Halloween Inspired Lunch!

A Halloween Party isn't complete without some Halloween themed foods. Ariana made 'witch fingers' in her cooking class at school so she was sweet enough to show us all how to make them. She literally did all the work and I was very impressed with her and they tasted great!

What you'll need:

A can of crescent rolls

A pack of hotdogs

Cheese (optional)

Preheat the oven according to the instructions on the can of crescent rolls.

Using a fork, pork a few holes in an unthawed hotdog. Place the hotdog on top of an unrolled cresant roll and roll it up. If you like, you can wrap cheese around the hotdog first, then wrap it in the crescent roll.

I know, I know, those aren't hotdogs, I thought I had some buuuuut I didn't
 so I improvised with Johnsville Brats (the kind here)

When you are done rolling all the hotdogs (or brats, in our case *wink*) you can kinda smoosh a piece of the roll around the hotdog to make it look like a fingernail (eeeewwww).

Then place 'em on a cookie sheet and pop 'em in the oven. Cook them according to the time on the crescent roll can. Then, Enjoy!

We also made spaghetti tacos (since they look worm-like and fit with the whole Halloween theme), and orange pumpkin shaped ice cubes (made out of orange Kool-Aid) and our drink was clear Kool-Aid so everyone could still admire the cubes while they were in their drink. 

Lunch filled the kiddos up and gave them the energy to keep on partying! 

Until next time...

LOR

Slime Time!

We had a party yesterday - a Mini Pre-Halloween party of sorts. You see, our next three weekends are jam-packed with plans so I knew we wouldn't have time to have a little in-house celebration on actual Halloween...so we partied like it was 1999 yesterday. Whoop!

Last year I planned a Halloween party for the kids and us adults alike, and for those of you that know us well, you know the HUGE roadblock that almost put my plans to a screeching halt - but I carried on with the festivities the best I could and I think I did pretty darn good considering. This year I knew such a thing couldn't happen and yet I wanted the celebration to be just between the kidlets and I (Daddy's gone to IFS), I guess, in a way, to make up for last year, plus, some "Mommy Time" is always nice - right?! 

So we started by making sliiiiiiiime! I found the receipe to make the slime from a birthday party website a couple of years ago (one of those sites that give you ideas of activities to do at parties) I think it was this website but don't quote me on that. Ethan LOVES science and for his 8th birthday we did a science party and it was a MEGA hit with all his friends. Even the adults loved a lot of the experiments we did. Anyhoo, below is what I did to make it (I did it from memory, you'll see why when you look at the ingredients). 

What you need (for each batch of slime):

1 teaspoon of Borax

A bottle of Elmer's glue

Water

Food coloring

Yup...that's it folks - nothin' fancy, now can you see why a recipe isn't needed even two years later. ;)

So we started by putting 1 cup of water in a glass and mixing in the borax til it dissolved. 

In a separate bowl, pour in the entire bottle of glue.

Add about 1/2 cup of water in with the glue.

Add food coloring until you get the desired color you're going for (beware, if it's red you want you are going to use almost half of the bottle - my oldest kept saying, "Mom? It's pink" with this, "how totally gross is that" look on his face).

Stir all that up 'til it's nice and smooth.

Next, add the borax mixture to the glue mixture. It'll look kinda weird, but no worries, it's all good.

Now use your hands to mix it all up. Keep mixing, it'll take a few minutes to get a good consistency. I had to knead my little one's for a good five minutes for some reason, while my older two had a good hunk of slime within the first minute.

This is what it looks like at first

It's gettin' there...

Tada!

You are going to have some excess water/liquid in the bowl - just toss it.

Now let the slime playing begin!

This kept my brood busy long enough for me to get our next activity ready. You can even store it in little sandwich baggies to use again and again. 

After we made it at my son's birthday party a few years ago, it lasted a good month or so before I trashed it.

Be on the prowl, more of our Mini Pre-Halloween shenanigans will be posted throughout the next few days! 

Thanks for looking.

XO, 

LOR

Halloween Lanterns

Aah, hello fine people and welcome to my wonderful world of...ummm...well, I can't think of anything clever right now, so simply Welcome to my Wonderful World!

I feel a bit of pressure to make this post fantabulous, it being my FIRST POST and all - well, my first post on my new craft blog, I have another blog about my family as a way for family and friends (and whoever else) to keep up with us since we move often. But this is my first post here - at Mommy, Interrupted - so I'm striving to make it a good one.

My friend, Jessica, suggested I create such a blog, and I think she was on to something because this head of mine is constantly in information overload with all my wacky ideas and plans. So, now I have somewhere I can let it all (well...some of it) out at. 

I figured this first fantabulous post would be a quick tutorial on how to make the  Halloween lanterns I posted a picture of in my other blog, Thursday Afternoon. My inspiration for these actually came from some Christmas luminaries (I don't remember the site - sorry!), but I knew with a few tweaks I could make 'em into a big hit in my house (and I was right, my kiddos LOVE these). 

Had I known I was going to do a mini tutorial at the time we made these I would've taken more pictures of the entire lantern making process. 

Okay, here's what you need:

Mod Podge (Glossy)

Foam (or paint) brush

Black construction paper (or vinyl)

Tissue paper 

Jars (any size, I like how it looks with a variety of sizes rather than all of them being the same height)

You can buy mason jars or any other kind of jar at many stores, but I like to be thrifty when I can so I just saved jars once I used them. For instance, when we had fettucini for dinner I saved the alfredo sauce jar to use for this project. I have three guys in my house that eat like a pack of hungry wolves so it didn't take long to collect the amount of jars I needed. 

Wash your jars and make sure they are dry. 

Decide what color you want your lantern to be and cut strips of tissue paper. My strips were about an inch or two in width. 

With a brush, paint a strip of mod podge onto the jar. Lay the tissue paper down on top of the strip of mod podge you just painted. Make sure it's as smooth as possible. 

Next, brush a light coat of Mod Podge over the tissue paper once it's on the jar. Repeat this until your jar is covered, slightly overlapping each tissue paper strip. 

I looked up some Jack-O-Lantern faces online and just free-handed them onto black construction paper and cut them out. Then we glued them on the jar with mod podge and did a coat of mod podge over top of the construction paper also in order to seal it AND make the whole thing look glossy. 

Let it dry, et voilà! Adorable Halloween decorations! 

They even look super cute during the day with the sunshine shining through!

And at night, just stick a tealight in them and you've got some super cool, glowing decor happenin'. I used a strand of lights in mine because I go through tealights like no other and figured I'd save money by using LED lights which last FOREVER. You could even use the little battery powered tealights too if you have younger kids that you don't trust around lit candles, or a crazy kitty who jumps in window sills (luckily ours only gets in the living room window sill).

Hope you all enjoy making (and admiring) these as much as we did!

XO,

LORRI