12 Spooktacular Treats:part1

 

Halloween is a great time to get creative with spooktacular foods! Some foods take more effort than others. I will start by listing the treats that are easier to make with their recipe link. On another post I will put more extravagant recipes that take longer to concoct.

Add a little candy corn to your chex mix treat! You can easily add candy corn and pumpkins, gummies, or any other Halloween treats. The one below also has honey bears- yum!

a bowl of halloween themed chex mix with chex cereal, chocolate pretzels, reese's pieces, candy corn, and sweet potato chips

Ingredients:

  • 4 cups Corn Chex and 4 cups wheat chex
  • 2 Cups of cinnamon Teddy Grahams
  • 1/2 cup of unsalted butter (melted)
  • 6 tablespoons of brown sugar
  • 1 tablespoon of cinnamon
  • 1 tsp of salt
  • 1 tsp of vanilla extract
  • 2 cups of candy corn/pumpkins or whatever amount you like!
  • 2 cups of chocolate covered pretzels (or regular)
  • 2 cups sweet potato chips (or whatever type you prefer)
  • 1 cups of reese’s pieces or m&ms

Directions

    1. Preheat oven to 250°. In a large bowl, combine Corn Chex, Wheat Chex, and Teddy Grahams. In a small bowl, mix butter, brown sugar, cinnamon, salt, and vanilla.
    2. Drizzle about one-third of butter mixture over Chex mixture. Toss to coat, then repeat with remaining butter mixture until every component is coated.
    3. Divide Chex mixture between 2 unlined rimmed baking sheets; spread in an even layer.
    4. Bake Chex Mix, tossing every 15 minutes, until toasted and crisp, 30 to 45 minutes.
    5. Let cool, then mix in candy corn, pretzels, sweet potato chips, and Reese’s pieces.
    6. Make Ahead: Chex Mix can be made 2 weeks ahead. Store in an airtight container at room temperature.

photo by Robin and Sue

If you prefer nuts and cinnamon toast cereal- then this bowl is for you!

Spaghetti with meatballs that look like eyes

Spaghetti with eyes! AHHH

  • Make your spaghetti and meatballs and sauce as usual.
  • To give the spaghetti the twirled “nest” look, just twist big scoops spaghetti with a fork in a ladle
  • Use olives and canned black cut up olives on top of mozzarella slices.
  • Serve with a side of parmesan cheese for sprinkling.

photo by anniesnomsblog

Pasta pumpkins! Cut the top of the pepper off and carve in the features! Then cook the pasta and sauce and scoop it all into the pepper.

Garlic bread with cheese that looks like a mummy

Mummy Garlic Bread!

  • Pre-heat oven to 375 degrees
  • Use italian bread cut in half long way (of buy premade garlic bread). If making own you can smother it in butter and place garlic powder/garlic precut on the bread.
  • cut up some strips of mozzarella cheese (strips of string cheese work well too).
  • Place them on a bakery garlic bread or home made
  • Heat the bread in the oven at 375 degrees for about 5 minutes.
  • Finally, add a couple olive slices for “eyes”.

May be an image of fruitGhost Bananas and clementine pumpkins!

  • All you need to do is use celery of the clementine and mini chocolate chips for the eyes of the ghost and a regular sized chocolate chip for the mouth! Kids love them!

photo by Rebekah W.Toes! Just use hot dogs- either cut up regular size or mini hot dogs. Cook them up and wrap them with cut up tortillas! You can also cook them in the oven with crescent rolls like the next recipe of mummy hot dogs!  Then place mustard on strategically to make nails!

Mummy Hot Dogs

If you prefer to go healthier, you can make fingers or toes from carrots with cutting s small area on the top or bottom of the carrot and using hummus and putting on a sliced almond! You can also use cream cheese and cut up peppers!

photo by Ms B.

Another hot dog recipe! This time it is for a worm sandwich! This time you slice the hot dogs into long strips and boil them until they curl- then add ketchup!

 

Spooky witches' fingers Halloween recipe | National ...Easiest Halloween Witch Finger Breadsticks

 

photo by AnonymousSpider Deviled eggs!

  • Make your deviled eggs as you usually do, then add olives to make the spiders- such a cute and easy idea!

Pumpkin seeds take a little more work as you dig them out of your pumpkin, clean them and let them dry- but well worth it! This website has 10 great seasonings and ways to roast them- try it this year- you won’t regret it!

 

More recipes coming in the next post!

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1st Birthday Ducky Theme!

As I searched the internet for ideas for my munchkins first birthday, I noticed a lack of imagination for the rubber ducky birthday theme!  So I have decided to share what I came up with in hopes of giving others ideas as well.

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My little Cecelia loves rubber duckies.  She has since she was introduced in the bathtub to them.  Now, besides just the rubber duckies, she loves everything ducky!  She crawls right over to any books that contain ducks; especially, the duck and goose series!  I even got her a large rubber duck down at the shore.

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So I didn’t want to go overboard on her first birthday since she won’t remember it, but…of course we had to have rubber ducks everywhere!

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First, I made Cece a 1st birthday dress. You can click here to see some of the details however right now I do not have a full tutorial. If you are interested in purchasing one you can private message me.  My Etsy site is upcoming.

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First I thought to myself, well if it is a rubber duck party, then I definitely need rubber ducks for favors!  So I searched the web for the cheapest, yet best rubber duckies for about 35 people.  I ended up going with an assortment of 2 inch rubber ducks from amazon.  There were some bad reviews that they were not a good assortment; however, I found them very varied in theme.

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Last minute, I decided to make birthday crowns!  This tutorial can show you how to make easy quick crowns!  Of course, if you have a large amount of kids coming you may want to just buy party hats or completely skip this.  I used scrap pieces to make the crowns and just did ribbon along the bottom that could be tied.  You of course can do buttons, Velcro, or if you know the head size, sew it all the way around.

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Next, of course I needed party decorations!  I didn’t want to spend 10 dollars for 8 fancy paper plates with cute ducks on them.  So, I made a trip to my dollar store and bought yellow napkins, plates, cups, and silverware.  They also had cute I’m one plates, so I bought a couple of those as well.  Since the weather is nice, we had lots of tables outside and I bought yellow tablecloths.

plates

As far as balloons, I ended up buying balloons on amazon, ones with little ducks on them and then two large Mylar duck balloons.  They did not carry these type at my local stores.  The only place around to fill the balloons was the dollar store.  Do you see a theme here?  **Note: it does cost more to have Mylar balloons filled, so if you are saying a buck or two you can skip the Mylar and go for the regular smaller balloons.

 balloons

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I also used the rubber duckies to decorate everywhere!  I had a couple mums and vases in the house and added little ducks to them!

IMG_2559 IMG_2560Food…of course this is key for a party.  I wanted to save some time but not spend too much money either.  So, I decided to order a couple small party trays and then do crock pot recipes.  I didn’t go crazy with the duck theme food since there weren’t a lot of kids coming to the party.  However, if you want to see some duck themed food check out pinterest for lots of ideas.  Yes, we did deviled eggs and some quacky snack mix that I used small duck cups for.  Cake. Originally I was thinking of making my own cake, there are tons of ideas on pinterest.  However, with more than 40 people coming, and cheap but tasty sheet cakes with a free smash cake included, I decided to save myself the stress and space in my fridge, and order a cake with a duck theme.  However, let me show you some of the ideas I picked up from pinterest. 

cake2 cake3Duck Birthday Ideas: click for more pinterest ideas.

I was GIVEN THE WRONG CAKE WITH NO SMASH CAKE when I went to pickup the cake two hours before the party!  I was given a mere 1/4 sheet cake (wrong size) with the wrong duck design on it, and NO smash cake!  Don’t panic I told myself as my mind reminded me I only ordered this a month in advance to make it was done right!  After several minutes of panic, the manager apologized and stated they could make my cake and smash cake in about two hours.  I agreed but would have to send someone else back to pick it up.  Lukily, my brother in law agreed to pick it up and got fifty percent off the cake.  Phew, added stress you don’t need!

I ended up addin some small ducks to the smash cake! Note: it was a HUGE SMASH CAKE!

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I also made duck shaped cookies with a duck cookie cutter!  And then I used yellow icing to make the number one of them!  Half were pumpkin sugar cookies and the other half regular sugar cookies

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Drinks. Duck punch of course!  There are a variety of recipes to make blue punch.  I ended up doing half blue hawiian punch, half 7up, and then putting in vanilla ice cream to make it look like bubbles!  You can clean rubber ducks up well and put them in, or freeze them in ice!  I also had a punch server that I put ice and ducks in the middle and then put water in it! 

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Play.
Since there were a handful or two of kids coming, I decided to buy a couple items and also set up items for the kids to play with.  Of course we had games such as bean bag toss, bacchi ball, redneck golf, and Frisbee setup for adults.

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I bought some duck beach balls off amazon.  They came in a 12 pack so I got them cheap enough and gave them away as favors too.

Birthday chalkboard!  I love this idea!  And it is so easy to make!  Now again, I needed to save myself some time with this project, but also not spend too much money.  My handwriting is awful, so making a chalkboard myself was out of the question.  I also wanted it on a poster board to have it as a keepsake.  So if you are into graphic design you can make your own up and have it printed at an office store.  However, I am not into graphic design so I investigated the options at etsy.  I ended up going with a 5.99 graphic for ducks and edited the sections myself with adobe.  I took it to staples to have it mounted on a poster board and enlarged.

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HOWEVER, **Note: the file was locked due to the seller having a password.  The staples I went to could not print it so I had to have it turned into a JPEG.  The seller offered to do it, but I didn’t want to wait, so I just changed it myself on a free online program.  Just type in change to JPEG and you can easily find a free site.  For these pre-made designs you cannot change the pictures or the design, only the words can be edited.  For mounting on a thick foam poster board and enlarging to 16×20, it cost me 16.99 online.  I am very pleased with the way it turned out and now it is displayed in her room as a great keepsake!IMG_0108 IMG_0154

You can of course buy a chalkboard and make your own.  You can even print out different fonts and trace them onto the board.  You can also buy a cheap graphic design program and make your own.  Again, for the price, and since it was last minute, it was easiest for me to order it.

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So that is it folks!  Although she won’t remember this, I have lots of pictures and we had lots of fun!

Hope you enjoyed the post and I hope it gave you some good ideas!  You can check out my pinterest site for more ideas!  Follow us on facebook too!

 

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