Halloween Snacks, Crafts, and Fun!

Halloween is a time of spooking and a time of fright. Bring on the costumes and pumpkin spice delight. Let's break out the fall décor and rake up some leaves. Let's sneak all the kids' candy and lie about it - please. The temperature is dropping, unpack the sweaters. Everyone's attitudes are about to get pleasantly better. Holidays are coming, up first is Halloween. Let's make all the craftiest, most delicious things that you've ever seen! I absolutely love the fall.  My kids played outside for 6 hours today.  I am not kidding.  No one complained of being too hot or too cold.  I finished decorating the house and enjoyed a glass of wine while pinning all of the glorious things I want to do before Halloween. I won't lie; Halloween was never my favorite holiday.  It still isn't.  I looked at it as the gateway to the holiday season.  But then we moved into a neighborhood obsessed with this spooktacular day of the dead.  We have neighbors who set up haunted houses and hire fortune tellers.  There are tailgating tents set up and grills lit with hot dogs and beer handed out to the parents of trick-or-treaters.  The block parties start a week before Halloween, and the costumes are worn by every one in attendance.  My outlook on the holiday has changed, to say the least. As a homeschooling family, we like to craft and cook - and do ridiculous activities related to education.  This year, I have decided to make a checklist of everything we want to accomplish that is Halloween themed! Leave me some love in the comments and let me know if you have something I should add to our list!  Or tell me what from this list you are adding to yours!

Food

OMG - this mother (I say mother because who else would think of this?) created pumpkin shaped carrots with four tiny knife slices.  Looks like our veggie and hummus lunches are about to be more fun.  Little Dairy on the Prairie.     A spider web sundae? HELL YES.  The hubs and I will make an unacceptably large version when the children go to bed.   Tastes Better From Scratch must be writing by another super amazing mom.  I actually had plans to make chocolate chip cookies from scratch last week.  (I'm lying.  I bought ingredients a month ago and still haven't made them.  But now, I will.)  I'm probably not going to make the legs this perfect because my plan is to just use a toothpick to do it, but I think the kids will love the effort.   Mummy-dogs.  I mean, how hard can this be?  Our Ordinary Life Halloween morning will be brought to you by these ghost pancakes!  EEEEK!! How great are these?  Gourmet Mom-on-the-Go  

Crafts

I Heart Crafty Things came up with this amazing idea that my kids will love.  I'll pre-cut the house and trace the windows onto the paper below before letting them go ghost crazy!  I'll even pull out those ridiculously tiny google-y eyes and let them go wild. I love things that I can hang from the ceiling instead of on the walls.  These spider webs by Buggy and Buddy and bats by Our Crafts n Things will do perfectly with my OCD and children's needs of crafting.   I cannot scroll past these vampires!!  My children have all decided to be a family of vampires this year.  Scarlett has an amazing vampire princess costume and the boys will be vampire bats (even the baby!), with my husband being the ultimate vampire and me being a wine-drinking-witch-vampire (that is totally a thing). Crafty Morning    

Activities

The Printable Princess created this easy math activity.  My middle boys will love it, and my oldest will use the plates in math equations.   Exploring the Outdoor Classroom is my new favorite blog to get ideas.  I'm going to let the kids do this and then wrap yarn all around the pumpkins to create a spider web effect. Ella Claire Inspired came up with this great playdate idea: Pin the spider on the web.   One Little Project blogged about these jiggly jello worms that will as much fun to make as they will be to eat!  I'll turn this into a science experiment.