Boo to You!

Here in Canada we get to celebrate with two holidays in October, Thanksgiving and Halloween!

  Starting off the month with Thanksgiving really puts me on the mood to do some fall cooking, especially when it comes to baking goodies.  I tried a few pumpkin muffin recipes this month, including the pumpkin cake recipe that I first tried in September.  I also spiced it up a bit by adding a cream cheese surprise from these carrot cake muffins that I made earlier in the year.  They were a hit.

 Another muffin recipe from the month was this French toast muffins.  I loved the crunchy brown sugar butter layer they were rolled in, but these didn't disappear into the lunch boxes quite as fast as the pumpkin ones.
French Toast Muffins via Rebekah's Pinterest
 

  Halloween is a fun time for cooking up some ghoulish treats.  We've tried to do something fun for dinner for the past several years.  I'm still planning this years dinner and treats for the few parties (kindergarten class, library school, ect) that the kids are involved in, but I'll share last years with you.

 
 For our 2012 Halloween dinner we feasted on Mummy's, Pumpkin Cesear Salad, Rice Krispy Treat Pumpkins, and Bloody Fishbowl Drinks.   The Mummy's were:  hot dogs wrapped in crescent roll dough.  Our cesear salads were held in hollowed out orange skins that we made to look like mini Jack O Lanterns.  The pumpkin rice krispy treats only looked liked pumpkins, by shaping them into balls rather than squares and adding some frosting for a Jack O Lantern face.  I used some red cranberry juice and a bit of Sprite with fish and shark shaped gummies for the drinks.  The kids talk about Halloween dinner all year long!

  Thinking there would be a bunch of unhealthy treats brought into Emma's school(there wasn't), I did a platter that looked a bit like a Jack O Lantern for something fun and healthy.  This year we are going to give them some more sugar...why not?  We are making some cute rice krispy ghosts tonight.
Veggie Platter via Rebekah's Pinterest via Baby Center
Rice Krispy Ghosts via Rebekah's Pinterest via the Idea Room

Of course Jack O Lanterns is a must every year and this year was no exception.  We also had some friends give us a "white" pumpkin.  They had painted chevrons on one of theirs and M&M really wanted to make the same design on ours.  Feeling like chevrons were a little beyond us we decided to do some stripes with tape.  After much taping and painting we discovered that black tempura paint will not stick to pumpkins.  Emma had a blast painting the pumpkin, but in the end I had to flake all that hard work off and do some spray painting myself.  Not exactly the most kid friendly of projects, and our pumpkin had a few extra runs and smears from the trial and error process, but something fun and different, especially from a distance.

Another activity we usually get into during October is Halloween costumes.  The first few years I was able to find some cute costumes at yard sales during the summer. 

However, as M&M and Moose get older I have found the costumes too Disney and less and less cute factor.  Last year we began making our own costumes.  M&M was a peacock, which turned out simple enough by using felt to make a few peacock feathers for a shirt we had on hand and tying up a tulle skirt in peacock colors.  We found a mask at the dollar store and her outfit was complete.

Moose was even easier.  Being that his nickname is Moose and we were going for an animal theme, I made some Moose shaped antlers out of (again) felt and sewed them on a brown hoodie from the dresser.  Over it we put a red shirt that had a picture of a moose and the caption "Eh!"  Cute and simple for our little moose.

 And then of course we were all fed up and dressed up and set to take off for some "trick or treats!"  Happy Halloween!