Wood Slice Pumpkins

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We were cleaning and burning up some brush the other day to get the yard ready for fall. When Dad was cutting the wood up I said to cut me some slices of a branch to make pumpkins.  Super simple, paint the slice orange leaving a little margin on the edge, then glue a stick and some Spanish moss on the top with hot glue.  Done! I used a semi gloss paint from Walmart that was about $1.50. I made seven and used about half the bottle of paint making them about 10 cents apiece.   The moss I had saved from some dried arrangement so no cost there.  If I hadn't had the moss I would have used dried grass or a bit of green fabric for an embellishment.      

When the pumpkins were all lined up it made me think of the book I read to the kids at least a hundred times when they are little to teach ordinal numbers, "Five Little Pumpkins Sitting On a Gate."  Click  here to hear the song if you aren't familiar with it or just want to walk down memory lane.

Halloween Goodies and Goblins

Trick or treats in a Snapple bottle.  Spray paint the covers orange.  Adorn with ribbon and stickers.  Make sure the jars are completely dry before putting in the candy or you will end up throwing it all out, rewashing the jars and refilling with new candy you have to run to town to buy.   

We were suppose to have a Halloween themed dish for the 4-H party.  Low on time and motivation we grabbed a container of cheese balls from Sam's Club and drew a pumpkin face on it.

For our homeschool co-op party I was more organized.  This is a pan of lasagna with RIP in green olives.  If you don't like green olives (I don't) just eat from the bottom of the pan.

Also for co-op, pumpkin biscuits.  These are those biscuits that come in the tube and make your heart stop while you are waiting for it to pop upon opening.  Lay them out on your baking sheet and then cut slits around the sides.  Cut one biscuit into small pieces and stick on top for the stems.

Co-op trick or treating.  We had Sonic, Little Mac, and Mario.

In about one hour between the three of them they brought home about 30 pounds of candy.  A good chuck of Sparks went to the hospital with Dad.  Nurses love candy :)

4-H Halloween party, Mario and Mary Poppins.

The funniest game they played was trying to eat a donut tied from the ceiling without using their hands.

Dancer's dead and scarred pumpkin.

Trick or Treating

Holy Calories Batman!!

Rat....................Meat Loaf

 

Just bake them and eat them whole. 

 

 

You don't get much meat off of a rat if you try and clean them.

Spider Taco Ring

 

This is our dinner for Halloween night but, since we are having friends over, we thought it would be best to "taste test" it before hand.  It passed unanimously.  

 

The idea for this ring came from pocketchangegourmet.com but we made a couple minor changes to it.  If you want the original, check out their web site. 

 

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 pound hamburger, cooked and drained
• 1 onion chopped 
• 1 package taco seasoning - I always find taco seasoning spicy so that is why only one pack for 1 1/2 pounds of hamburger. 
• 3/4 cup water
• 2 tubes refrigerated crescent rolls - we used the large size 
• 1 tube refrigerated bread sticks
• Shredded lettuce
• 2 large pitted black olives

 Brown hamburger with onion, tip up pan and scoop out grease. Add taco seasoning and water. Simmer until liquid is gone. On cookie sheet, lay out the crescent rolls in a circle with the small point facing out.  Add hamburger mixture around the ring, flip the rolls into the center - if you have ever been to Pampered Chef party do it like they did, same thing. Bake at 350 degrees for about 20-30 minutes or until golden brown.

 

Spider Legs - Place spider legs on another cookie sheet bent in the shape of a "V". Bake until brown.

 

Putting it all together - Add lettuce to the center of the taco ring (you may have to cut the hole in the middle bigger just use a glass), then add olives for eyes.  Sticks the legs in.

 

Serve with cheese, tomato, salsa, raw onion, sour cream, more black olives and shredded lettuce or anything else you would put on your taco.

Ritz Spiders

Taking these to bible study tonight.  Assuming they won't last long after the kids get there.  Update:  The kids didn't get any because the adults ate them.  Good for all ages :)

Halloween Party II

 

Our second Halloween party this year, the first one was with our 4-H club.  Dancer and her nerd friend (who is anything but a nerd).

 

A little church lady served toxic slug.  Her costume was awesome.  It was actually her grandmas dress, she wore a black 1960's going-to-church hat, clip-on painful earrings (how did women ever wear those?), a grandma pin, had a little purse draped on her elbow and, to make the outfit authentic - knee high nylons.

 

Wrap the mummy relay.  In two teams they had to run down to the other end of the room, grab a roll of toilet paper, their team had to wrap them in it without ripping it, then unwrap them and wrap the toilet paper back on the roll and the then free mummy ran the roll back down.  It is a really boring game.................... 

 

 

until there are girl mummy wrappers.

Another game was to untangle a spider web.  For 10 kids we had 10 balls of yarn.  We tied a spider ring to the end of each one and then threw them around the room. 

 



 

This proved to be quite challenging especially since we told them they couldn't just bring back a mass of yarn, it had to be rolled back up. 

 

They also played another spider web game, a eye ball relay race, made monsters and eatable necklaces, got a bag of candy and had a yummy game of Fear Factor - did you know kids don't really like canned octopus? 

Spooktacular Halloween Treats

Yummy Mummy

 

Cut a loaf of French bread in half lengthwise.  Spread Alfredo or marinara sauce on bread.  Cover with thin strips of mozzarella cheese.  If you want other toppings put them under the cheese.  Add two slices of black olive for eyes, place them so they are "peaking out from the mummy's wrappings.  Bake in a 350 degree oven until cheeses is melted.

 

Tombstones

 

 

By some oval shaped cookies, these are Pepperidge Farms Milano cookies.  Break the cookies in half so each half looks like a tombstone.  Dip each piece in melted chocolate almond bark or melted semi-sweet Chocolate chips.  After they cool and harden write "RIP" in the tombstone with white frosting.  To make the patch of ground where the tombstones are planted, make a brownie mix or recipe.  The patches of earth were made on a baking stone so that they would be large and flat.  Push the "grave markers" into the still warm cookies so the will stay there when the cookies cool.  Sprinkle green decorating sugar on the brownie base and gently push in to look like grass. 

 

 

Monster Scat

 

 

Mix roasted peanuts with more melted chocolate almond bark or melted chocolate chips.  Drop spoonfuls onto wax paper.  Remove from the paper after cool and hardened. 

The Pumpkin That Didn't Want To Be Carved

 

Spark had a two pumpkins he wanted to put together for the 4-H pumpkin carving contest.  The first one, no problem.  The second one, who was quite small, had such a hard rind that he couldn't even get the knife to stab into it.  That is where Ryobi came to the rescue.  Dad got out a saw and got the top off that pumpkin in short order. 

 

 

To carve the eye - used a door knob cutter.  The pumpkin is looking like he is having second thoughts about being so hard to carve.  For the mouth they used a regular drill bit.

 

 

Their diligence paid off, Spark won first place in the carving contest.

Crazy Cat Lady

 

Dancer is ready for Halloween - she's not normally a crazy cat lady :)

Trick or Treat, Smell My Feet

Spark was Ernie Brown aka Turtleman.  Everyone thought he was a cowboy.  Think what you want candy givers, just hand over the loot.  I took his picture outside of one of the most nicely decorated house and the people were so excited about our picture taking that they even gave Dancer and I a treat.  Maybe we should have taken his picture in front of every house for extra treats, might have to try that next year.

We weren't out very long because Spark wasn't feeling the best but, he still made quite a haul.  There wasn't hardly any kids out, in fact, on the way into town I even asked the kids if it was actually Halloween or did we have the wrong day.  Because of this low turn out people were giving handfuls of candy.  It was also odd because it was a beautiful night, the temperature was 50 degrees when it is not unheard of on Halloween night to have windchill temps near zero and possible snow on the ground.   

After sorting out all his candy he made a bag for the Sugar Sprite Fairy.  He left the bag on the porch and in the morning this is what she left him.

How To Kill A Pumpkin

Start by shooting it with your Co2 Airsoft Pistol repeatedly.  Perhaps he should have tried his sister's .22

 

Lots of holes and cracks but not much real damage.

 

 

Wind up and hurl it across the yard.  Still no damage.

 

 

Toss it in the air and let it smash to the ground.  Still no damage.

 

 

Hurl it against a tree.  It is starting to crack but still holding together.

 

 

Toss it around the yard a bunch more times and it finally, finally cracks open.  Dig out the seeds to plant for next year because this is one sturdy pumpkin.

4-H Halloween Party

 

He doesn't even roast them first.

 

 

Trunk or Treat

 

Our treats were Nutter Butters dipped in almond bark with chocolate chip eyes. 

 

 

Noodle pudding baked in a bowl.

 

 

Spark was Turtleman Ernie Brown and Dancer a Directioner.

 

 

 

Games - this was a relay, two teams each run to a bowl with work gloves on and have to pick up a Hershey Kiss, unwrap it and have it in their mouth before they can pass the gloves on to the next person.

 

 

Digging beads out of brain goo.

Pumpkin Patch Field Trip

 

Pumpkins as far as you could see.  It looked like a field of basketballs.  This is a farm that grows pumpkins that are sold at stores out front in the big boxes.  In our area, if it says that the pumpkins are locally grown they came from these fields.  The pumpkins shown here are the left overs.  There was an early frost so some of them froze and I am not sure why the rest were passed over.

 

   

 

All the kids minus two.  The little girl that Dancer is holding is a baby that one of the families takes care of.  The highlight of Dancer's week is getting to play with her and she holds her every moment she gets.

 

 

Back to a member's house to carve all those pumpkins.

 

 

 

Checked out their llamas and alpacas.  I loved the expression the middle llama was giving Spark. 

 

 

They are quite large but on the plus side they only poo in one place, unlike a goat who goes where ever, and they don't smell.  Although they don't have any males that aren't gelded so they don't have those hormones flying around like we do with the goats.

 

The family cleaned 50 chickens this fall and then when everything was all put away they realized that they only cleaned 49.  The mom was saying how now they would have to haul everything back out and heat up boiling water to pluck and clean "a" chicken.  Dad told her about how we have had success with sticking the air compressor nozzle in the under the chicken skin and loosing it enough to easily peel the skin off.  "Let's do it!" she said right away.  Her son and Spark headed out to cut off the head and bleed it out with the air compressor humming away.  Dad stuck the nozzle under the skin and the bird blew up, that is why the legs are sticking up like that.  The air compressor was set on 120 pounds and we usually have ours set on 90 pounds for using the stapler or nailer.  We learned when the bird "popped" that 120 pounds is a bit too much pressure.

 

The kids finished cleaning the bird and dug out all the entrails to find all the parts since we had just done anatomy in our co-op last year.