Halloween fun

I love holidays.  When my children were little once a month we would take down the decorations for the holiday that had just passed and put up our decorations for the holiday coming.  This was a fun family activity and helped the children sense the passage of time. 

Like many of you one of my favorite holidays is Halloween.  I love trick-or-treating.  I loved taking the children around the neighborhood.  It was a great way for me to see and meet many of the neighbors.  My children loved it when I would go with them.  One year dad took them out trick-or-treating.  He went around the circle and came home.  Then our children asked me if I would take them back out.  Although I have heard them say they had to beg me to go home and I would say, “just one more house”.

Here are a couple of games and some ideas that are easy, simple, and have made for fun traditions in our home.


Spider Hide N’ Seek

 One year someone gave us a rubber spider.  I didn’t know what to do with it so I started hiding it for the children to find.  Pretty soon we had a game.  Every year when we pulled out the Halloween decorations I hid the spider first.  Then the game began. Whoever found the spider hid it next.

At first we had only one rule.  It had to be in plain sight.  As the children grew this rule morphed into you had to be able to see at least part of the spider.  We also added another rule.  If you hide the spider and it hasn’t been found in two days you needed to hide it in a more obvious spot.  This kept the spider moving and gave everyone a chance.

I now hide the spider and my grandchildren love to come over and play spider hide n’ seek.

Witch’s Brew

We created this game for a family activity.  The family sits in a circle.  One person is “it” and they stand in the center of the circle.  Each person in the family is given a name of something relating to Halloween like: witch, ghost, bat, pumpkin, etc.  The person in the center calls out a name or two and they have to switch places.  The person left standing is now “it”.  Once in a while the person who is “it” will call out, “Witch’s brew”, at which time everyone sitting has to change where they are.  It is a lot of fun, gets everyone moving, and the faster you go the wilder the game can become.

Grilled Cheese Jack-o-Lanterns

Another thing we enjoy doing during October is to eat things that are Halloween themed.  You can have dinner where everything is orange, black, green, and/or purple (Halloween colors).  We love making and eating grilled cheese jack-o-lanterns.  These are very easy to do.  The bread is easier to carve if it is frozen.  Take a piece of bread and put a layer of cheese on top.  Take another piece of bread and carve out a face using a knife.  Put the carved bread on top of the cheese and grill.  Don’t forget to put oil or butter on the bread or in the pan so the sandwich won’t stick. It puts a new twist on a classic dish. 

You can do this with tortillas and have Halloween quesadillas.  You can change the face or add ingredients to your sandwich.  Just experiment and have fun with it.

Halloween mini pizzas

Halloween is a great time to let your children create their own Halloween monster pizza.  For the crust you can make your own dough or use refrigerator biscuits, English muffins, tortillas, or whatever you would like.  Then we put on sauce.  The sauce can be anything from a jar of spaghetti sauce to making your own (see simple recipe below).  If you are making a mummy or ghost use a jar of white Alfredo sauce and any white cheese of your choice for the base. Then let your children have fun making a pumpkin, witch, ghost, vampire, mummy, whatever they want.  Let their imagination run wild.  Use pepperoni, sausage, tomatoes, olives, mushrooms, green pepper, and other toppings you can think to make the face.  You can cut the topping ingredients to different shapes or use as they are.  Bake it as directed on your dough recipe. If using English muffins or tortillas usually baking in a 350 degree oven for 5 minutes will do it.  You’ll know it’s done if the crust is brown and cheese melted to your liking.

Simple pizza/spaghetti sauce recipe:

1 15 ounce tomato sauce

1 teaspoon oregano

1 teaspoon basil

½ teaspoon garlic powder

½ teaspoon onion powder

½ teaspoon salt

¼ teaspoon sugar

Combine ingredients in a saucepan.  Bring to a boil over medium heat.  Boil for a few minutes to allow the spices to combine their flavors.  You have a great, simple sauce.

Carving Pumpkins

One last Halloween tip, as my children became teenagers we discovered pumpkin carving.  If you wait until it gets closer to Halloween or it is over, many of the craft stores and grocery stores will sell their pumpkin carving tools and pattern books at a discounted price.  Put them with your Halloween decorations for the following year.  This is an easy way to remember and find them for the next year. We also found if we copied the original pattern and used the copy then we could use the patterns over and over again.  My children also liked making their own patterns.  They would draw it out on paper first and follow the same procedure for carving a pumpkin.  

Jan

Conference Activities for a Two Year Old

I know this post is a little late, but hopefully it will help in the future. I love conference weekend!! It has always been my favorite times of year. I always feel a renewed effort to be better. I’ve been lucky up until this conference to have a little girl whose naptime was during conference. As I thought of conference this time and my very active two year old I wondered what I was going to do to help us all enjoy conference a little more.

I first went to the internet and our old Friend magazines. I was overwhelmed with all the ideas that I found! The ideas ranged from little time to prepare to taking until next conference to prepare. I found this really cute idea in the Friend where the family took a family night and talked about King Benjamin and how the people faced their tents towards the temple to listen to the prophet. The following weekend when they listened to conference they built a tent and listened to conference in their tent. I loved the idea, but knew it wouldn’t last long for our little gal.

I found another idea that I loved too!! You take different buckets and fill them with treats and on the buckets you put words like faith, family, temple, etc. Every time someone talked about the word on the bucket you got to go get a treat out of the bucket. I loved this idea because who doesn’t love treats during conference. I then thought of my rowdy two year old after the first five speakers in the first session and thought all that sugar would not be good by day two hour 6 ½  of conference.

We found something that was simple to prepare and kept little Tay happy and busy so we could actually listen to conference. First we tackled the snacks. Normally I would have totally made our favorite treats and we would have snacked on that, but I wasn’t feeling up to it. So I bought some of Tay’s favorites that I rarely buy (fruit snacks, goldfish, M&Ms, and caramel popcorn). We would bust out a snack at the intermediate hymn of each session.   

To keep Tay busy Ty and I prepared little activities that she could do during the different speakers. (This is what we did for date night. I told myself it didn’t matter what we did as long as we did it together and that it wasn’t just me putting it off J ) We took the May Ensign and cut out the pictures of the First Presidency and the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles. We put each picture on it’s own sticky note as you can see below. On the back of each sticky note we put something different Tay could do. We put the sticky notes near our TV. As a new speaker spoke Tay would go over and find the speaker. She then got to do the activity on the back. 

I loved this for so many reasons. It helped Taylor to learn the Apostles and the First Presidency. It kept her busy. We got to listen to conference!

The activities we had on the back of the sticky notes were: paint toes, build a fort, color (you can get lds coloring pages here https://www.lds.org/general-conference/children?lang=eng ) , there was also a matching game that we had Tay play on that website, play with stuffed animals, play with Mom’s bracelets, play with Dad’s wallet, look at Friend magazines, build a temple out of Duplos/Legos, play with dishes, do puzzles……I can’t remember the rest!! There were four more. If I think of them I’ll add them in comments below.

Heather

Welcome!

Hopefully this is a place where we can get good ideas and share them. This way we actually have a way of sharing recipes and ideas without having to write out or print a million copies too. The only suggestion I have is that at the end of the post you write your name so we know who posted it and who to ask questions to. I can't wait to see all of your great ideas :)

Heather