Because Babies Grow Up

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Spiders

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I have a huge aversion to spiders. Seriously. I literally cried when the park ranger walked by me with a tarantula at a show we went to. Then I turned around and carried the snake around for all the kids to see. It’s just spiders. They freak me out. So celebrating spiders on our Halloween Countdown took a lot of will power for me. In the end, it was one of the more fun days we had!

We made spider snacks:

Oreo Spider TreatThey are cute and I know you want to make them, too! Here’s the how-to on spider cookies.

Supplies for Spider Cookies

I made the frosting first following our gingerbread house frosting recipe. I was a little distracted and added almost two pounds instead of one pound of powdered sugar. I added some more milk to thin it down and smooth it out. I was worried it wouldn’t hold well with the, uh, alterations. But it did great.

Next we pulled apart the Twizzlers and cut them into little leg-length pieces. Then we twisted the top of the Oreo off. We pressed eight legs into the cream filling. Then added a little frosting to the backside of the Oreo and put it back on top to cover the legs. Then we dipped the chocolate chips in the frosting, generously, and put them on to of the Oreos for eyes. I love the look of a little extra frosting around the chocolate chip. Looks like real eyes to me.

This was great work for little fingers. Sammi (5) and Elli (3) both helped put legs on and dipped eyes in frosting and added them. Sammi also loves to twist off the Ores tops. Once she worked through the process on one cookie with me, she did all the rest of hers on her own without any assistance from me. I love how independent she is now!

Monster Pancakes

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We’ve been following The Home Teacher’s Countdown to Halloween. It’s been so much fun and the girls look forward each morning to picking the pumpkin off the wall and finding out our theme for the day (a picture on the back of the pumpkin). Today is Monster day and I have lots of fun things planned, but we started the day off with monster pancakes for breakfast.

Monster PancakesBrent made the pancakes and colored some green and some purple. Then we put decoration possibilities on the table. We had chocolate chips, bananas, whipped topping, bacon and sausage.

Sammi and her Monster PancakeEach person created their own monster.

Sammi and her Monster PancakeSuch creativity!

Scott eating his Monster PancakeEven Scott enjoyed his monster pancake.

Other things we are doing today:

Looking for monster ideas? Check out my Monster board on Pinterest!

Halloween Wreath

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This was a quick and fun craft project we did one afternoon. We just used Halloween supplies we had on hand. Last year after Halloween I bought a bunch of rings and other Halloween plastic goodies. We discovered this year that the ring part pops off easily and leaves the Halloween shape free to become something else (other than a ring!) So we used them to make a Halloween wreath.



Supplies
  • Paper plate
  • Paint
  • Halloween shapes, figurines, anything you have around the house
  • Ribbon, Halloween colored or not
  • Glue gun
Directions
  1. The paper plate is the base of the wreath. Cut a circle out of the center of the paper plate. Then trim around the outside of the plate so the wreath is the size you want to accommodate the decorations you have for it.


  2. Paint the paper plate. We used orange, yellow, purple and black. We also used the Bingo bottles to paint so that the pain wouldn’t be too thick and would dry faster. Let dry.


  3. After the painted plates were dry, we warmed up the glue gun. The girls chose which shapes they wanted on their wreath. We laid them out to see how full the wreath would be and what order they wanted their shapes in.


  4. I added glue to the back of the shapes and helped the girls put them where they wanted them. Then they pressed down and counted to five to let the glue dry before we did the next one.


  5. After all the decorations were on the front and the glue had cooled, we added the ribbon. I just cut the ribbon pieces all the same length. I doubled the ribbon and glue gunned the ends at the top of the wreath. After a minute to cool, they were ready to hang.


Wishing you Happy and Safe Halloween Celebrations this weekend!

Spooky Monster House

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Happy Halloween!

Here’s one last Halloween craft you can do with all that candy you’ll get Trick-or-Treating!

We have enjoyed Make and Takes Monster Mania eBook. It is full of fun ideas that inspire creativity and problem solving skills. I love the projects because most of them use things I have on hand anyway. It makes it easy to pick and project and do it right away. For the Spooky Monster House, though, I spent some time preparing. I thought the prepping was half the fun and definitely worth it. I used the frosting recipe I found here.

Sammis Spooky Monster House

Sammi’s Spooky Monster House

Mommys Spooky Monster House

Mommy’s Spooky Monster House

Daddys Spooky Monster House

Daddy’s Spooky Monster House

Looking for more monster ideas? Check out my Monster board on Pinterest!

Ghost Craft Projects

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We had fun this week making ghost craft projects. We also worked on a big project inspired by this I saw on a blog I love. But we’ll share that next week, after the Halloween hype is over. Here are our ghosts!

Cotton Ball Ghost

How do you color a ghost white? With cotton balls, of course!

Sammi and Elli both had fun with this project. I downloaded this cute ghost here then printed it in two sizes. For Sammi I gave her the bigger ghost. I let her put the glue on her ghost picture and then put the cotton balls on the picture. Sammi finished hers off with googly eyes. She also dumped some glue on Elli’s ghost and then spread it around.

For Elli I handed her cotton balls one at a time and told her to put them on the ghost. I tapped my finger on different places on the ghost to help her spread them out. She giggled and smiled the whole time. It was a fun activity.

Ghost Trick-or-Treater

We finally made it to the preschool storytime program at the Middlesboro Library (where I do the laptime program) and were treated to this treasure of a craft. This was such a fun project and Sammi was able to do it all on her own, which makes it a success in her eyes 🙂

We used thin glue dots to attach the arms and legs to the back side of the ghost. Those glue dots also worked wonderfully to accessorize the legs with shoes, the ghost with eyes and add the word “BOO.” I loved the glue dots so much I ran out and bought some for our projects at home.

Happy Halloween tomorrow! What’s your little one going to be?