Category: Halloween

Eerie Eyeball Cups

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With Halloween a week away, Travis is starting to demand spooky decor around the house. We put together these eerie snack cups, perfect for holding candy or portions of little snacks or dry cereal.

Cut an upcycled egg carton into separate compartments. Decorate half of them as the top of the eyes, with a circle right in the center.

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Add wiggly lines of red marker for the bloodshot veins. (Note: You can use paint, but we preferred marker since there was no drying time).

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For the other half of the cups, omit the iris and just make wiggly veins.

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Fill the bottoms with treats, then stack an eyeball cup on top.

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Spooky!

Catnip Toys

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It’s our cat’s birthday today, 11 years old! Travis loved the idea of celebrating our little guy, so we put together these easy catnip toys for him.

Ranger Rick had a template to follow for Halloween-themed cat toys, since National Cat Day (October 29) falls just before the spooky holiday. I printed out the pumpkin and ghost templates and  traced them onto appropriately colored felt, along with shapes for facial features and a green pumpkin stem.

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Whoops, because I didn’t have much white felt, some of our ghost features were reversed white-on-black.

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Use fabric glue or hot glue to attach both sides of each shape nearly all the way around, leaving an opening. Travis helped stuff these openings with cotton balls.

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And then of course we added catnip, a small spoonful to each. Travis thought the smell of it was wild, and loved the idea that it would drive the cat crazy.

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Seal up the remaining seam with more glue. I glued on the features, and then it was time to treat the cat!

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Travis loved tossing down the birthday present.

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And our cat was quite appreciative! How will you celebrate National Cat Day? Please share in the comments!

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Morphing Monster Clay

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Yesterday Travis made monster slime. Today, we morphed it into monster…clay!

You’ll need to start with the slime recipe, whether or not you’ve made a monster jar to hold it in. As a reminder, that’s stirring together 1/2 cup glue, 1 tablespoon baking soda, and a few drops food coloring of choice. Add 1 teaspoon contact lens solution.

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Place the slime in a large bowl. Add 2 tablespoons white vinegar and 1 tablespoon vegetable oil

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Travis loved that we were dissolving the monster – scary! Begin adding 1 and 1/4 cups cornstarch (that’s 20 tablespoons!) 1 tablespoon at a time. Eventually you’ll have a clay you can work and mold with your hands. This comes out exactly like the model magic you can buy at the store!

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Travis loved the non-goopy texture since he doesn’t always love sticky and slimy projects. Soon he was rolling up monster snakes.

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And he told me this was a mummy!

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Have fun making multiple colors and see what spooky Halloween monsters your kid will create.

Monster Slime

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The slime craze isn’t over yet, and it seems like there’s always a way to make it new and novel for kids. Travis went bananas for this slime monster he could trap in a jar!

To make the slime, stir together 1/2 cup glue, 1 tablespoon baking soda, and a few drops of food coloring. We decided on an orange monster, so mixed together some red and yellow drops.

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Add 1 teaspoon contact solution and your slime will seize up right away.

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Travis loved watching it stretch. And even better, capturing the beast in its jar!

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To add monster facial features, we cut out shapes from white and black felt and glued on.

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Eek, a monster!

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If you like, make a whole batch of these and decorate a windowsill for the upcoming holiday.

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Pineapple Pumpkin (and More Pumpkin Fun)

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We had so much fun at the pumpkin patch this year; Travis needed to come home and carve one right away. We even sorted and saved the seeds for roasting (full recipe below). With our final three pumpkins, we got a little craftsier, putting together these three painting projects.

First up was Mr. Pineapple Pumpkin. Paint your pumpkin with a layer of yellow acrylic paint and let dry overnight.

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Once dry, I added upside-down V marks with a sharpie to mimic the exterior of a pineapple.

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Travis helped glue on two eyes, and we used dot stickers (cut in half and slightly overlapped on the top) for the mouth.

For the pineapple stem, attach two pieces of green sticky-back craft foam together, leaving a sticky overhang on either side. Cut leaf-like shapes into the foam. Attach one sticky portion to the stem, then wrap tightly and use the remaining sticky edge to hold the “stem” in place.

Deck out your pineapple fellow with a blingy pair of shades for the final touch!

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Needless to say, this particular pumpkin craft required significant adult help for a four-year old. For something he could do entirely on his own, I set Travis up with puffy paints and a whole pumpkin.

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He loved squeezing out all the colors, which almost looked like goopy spider webs.

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Kids who are too young to carve might also love attaching feathers to a pumpkin, or sticking on pre-cut foam shapes for a funny face. Many sets of facial features come available in craft kits, and Travis enjoyed selecting this goofy look.

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What pumpkins are adorning your stoop this year? Please share in the comments!

I’ll leave you with this easy pumpkin seed recipe:

Scoop seeds from 1 pumpkin (about 1 cup). Rinse well and pat dry. 

On a baking sheet, drizzle with 1 and 1/2 tablespoons melted butter and sprinkle with 1 teaspoon salt.

Roast at 200 degrees F for 40 minutes. Increase the heat to 325 degrees F and roast a final 5 minutes.

 

Puffin Costume

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Our October issue of Ranger Rick Jr. featured a cover story on puffins, with information inside about these bright-beaked birds. If your child is still looking for a Halloween costume, consider putting together this DIY puffin outfit. It’s perfect for trick-or-treating… or just everyday dress up!

Because we were making the costume simply for play at home, I skirted a few corners. But you can be more exact if this will actually be the Halloween garb of choice for your child.

First, make the puffin’s head. Fold a 20 inch x 12 inch piece of white felt in half. Draw the head shape (available from the online template) onto one side of the fold and cut out.

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Add two “head top” shapes cut from black felt with fabric glue or a hot glue gun. Next cut the beak shape from orange construction paper and glue on as well. Let dry.

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We added details like eyes and feathers with a marker. Here is my very serious puffin testing out the headpiece.

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The piece of black felt I had at home was big, but not quite large enough for the suggested wings – a full 34 inch x 18 inch rectangle! So working with what I had, I traced on the wing shape from the template in chalk, and cut out. I added a ribbon to tie around Travis’s shoulders; if you are using truly large enough felt, part of the felt itself will become the tie.

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Finally, we needed puffin feet. Trace the foot shape onto orange craft foam and cut out; add details with marker.

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Poke a pipe cleaner (ideally orange) through the middle of each foot shape, and wrap around the thong of a flip flop. If you’re going all out for Halloween, make sure your pipe cleaners and flip flops are orange too! Yellow pipe cleaners and some old summer flip flops worked for us in a pinch.

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Finish a true puffin costume with a white shirt and white pants.

My little bird was happy just to fly around the apartment.

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What a cute idea this was!

Toasty Fall Treats

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These adorable little toasts, the recipe in our October High Five magazine, make a great snack – simply vary the shape to make them appropriate throughout the entire fall!

For our first toasts, Travis chose pumpkin- and leaf-shaped cookie cutters. Adults: toast 1 slice of bread per each shape.

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Travis loved helping press the cookie cutters into the bread, and seeing the shapes pop out.

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Next came spreading them with red-pepper hummus, giving a nice autumnal hue to our snacks.

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I cut up small strips of red and yellow peppers for him to arrange on the toasts as decoration, including red color for our pumpkin’s stem.

Okay, the leaf veins were care of mama.

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Closer to Halloween, make a ghost toast! Use a ghost-shaped cookie cutter and spread with non-dairy cream cheese. Add eyes and a mouth from cut black olives.

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Once we’re into November, consider a turkey version. We spread with red-pepper hummus again, and used bell pepper pieces for tail feathers and a beak.

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Happy snacking!

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Halloween Candy Experiments

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Well, the initial blood sugar rush of Halloween has subsided and sugar comas have set in, and we have lots of leftover candy. In our vegan household, I divide the candy into three piles: vegan candies to eat and enjoy; non-vegan candies to donate to our military overseas through Operation Gratitude; and non-vegan candies with which to do a little experimenting.

For the first experiment, make a “magical pumpkin” by stripping the color off any hard-shelled candy. Reeses Pieces are ideal, since you’ll have orange and brown galore, but we only had Skittles to work with. First, arrange the candies in the outline of a pumpkin on a plate. We nearly didn’t have enough orange for the outline, but by adding in a little brown and a green stem, we made it work.

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It was Travis’s idea to add red as the pumpkin’s “guts”!

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Once you’re outlined your pumpkin, fill the plate with a little hot water; the colors will bleed and fill in your pumpkin almost like watercolors. Sweet and neat!

Halloween Candy (5)Travis wanted to stir the candies, which messed up the pumpkin shape, but allowed us to see the white candy left behind.

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Next we tried to make gummy worms dance, following instructions we’d found online. Cut your gummy worms into small pieces, then fill a cup with 3 tablespoons baking soda and 1/2 cup water. Add the worms and let stand for 15 minutes.

Transfer the worms to a second cup filled with vinegar. You’ll see bubbles appear, and then hopefully the worms will float up and wriggle.

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Unfortunately, ours did not rise up (perhaps because we used Surf Sweets brand?) – but that didn’t seem to matter. Travis loved the fizzing, and declared this his favorite of all our experiments.

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You can also test for any candy for acid with a similar method. Add candy to a cup of water and sprinkle with baking soda; if you notice bubbles, the candy has acid. Mike & Ike’s left our water still, but sour patch kids did the trick!

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Finally, you can test your candies to see if they contain oil. Dissolve any candy (we used Starbursts) in hot water, and let stand for a few minutes.

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If there’s oil, you’ll soon see a shiny or waxy layer on top. Yup, Starbursts definitely had oil!

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Try this with Laffy Taffy, too, or any other chewy candy.

That was the end of our experimentation, and we finished with some more noshing, of course. Travis’s favorite vegan candies to eat by the way? The following make the top of his list:

Twizzlers

Swedish Fish

Surf Sweets gummy worms

Dum Dums

Unreal dark chocolate peanut gems

Glee gum blow pops

Hope your Halloween was equally sweet and full of treats!

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Dancing Bats and Ghosts

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What is it with playground slides and static electricity? Travis was fascinated the other day when he kept picking up a shock each time he went down the slide and then touched the railing on the stairs back up. So we turned it into a teachable moment – minus the shock! – with this little lesson on static electricity at home. You can cut any shape you want into tissue paper, but since it’s Halloween, we had to go with bats and ghosts of course.

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I didn’t trust myself to cut tissue paper free-hand, so downloaded templates of a bat and ghost, and traced onto the paper before cutting out.

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Tape the shapes to a tabletop or similar surface; set aside.

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To create the static, blow up a balloon (a spooky black was the perfect shade for today), and rub in your hair (or on a sweater). Hold the balloon over the tissue paper, and the static will make the ghosts and bats lift up and dance!

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Travis loved every element of this experiment, including making static from his own hair…

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…And seeing if he could make the tissue paper rise up.

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Of course you also could just create static and the tissue paper will stick directly to the balloon, but taping our tissue paper spookies to the table turned it into a hokey Halloween jig.

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Spooky Expanding Ghost

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Your little one will get a kick out of watching the spooky-not-scary ghost puff up in this experiment, a trick made possible with good old vinegar and baking soda. It might not be quite as impressive as flaming ghosts, but is sure to earn a giggle.

First we gathered our materials, and I drew two ghost eyes and a big ghost mouth on an uninflated white balloon.

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Have your child carefully help add 1/2 cup white vinegar to an empty plastic bottle; set aside.

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Next, fill the balloon with 1 tablespoon baking soda. A funnel is your best bet to get the baking soda into the narrow neck of the balloon, but we managed to do so with one adult holding the balloon wide and the other spooning in the baking soda with a baby spoon.

Fit the balloon over the opening of the plastic bottle – don’t let the baking soda fall inside just yet.

When you’re ready, stand the ghost up straight; the baking soda will sprinkle into the vinegar, and the resulting air makes him puff up.

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Boo!

Travis loved this so much we went through 3 ghost balloons before the fun was done.