A Spooktacular Halloween 2013

I just love Halloween.  It’s spooky, and fun, and full of candy.  (Boy do I love the candy.)  I love dressing up, carving pumpkins, and toasty pumpkin seeds.  Candles in jack-o-lanterns, little tiny monster trick-or-treaters, and did I mention the candy?

The Three Girlies have grown past the I-just-want-candy stage this year, and Halloween 2013 was all about hanging out with their friends.  All three of them got creative and made their own costumes….which turned out very cool.

Amber and her best friend decided to be Patty Schwab and Penelope Brown, best friend nerds. (Amber was Patty.)  My picture does not portray how hilariously “nerdy” they were.  You just had to be here!

Allie and her three friends were Barbie dolls.  I think it was really just an excuse to dress sassy (I made them take off the stilettos) and STILL get candy, but it worked.

Abbey threw together some blood and stuff, and turned herself into a Zombie Cheerleader.  Super cute!

For the seventh straight year, my husband was the ever-popular Super Chicken. (Fuzzy pictures...sorry!)

Super Chicken and his side-kick Nugget, made a 30 minute appearance outside and the Japanese kids ALL wanted pictures with him. 

And finally, my last minute masks that I found at the store for my friend Bri and I, were AWESOME!

Turns out they were VERY creepy.  Like serial killer creepy. 

But despite our murderous façade, we did get a picture with the band One Direction.

We also got one with Super Chicken.

See what I mean?  A lot of fun!  A little creepy!  And now....... it’s time for me to go eat some candy!  Happy Halloween!

Halloween Recap....2012

We survived.  No, not a zombie apocalypse…..we survived Halloween!

We estimate about 1000 trick-or-treaters came to our front porch.  Good thing Super Chicken was there with his bowl of candy to save the day!

The girls came in with LOADS of candy and had TONS of fun.  Allie was a princess with her best friend Kaylie.  Those two are inseparable.  The only way they could have matched even more is if Kaylie broke her arm and got a pink cast like Allie's blue one!

Amber was Red Riding Hood….vampire style! 

Abbey was off with her friends right after school and for the first year ever, I don’t have any Halloween pics of her.  Sigh.  I stole this from her Facebook page though.  This is totally what I do......

Hope you all had fun this Halloween!  We love you!

Halloween 2011

They’re creepy & they’re kooky…..

Mysterious & spooky…..

They’re all together ookie……

The Penton Family.

On a side note, it was IMPOSSIBLE to get all three of my girls together for a sister Halloween photo.  Once they got their costumes on and the friends started coming over, the festivities no longer included mom and dad in their plans.  (Sniff, sniff.)  Although, after a glass of red wine….I mean blood….and some Reese’s peanut butter pumpkins, we got over being abandoned. 

It's Pumpkin Seed Time!

Pumpkin Seeds!!! Yum!

I know, I know.  I told you I hated carving pumpkins….but I broke down and bought two pumpkins just so I could make some pumpkin seed recipes.  Guess what?  Two pumpkins just don’t generate enough seeds for two separate recipes.  %$@&!  What did I do?  My neighbor (HI SHERRY!) has four kids AND four un-carved pumpkins sitting on her porch AND she just had her wisdom teeth pulled.  This woman needs me and I need her seeds!  So, here I am with a large knife and five children on my back porch……to make a long story short, I ended up with 4 cups of seeds. Recipe #1 is from my good friend Theresa…..hence the creative name….

Theresa’s Pumpkin Seeds

Ingredients:

·        2 cups dried seeds

·        2 tablespoons melted butter or margarine (come on people…use the real butter!)

·        ½ teaspoon Worcestershire sauce

·        Salt

This recipe is much much much better than your basic roast-n-salt type recipes.  If you do ANYTHING with the seeds, do this recipe.  For goodness sakes you wasted all that time digging the seeds out of the guts and drying them…love them a bit!

Directions:  Mix your seeds with the butter and Worcestershire sauce.  Thank goodness the spell check knows the word Worcestershire or else my brain would explode.  Spread those buttery wo’shired seeds in a shallow pan.  Sprinkle with salt.  Bake at 250 degrees for two hours stirring them occasionally.  They are done when they are brown and crispy.

Now for the great mother queen princess of all pumpkin seed recipes!  I found it in one of those church cookbooks.  I think that is why you can actually taste a bit of heaven in them.  There are very few foods that I think are, “taste of heaven” worthy.  Cheese fondue, red velvet cake, and these seeds are exactly what I am going to eat in heaven. 

Sweet-n-Spicy Pumpkin Seeds

 

Ingredients:

·        One cup dried seeds*

·        5 Tablespoons sugar

·        ¼ teaspoon salt

·        ¼ teaspoon ground cumin

·        ¼ teaspoon ground cinnamon

·        ¼ teaspoon ground ginger

·        Pinch of cayenne pepper to taste

·        1 ½ tablespoons peanut oil

You need to start out with dry seeds…..dry toasty seeds are the best. *To get dry toasty seeds, put them on a shallow baking stone or a shallow pan lined with parchment paper at 250 degrees for about 15 minutes.  Stir the seeds around and go 15 more minutes.  Stir again.  Then, turn off the oven.  Leave the seeds inside and go to the store and get whatever ingredient you are missing…..like cumin.  Stop at the salon and buy some shampoo.  The object is to leave your seeds in the oven for about 2 hours untouched.  They will toasty and dry when you get back!

Mix  3 tablespoons of the sugar, salt, cumin, cinnamon, ginger, and the cayenne pepper in a medium bowl.  Make sure it is a pretty bowl like mine.  If you need to, go to Poland and get a pretty bowl of your own.  These seeds deserve a bowl this nice.

Heat the peanut oil in a large skillet on high.  Add your seeds and the last 2 tablespoons of sugar to the oil.  You need to stay with your seeds and stir them constantly.  They will brown very quickly.  Cook them until the sugar begins to caramelize.  This sounds more complicated than it is.  Just pretend you are on Iron Chef and move and stir the seeds until they are nice and brown.

  Quickly, dump the seeds into the bowl with the spices and stir well to coat.  Let them cool or burn your tongue and try some.  You can store in an airtight container for up to one week but you won’t need to.  My one cup of seeds were gone in about 10 minutes.  

Just go and buy a pumpkin right now and make these or de-gut your neighbors like I did.  You can thank me later.https://sites.google.com/site/threegirliesprintablerecipes/sweet-n-spicy-pumpkin-seedshttps://sites.google.com/site/threegirliesprintablerecipes/sweet-n-spicy-pumpkin-seeds

Spider Cookies

This is the LAST Halloween recipe….I PROMISE!  Between the school bake sale, the middle school dance (more on that soon, because it was my oldest daughter’s first dance ever!!!), and the “You’ve been BOOED” packages on my door, I was getting crazy trying to make goodies.  Oh, you noticed I had more than one BOO on my door?  I confess, it took me almost a week to tape up the sign that proclaims someone had already BOOED me…..and during that time we were BOOED again.  I also confess that I only BOOED one family back.  It took my daughters almost a half hour to find a BOOless door.  So someone’s BOO line was killed at my doorstep.   My point is, who has time to make dozens and dozens of goodies with all the BOO madness?  So I put my 10 year old Allie to work on this recipe.

SPIDER COOKIES

Ingredients:

·        Betty Crocker Peanut Butter Cookie Mix

·        Rolo Chocolate and Caramel candies

·        Skinny licorice ropes (black or red)

·        Mini M&Ms

·        Black Decorating Frosting

·        Small Decorating tip

Get a bowl out for your 10 year old….because if she dropped your Pampered Chef large batter bowl while climbing off the counter….well, you would be gnashing your teeth.  Make the cookies as directed on the package.  You will only need oil and egg for this.  Yay! It is even easy for a kid to stir.  Make small teaspoon size balls and do not press them down.  Bake.  This is a good time to cut the licorice into little legs (about an inch and a half or as long as you want). We used red licorice (Pull-n-Peel Twizzlers) because black is BLECHY….but it would look cooler. You decide.  You also need to unwrap the Rolos because you are going to press one in the middle of each cookie as SOON as they come out of the oven.  Wait two minutes and then remove the rolo cookies onto some wax paper.  Technically you could stop here.  These Rolo and Peanut Butter cookies are good.  You better try one, just to check if the caramel is gooey enough.  Mmmmmmm.

While the cookies are still warm, stick eight little licorice legs into the bottom part of the Rolos.  Viola! Spider legs!  Then, take the mini M&Ms and lightly press two onto the top of each Rolo for googly spider eyes.  If you want to get really detailed, put small black dots in the middle of each eye with the black frosting or a decorating pen.  Let cool so the legs don’t slide off the caramel.  You are finished!

The Spider COOKIES were a HUGE hit at the bake sale.  There is something about pulling the legs off of something and eating them first that kids just love.  Have a safe and HAPPY HALLOWEEN!!!!

Halloween Jack-O-Lantern Jars

I think I may never carve another pumpkin in my life.  Every year my husband and I go and buy five pumpkins.  One short fat one (my hubby), one oddly tall and thin one (me), and three others for each girlie.  Every year the kids are excited to begin the carving.  They each will plan out on a piece of paper exactly what they want on their orange, impossibly thick to cut through, too gross for them to dig out, and makes my hands itchy pumpkin.  Then, to get that magical Jack-o-lantern glow, my husband and I have to cut, degut, and design all five of them by ourselves.  I think I am just too old for those shenanigans this year but I really want the GLOW!

 

I found this project on Not So Idle Hands and just HAD to try it out.

You need:

·        Old newspapers

·        Mod Podge or white glue

·        Small foam brush

·        Various colors of tissue paper, crepe streamers, or napkins

·        Black acrylic paint

·        Glass jars…..the more different sizes the better

I gathered several different sizes of jars.  Actually, I bought the two big fatties, had a few old candle jars, and dumped out two jars of salsa from my husband’s salsa collection.  He says my homemade salsa is the best in existence yet I found two half eaten jars of Pace and Chi Chi’s in the fridge.  What gives?  Anyhow, don’t tell him.

Now, go ahead and lay out some old newspapers.  This might get gluey and messy.  If you are not a mean mommy like me, this would be a great project to do with your kids! (Oh yeah, and don’t tell my husband that I used today’s paper for my messy project.  He gets funny when he doesn’t get to do his word jumble.)

Cut out pieces of tissue paper that are the lengths of your jar and maybe about 1 ½ inches wide.  It doesn’t really matter.  Cut them as thick or as thin as you want.  I purchased orange tissue paper. The store was out of white, purple, and green.  Really?  Oh the joys of living overseas.  I did find green and purple crepe paper streamers though and used Kleenex for the white.  Neither one was as easy to apply as the tissue paper, but I don’t think you can tell after they are all Podged up.

Next, brush some Mod Podge down the side of a jar with a brush.  Carefully stick your strip of tissue paper on the Podge.  You can use white glue mixed with water here too instead.  My seven year old suggested fingernail polish with sparkles, but I shot her down on that one.  Cover the whole jar with the strips, overlapping slightly as you go.  It will sort of end up looking like the lines on a pumpkin that way. Yay!

 I topped my pumpkins with little scraps of green tissue paper for the stems.   If you just lay the strips on the jar your lantern will have a wrinkly look and this is easy for the kids.  You can also put a layer Mod Podge over the strips.  This gives it a shiny and finished look at the end, but the tissue can also tear.  Maybe you should let your kids do the first part and you can come back and shine them up later?  Set them aside to dry.  Depending on how thick you lay on the Mod Podge or glue mixture, will determine how long it takes to dry.  I left mine alone for about 2 hours and we had a yummy pizza and salad night.

Now it is time to decorate your lanterns.  I used black acrylic paint on mine.  You can also cut out stencils on black paper.  I found some cool easy templates RIGHT HERE.  (They are free!)  My girls all designed their own though, because that is the part they like the best.

Finally, go and dig up some candles/tealights.  We had nothing in the house so I stuck a match in some play-doh to get the picture.  Just kidding.

  I think they turned out pretty great, don’t you?  I am going to have to go to the store now and buy some more salsa.....cuz I'm outta jars!