drawing - Emma, 2nd drawing - Zoe)




Some not-so-scary skeletons (1st drawing - mine, 2nd drawing - Zoe)




Two cackling witches, and one that reminds me of the green witch from the Looney Tunes cartoons (1st drawing - mine, 2nd drawing - Zoe, 3rd drawing - Zoe)





Ghosts (both drawings - Zoe):




And last, but not least, our blood sucking vampire boys (1st drawing - mine, 2nd drawing - Zoe's, 3rd drawing - Zoe's)





Now we're all set for Halloween decorations, as long as it doesn't rain!

Halloween Round Up

I know, I know, this is late in coming. But I've been busy lately!

Halloween actually began on Wednesday when Zoe had her preschool party. I'm room mom and planned the party for the kids. Zoe went as a cowgirl and I think she is the cutest cowgirl in Illinois. We didn't know it, but her teachers dressed as cowgirls, too. Mrs. Voirin repeatedly introduced Zoe as "her sidekick." Zoe grinned ear to ear each time her teacher said it. We made a craft, ate some cupcakes and brownies, then ran a relay where the kids had to scoop up candy corn on a spoon, run across the room, dump the candy corn into a bowl, then run back and pass the spoon onto the next person. The kids loved it and the I had a lot of candy corn to pick up off the floor when the game was done!




Here are my three kids getting ready to go out trick or treating with their Dad. Ian was Ash, the trainer from Pokemon. I made and sewed the symbol on his hat out of felt and cut the fingers out of the gloves for this costume. You can see Pikachu peeking out from the back of his backpack. Zoe is, of course, Scooby Doo. Emma chose Shawn Johnson of Olympic gold medal fame as her costume this year. I cut the letters U S A out of white felt and sewed them to her gymnastics suit. Then I cut a circle out of some cardboard, painted it yellow and sprinkled gold glitter all over it. After punching a hole in it and stringing white ribbon through it, she had a gold medal. The final touches were a ponytail and make-up and cheek glitter.

Here is each one on there own.

Ian

Emma

Zoe

I think my favorite part of the costumes this year was that they cost me all of $1.50! The gloves for Ian's costume and the blue bandanna for Zoe's cowgirl costume were the only things I had to buy. Everything else I had in the house somewhere. (Zoe wore the Scooby costume last year, too!) I did however have to spend a few nights hand sewing the USA onto Emma's costume and the Pokemon symbol onto Ian's hat. But, I love that their costumes were unique and exactly what they wanted to be. No princesses or Darth Vader's for me this year!

I'm also realizing that I love the set-up we have for the annual trick or treat fest. Brendan has always taken the kids out, and I've always passed out the candy. I saw several sets of both parents going with their kids, which led me to question who is passing out candy at their house? I understand not wanting to miss any of the cool things your kids do, but I also think they need to do special things with each parent separately. And for us, this means getting candy door to door with dad. I hope my kids look back on this and remember it happily. (With Brendan working in the city, they get to do loads of things with me. Doing something with Dad is extra special.) Besides, I really like the hour or so to myself in the house while the four of them are all out gathering goodies. I've come to find it relaxing and equally exciting to hear their stories when they get back and dump all their candy on the floor. It's a good set-up.

Hope your Halloween was as much fun as ours was!

Fun Monday - Spooky Edition

Sayre, over at SayreSmiles is our hostess this week. Keeping with our Halloween time of the year she has given us the following assignment:

Tell us about your favorite Halloween as a kid (pictures, if you have them!), and show us your costume for this year. If you're not dressing up, show us a picture of a pumpkin carving that really tickled your fancy or how you decorated your house.

I grew up in England during my prime trick-or-treating years, and I don't know if it has changed much, but back in the early 1980's they didn't really trick or treat over there. I remember one Halloween my mom loading me and my two brothers and my sister into the car and driving us to all of our American friends houses to trick or treat. Needless to say, we didn't ever get a lot of candy while we lived there.

Another Halloween in England my mom threw a big Halloween party for all the different families we were friends with. She went all out and hung up creepy homemade decorations and had scary music playing. We had a long window over our stairs right at the front of the house that we could open. She strung a ghost made out of a white sheet to a tree outside and then strung the end of the rope into our house through that window. It was the kid's job to pull on (or let go of, I can't remember now!) the string and send the ghost flying right down to the entryway outside our front door. It was great fun scaring adults and kids alike, though my best friend at the time wouldn't come into my house after that! My mom also served foods with scary names like witch's brew for green kool-aid or Vampire's blood for red punch. I'm sure the adults had stronger concoctions, but I wasn't aware of it.

I don't have any Halloween pics of costumes for myself this year (though one of my favorite costumes was the first year after I was married and my new husband went as Fox Mulder and I went as Dana Scully!). So here are our pumpkins we carved for last year's Halloween. One is the traditional scary pumpkin, and the other is a little more artsy fartsy (we like to say "creative.")



Here's a close-up of the scary pumpkin.


And here's a close-up of our creative pumpkin.


Finally, here is a picture of my youngest daughter helping her Dad to make our creative pumpkin. She is 3 1/2 in this picture. (Yes, that's an electric drill if any of you were curious how we achieved such an effect.)