Plan a Spooktacular Kids Halloween Party

October 5th, 2011 · 2 Comments

Thinking about hosting a kids Halloween party this year? We’ve put together some fun, easy and inexpensive ideas to help you serve up some spooky Halloween fun.

HALLOWEEN PARTY INVITATIONS

There are certainly a variety of cute Halloween party invitations out there, both paper versions and as e-vites. However, sometimes sending a homemade invitation makes all the difference and creates a great first impression for the festivities. Your invitations can be as simple as taking a photo of the kids from last Halloween and writing the party details on the back.

You’ll find more easy kids Halloween party invitation ideas here.

PARTY DECORATIONS

There are so many ways to decorate for Halloween, it’s mind boggling. I like to use everyday objects in the house and “spookify” them in some way. For example, drape cobwebs over your picture frames. Wrap muslin strips around a candle and add googly eyes to make it look like a mummy face. Cut a black mask out of construction paper and tape it to your large candles.

Our favorite easy Halloween decoration is to make Scarrots. Read my Easy Halloween Party Decorations post to find out how to make scarrots.

PARTY GAMES & ENTERTAINMENT

Mummy Wrap

Mummy Wrap Limbo – You’ve all played Mummy Wrap where one kid wraps another up in toilet paper to look like a Mummy. Take it a step further and make them do the limbo. Whoever breaks their toilet paper wrapping is out.

Freeze Dance – Get some spooky Monster Mash music and have the kids play freeze dance in their costumes. Grab your video camera! Play the music and when you stop, have the kids freeze. The last one moving is “out” and gets to run the music next.

Halloween Storytime – Especially if you have little kids at the party it’s nice to calm them down for a few minutes by reading them a Halloween story. Here are some of my family’s picks for Best Halloween Books for Kids.

Read about more of our Kids Halloween Game & Activities.

SPOOKY FOOD

Halloween Cupcakes – The kids and I made some fun Halloween cupcakes last year. Check out the instructions to make Jack Skellington, Owl, and Spiderweb cupcakes.

Halloween Bento Boxes – While these fun ideas from AnotherLunch.com were to create a Halloween Themed Bento Box Lunch for your kids, you could easily use these creative ideas for a Halloween party and give each child their own bento box or have the food out on larger plates for them to take. It would still be super cute!

Beefy Cheesy Pumpkin Tostadas

Beefy Pumpkin Tostadas – If you want to serve more substantial food for the party, try this recipe for easy Beefy, Cheesy Pumpkin Tostadas.

Halloween Ghost Pretzel Treats

Ghost Pretzels – These White Chocolate Ghost Pretzel snacks are so easy to make that the kids could do it as an activity at the party or make a bunch to take to your child’s school Halloween party.

SPOOKY HALLOWEEN CAKE IDEAS

Last year the kids and I made this Creepy Critter Cheesecake with Chocolate Rats for Halloween. The kids had a blast making the rats and the cake was darn tasty too.

Igor Halloween Cake

Here’s photos of some otherHalloween cakes for more inspiration.

PARTY FAVORS

A Halloween bag full of candy is certainly fun as a party favor but why not get the kids to help make Ghost Tootsie Pops for your party favors? It’s super easy. You’ll find more ideas for party favors there as well.

Got any great party ideas you’d like to share? I’d love to hear about them, so leave a comment with your tips! Have a great party!

One Last Peeps Easter Cake Idea

April 26th, 2011 · Comments Off

I know Easter is over. And I hope you had a fabulous Holiday with your family. My kids and I have one last Easter treat idea to share. You can change the theme, easily. Check out this Easter Kit Kat Cake that I made with my daughter, having fun in the kitchen together.

We were inspired by this post for a Kit Kat Cake from Made in Melissa’s Kitchen.

The cake looked great but we wanted to give ours an Easter flair. Here’s our version, using Peeps:

You need:

Chocolate Cake Mix
Chocolate Frosting
6 Kit Kat bars (4 pieces each)
Bag of Shredded Coconut
Green food coloring
Peeps, robins egg, or jelly bean Easter candy
Ribbon

First we baked a Chocolate Cake using 2 round cake pans. We used our knife to even off the top of one cake so that the top layer would sit a little nicer on the bottom layer. We generously frosted the bottom layer of the cake, then added the top layer and frosted it. We finished up by frosting the sides.
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Easter Cupcakes to Bake with Kids

April 25th, 2011 · Comments Off

I hope everyone had a fantastic Easter or Passover last week with their families. After finding so many creative ideas for Easter cupcakes last week on other blogs, my daughter and I were inspired to bake up some fun treats. Here’s our take on some cupcake ideas:

Carrot Patch Chocolate Cupcakes

I saw this idea on the Frog Prince Paperie blog and just had to try it. Not only because it looked tasty but had huge visual appeal. You can get the whole tutorial for how to make the cupcakes on their site but here are our photos of my daughter making the “carrots” and our end product. It was VERY easy to make and kids can help out all along the way – baking and decorating. It just has several steps – make cupcakes; let cool; make “carrots”; let cool; frost cupcakes, and insert carrot tops – so you need a little time.

Dipping marshmallows in orange candy coating, then dipping top in orange sugar sprinkles, and finally sticking them into styrofoam block to dry.
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Happy Easter

April 24th, 2011 · Comments Off

I hope everyone has a safe and fun time with their family on Easter! My daughter wanted to share her Easter art with everyone.

The Coolest Easter Cookies Ever

April 23rd, 2011 · 1 Comment

I’ve been spending a lot of time online getting inspired for our Easter celebration tomorrow. I’ve been highlighting some of my favorite crafts, decorating ideas, Easter family traditions, and recipes you can cook with the kids. Normally, I only share ideas that are creative AND simple. One’s that have high impact but that a busy Mom could do – with her kids.

However, these three Easter cookie recipes blew me away and I just had to share.

Spring Bird Nest Cookies

These cookies by SweetSugarBelle are amazing. I so desperately want someone to make them for me. I wouldn’t even eat them. I’d just stare and admire them for awhile. (OK, I lied. I’d eat them. But I would admire them first.)

Tidymom's easter cookies
Easter Cookies
Tidymom went nuts decorating these beautiful Easter cookies. I love cut-out, sugar cookies and these are so incredibly beautiful.

Bunny Macaroons
Macaroons are the “it” gourmet cookies lately and the Raspberri Cupcakes blog did an amazingly fun job of making Bunny Macaroons. As she says, they aren’t that easy but they are SO CUTE!

If you do make any of these for Easter, let me know how it goes. I’d love to admire your hard work.

5 Fun Easter Family Traditions to Start this Year

April 21st, 2011 · Comments Off

Family traditions are so important and Easter is a great time of year to celebrate and have fun with loved ones. But Easter can mean more than just a ham dinner and an Easter Egg Hunt. Here are 5 ideas to start a fun, family Easter tradition this year.

1. Color Easter Eggs – Well, duh! This is easy right, we all know you color Easter eggs at this time of year. But, why not add to the Easter Egg coloring experience? Every year, color the eggs in a different way. Family Fun magazine, Martha Stewart Living, and Celebrations.com provide you with ideas on how to decorate Easter Eggs. Start a tradition where every year you take turns deciding how you are going to decorate the eggs that year – stickers, decopage, tie dye, googly eyes, themes, etc. Or, start a tradition where you take some of the decorated eggs to a nearby nursing home. They would love to see your artwork. Another idea is to paint wooden eggs. Every year, everyone in the family gets to decorate one wooden egg. Put their name and the date on the bottom, save them and you have some artwork to look back on.

2. Hunting for Practical Jokes. Funny-up the Easter Egg Hunt by putting weird items in the plastic eggs. Our family has put in everything from grass, dog food, candy wrappers, dirt, shaving cream, and lego guys in the eggs. The kids look forward to opening the eggs and finding weird stuff in them. Lots of giggles.

3. Feed the Bunny. You leave cookies and milk for Santa, right? Well, what about the Bunny? He has to travel all night and he has to hop it! He doesn’t get a cool sleigh ride. I’m sure he’s hungry. Leave out a plate of carrots and a bowl of water for the Easter Bunny. (Maybe leave a can of Red Bull. I think he’s going to need the extra energy.) It’s up to your kids if they also want to leave some “white dip.” This forces Mom and Dad to eat a healthy snack before dinner, as well. Take it a step further and have the kids create a special plate and bowl just for the Easter Bunny.

4. Hunting for Fun. Why do the kids get all the fun on Easter Day at the Easter Egg Hunt? My husband has a huge family and every Easter the adults have fun hiding the eggs for the kids. The eggs get hid in some weird places and you get points for hiding the egg that doesn’t get found until Labor Day. Bonus points if you find out the egg was run over with the lawn mower. One year when the kids were done hunting and the adults were standing around wondering what to do next, we decided to have an adult hunt. One year we hid beer cans (soda would work, too). Another year, it was twinkies. We have hid pieces of paper with jokes on them and it’s pretty fun to read them all aloud later. Be creative, but have fun by having a second Easter Hunt.

5. Try Something New. Traditions are all about doing the same thing so you can look forward to the event, right? Well, make a tradition of doing something different for Easter. In our family, Easter means Ham, Cheesy Potatoes, Deviled Eggs, and some kind of Cream Pie. However, why not make it a tradition to try a different meal combination every year or a different recipe for ham, cheesey potatoes, etc? Cook an Easter meal from another country each year. Or, if you are like me, you clip these great recipes out of the food magazines only to store them somewhere and never use them. Use this family gathering as an excuse to try a new ham recipe or do the potatoes a little different. Just wait for the comments. “Ooh, she used apricot jelly on the ham this year.” “Goat cheese in the potatoes? Brilliant!” Here’s another tradition – invite non-family members to Easter dinner. If you have a small family or find yourself not traveling on Easter, start a tradition of inviting non-family to the family dinner. We have plenty of friends who celebrate Easter at home by themselves. Why not invite them over? You’re going to cook anyway.

We hope these ideas have spurred you on to start a new Family Tradition this year. Leave a comment and tell us your Easter Family Traditions.

More Fun Easter Treats to Cook with the Kids

April 16th, 2011 · 2 Comments

Living Locurto is definitely on my list of sites to check out daily for inspiration to have fun with the family. Designer Amy and her team of creators always have some fun recipes, printables, and craft ideas that are just adorable. Here are two of my favorite Easter recipes from her site.

Cotton Candy Cupcakes

These Cotton Candy Cupcakes are just too cute and pretty easy to make. The kids will love working with the sticky cotton candy to create fluffy clouds and of course you can’t go wrong with Peeps and M&Ms.

Easter marshmallow chicks

How simple and cute are these Baby Chick Marshmallow Treats. This would be a very fun snack for the kids when they come home for school or use them as cupcake or Easter cake toppers. They came out so cute that she turned them into a fun Easter card that you can download for free.

What are your favorite sites for family fun inspiration?

A Unique Way to Decorate Easter Eggs

April 13th, 2011 · Comments Off

My daughter and I got crafty this past weekend after looking through all of the wonderful egg decorating ideas in magazines and online, we were inspired to make the most unique idea we had seen – Chalkboard Painted Eggs. We saw the idea in Style at Home and wanted to see if it really was super easy and super cool.

It’s definitely easy and my daughter loved making them. We used their instructions as a guide but we found we had to deviate a little to make ours work.
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Cookin’ & Craftin’ with Easter Peeps

April 8th, 2011 · Comments Off

How do you follow up a post about Angry Birds Cake Pops? Well, with Peeps Cupcake Push Pops, of course.

Christi over at the Love From the Oven blog made these incredibly cute cupcake pops with Peeps. What an impressive Easter dessert to thrill the kids and amaze the adults.

Now, you will have to buy the plastic push pop containers to get the same effect. Or you could just make regular cupcakes and use the Peeps as decoration. They would still look stunning displayed on an Easter theme serving plate.

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A Most Unique Easter Centerpiece – A Cupcake Topiary

April 6th, 2011 · 1 Comment

Cupcake Topiary

I have been collecting what I think are the best of the best Easter craft and recipe ideas to delight and have fun with your kids. I’ll kick things off with this Easter Cupcake Topiary created by Christy from the Girl Who Ate Everything blog.

Is it a recipe or is it a craft? It’s both! I just loved the idea for showing off your cupcakes in such a unique way. It’s THE perfect centerpiece for Easter or for an upcoming baby shower.

While I was checking out the recipes on her site, I found this recipe for Angry Bird Cake Pops. Now you can literally feed your obsession. I LOVE it! My kids were so psyched to see this! As she says in the post, it’s a little complicated to make so I’m just going to look at the picture and drool.

If you have a kid-friendly recipe or craft idea for Easter that you’d like us to share, please send it in! We’d love to feature your creativity and if you have a blog site, we’re happy to give a link back. If you can, take a second and vote for us in the Leading Moms in Business contest. It only takes a click!