Halloween Keepsake Treat Bags~ 2016 Hand & Footprint Art

 Those of you who have been following me for a while know that I started a tradition in 2012 with my children where we put their hand and/or footprints on the sack they take trick or treating. If you want to know more about this click HERE to see the past posts and the hand/foot prints from past years.

This year I kept it a little more simple and did only one print for each kid except for Rowen. He is still so little and the prints are just so cute at this age! 

Here is Rowen in two of his costumes this year.

Plex from Yo Gabba Gabba and Buzz Lightyear!

      

Here are the prints I did for him. I wish I would have done his footprint for Buzz in purple because that is actually the color of the bottom of his foot. Instead I just wrote ANDY in purple.

Garren's foot print turned out better than I thought it would! 

I just copied his costume of a blue Power Ranger to his footprint!

   

 Kiki is a police woman this year so I thought it would be fun to just put a police badge in her handprint!

   

 One of Brenden's costumes is Harry Potter so I got really creative with his LARGE footprint! 

Seriously, just to get an idea of the space this takes up.... he wears size 7 in men!!! 

Why do they grow up so quickly!?

   

 Lastly, I had to add what Brenden is wearing today for actual Halloween Day.

He is Josh Dun, the drummer from my FAVORITE band Twenty One Pilots!

Notice the sharpie O gage on his ear! LOL

   

 Here is full body! Brenden is wearing his Skeleton hoodie just like Josh and Tyler wear!

And don't forget the drum sticks!

   

 To his bag, I will probably add his handprint in red and paint the Twenty One Pilots logo in the center.

Well, I hope you all have a fun and safe Halloween!!!

Cake Decorating Party- Dollar Store Supplies

My daughter Kiki LOVES to cook! She is always saying that she wants to have her own bakery when she grows up. Last year we made a Sweet Shop in our basement! If you want to see it click HERE! The amazing thing is we STILL have this up in our basement a year later! 

 I really didn't want to throw a HUGE party again. I wanted to just go somewhere and have them do all of the work. However, once I saw how much it would cost, I decided to have it at our house. 

After talking it over with my husband and Kiki we decided that a cake decorating party would be the easiest. We had her pick 5 close friends so they could all fit comfortably around the dining room table. 

The first thing to consider when having a cake decorating party was how to prepare the cakes. We decided it would be best if the cakes were made before hand and the girls would just have fun decorating them during the party. I searched and searched for the best size cake pans. I didn't want to spend a lot of money and then have something I wouldn't use later. We finally found these ceramic ramekins at World Market that were about 5 inches in diameter. They only cost about 2 dollars each. As you can see in the picture below we also bought a few smaller ramekins to see if we wanted a smaller cake layer on top. I will tell you now it was easiest to have just two 5in circle cakes. It made it easier to put the icing on since that is the trickiest part. 

One cake box mix filled all 6 of these ramekins. So if you were just going with the 5in ramekins, you might get away with filling 5 with one box of cake mix.

 What we did, starting about a week or two before Kiki's party, was bake a bunch of batches of cakes one at a time. We would make a batch, cut the tops off to make them flat, flash freeze them on a cookie sheet, and then store them in a ziplock bag in the freezer until the day of the party. It would be easier to choose one type of cake but we wanted the girls to have the option to choose between white and chocolate so we had to bake a lot of cakes! I think all together, pictured below is two boxes of chocolate cake and three boxes of white. The great thing is you can find box cake mix at the dollar store so it didn't cost us much it just took a lot of time! 

The morning of the party we pulled all of the cakes out of the freezer and placed them on parchment paper to defrost. It only takes about 2 hours!

Next is the fun part! I let Kiki pick out tons of candy that she thought would be good to decorate the cakes with. A good place to pick out candy is the dollar store because your kids can go crazy and it won't cost you a fortune! I also found theses small plastic bowls at the dollar store, 12 for $1. These were perfect because the girls could pass them around the table.

   

 I got this cute 3 tier serving platter from IKEA. The 12 little bowls fit perfectly on the plates.

You can also just place the little bowls around the table.

   

 One of my favorite things to do when decorating for a birthday is hanging regular balloons from the ceiling with curling ribbon. It's so much cheaper and better than dealing with helium!

 The other goodies we got for the party were also all from the dollar store! They had these cute aprons, the "silver" plates, and also a spatula/spreader. We got one per person and they got to take them home after the party as favors along with their yummy cake!

Here is another look at the table with Kiki's donut birthday cake on the corner.

  

We also scored because we found these pastry bags with different decorating tips for icing at the Dollar store! Seriously, they have EVERYTHING there!

We set it up with every color of the rainbow. Each pastry bag held one tub of icing. We put three colors of icing on one end of the table and three at the other end.

   

 When all the girls arrived we let them pick out two white cakes, two chocolate cakes or one white and one chocolate cake. Then, we let them choose a whole tub of either chocolate or vanilla icing. One tub was the perfect amount of icing for the center and then to cover the whole cake. 

FYI, You can also get tubs of icing from the dollar store!

I told the girls before they started that they couldn't mess up their cakes! If they felt they didn't like something just add more icing and candy! 

At one point, a little piece of the cake fell off of one of the girls cakes. No problem at all, we decided to make a pink and purple waterfall out of that part! 

It was all about having fun, not about a perfect end product!

Everyone had a blast!

 Here are my little chefs having fun decorating their cakes!

The birthday girl got to wear this cute chef hat to match her apron!

Since Garren was the only sibling present at the party, we set him up at his own little table right by the girls! He loved being a part of the fun!

As you can see here, this type of party can even be for younger children. My son is 4 and he did a wonderful job decorating his cake with little help.

   

 Another thing we found at Target was small piñatas, one for each girl. They had fun breaking their own personal piñata open. Garren got sad because he wanted to brake one also so I found some extra candy and duct taped one back together. He didn't know the difference!

   

Here is Kiki's end product! 

What a great way to end your birthday, on a SUGAR HIGH! 

Kid Friendly Mini Quiche

I wanted to make a quiche for dinner one night and when I went to the store they were out of pie crust so I just picked up some Crescent rolls instead. I have to admit, I was a little frustrated about this but it ended up being a meal my kids RAVED over! I made these veggie quiche but the great thing about this is you can make a bunch of different flavors because they are mini. 

WHAT YOU NEED :

makes 24 mini quiche

• 2 packs of refrigerated Crescent rolls
• 10 eggs
• 2/3 cup half and half 
• about 1 cup shredded cheese
• salt and pepper to season
• butter/or spray to grease muffin tins
• about 2-3 cups of filling for your quiche (some ideas I have would be sweet potato, spinach, broccoli, mushrooms, chopped up ham, bacon, bell peppers, tomatoes, etc.)

Preheat your oven to 375 degrees.

First, I buttered my muffin tins. Then, I opened the crescent roll packages. There are 8 triangles of dough in each package. I ripped the triangles in half and pressed it to the bottom of the tin. You will have a little dough leftover so what I did was add more where I thought I needed it.

   

This is the step you can basically add any ingredients you want. 

I love the combination of sweet potato and broccoli so I steamed the veggies and then cut them up into little chunks. I think the next time I make this I will add bacon. My family LOVES bacon!

Add a little of your ingredients to each section in your muffin tin. Just try not to let the stuff stick up to high over the top of the tin.

Next, mix your eggs, half & half, and salt & pepper.

After your eggs are well blended pour a little in each section in your muffin tin. Make sure you don't fill it all the way to the top because the eggs will rise. 

Then, sprinkle shredded cheese on top.

Put in the oven and cook for about 20 minutes.

   

For dinner I added some fresh fruit to each plate.

The crescent rolls made for a perfect crust!!!

The other great thing about these is you can freeze the leftovers and pull them out for an easy and quick breakfast.

Yummy!

Man Eating Plant Halloween Decor

Oh My, It has been a LONG time since I last posted! I can't believe Summer is gone and Fall is here! I got my pumpkin Decor up early! I LOVE pumpkin season and all crafts that have to do with them! I saw this awesome Pin on Pinterest of a Man Eating Plant using a craft pumpkin for the head, from Shirley at Eden Makers. Below is the picture of her Man Eating Plant, if you click on the picture below it will take you to her blog and post!

I absolutely LOVED this idea! My husband and I have been adding plants and working on the front landscape so I thought this would be perfect! It's and plant AND halloween decor at the same time! 

What's best is you hardly need any supplies to make this!

WHAT YOU NEED:

A large branch

one carvable craft pumpkin

a bunch of silk leaves

green spray paint

hot glue or gorilla glue

Here is a few pictures of the branches we chose for this project. I actually made two, one for me and one for my Mom. 

Cut all the large branches off the main body and leave a few small one sticking out.

   

After you have your branch, its time to cut your craft pumpkin.

Here is the side view to show you the way the mouth goes! Just get creative, it doesn't need to be exactly like mine. You can use a pumpkin carving knife to do this or I just used a regular small knife (just be careful if you do it this way). 

I wanted to use two different colors of green spray paint for this project. I thought it added to the spookiness of the plant. I spray painted the inside of the mouth light green and the outside darker green. I also used this same dark green spray paint to paint the main large branch. 

For my leaves, I found some awesome halloween leaves for 70% off at a craft store. I wanted the leaves to match the pumpkin head so I spray painted the tops of the leaves with dark green and the backs of the leaves with light green. I tried to do it very lightly so I wouldn't cover all the cool detail of the leaves. Below shows the process of painting the leaves.

This next step is the hardest part of the project. On Shirley's blog she just uses hot glue. I found that I was standing there FOREVER waiting for the glue to dry and trying to get it to hold. 

Next time I might use a different glue, like Gorilla glue etc.

We ended up adding some tape to get it to hold a little better and then I spray painted over that.

I will say, I was still nervous about it holding so I just had my husband add a few nails into it with the nail gun and then I felt that it was VERY sturdy! 

   

Now on Shirley's blog she has a great idea to put the stick into a pot and make it stay with spray foam insulation. If you end up doing it this way, I will tell you that spray foam insulation is very light weight. You will need to add a lot of weight to your pot, before adding the insulation, to be able to hold the weight of your large branch. I thought it was just easier to make sure I had enough straight branch at the bottom to stick into a large potted flower that we already had by our door. I think it also makes it look more realistic when it's sticking out of a pot with a real plant in it.

Below is a picture from Shirley's blog of the spray foam insulation holding the branch in the pot.

Once you have your branch in a pot, hot glue the silk leaves to the smaller branches as you think it looks good. Here is a picture of my finished Man Eating Plant by our front door. He is ready to greet our guests! hehe

A few more cool views of the hungry plant!

"Feed me Seymour"- Little Shop Of Horrors

   

Here are my little boys reactions to seeing the plant by the front door. 

Rowen couldn't believe it and Garren was ready to fight!

      

I hope you all have a great October and a fun & SpOoKy Halloween!