Halloween Fun

 

Halloween is this weekend and I don't know about your house, but we have things we do every year. One thing I believe very strongly is that children take comfort and security in traditions.  It really doesn't matter what the traditions are, just that they can count on them happening regularly!

So, as the day approaches, we've purchased costumes (we don't do really scary around here), and we have pumpkins and I have a list of foods to make on Halloween.  We always watch "It's the Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown" sometime before Halloween, and I am somehow always in the mood to watch "Beetle Juice".

 We carve pumpkins, and always have one for each child.  They can draw their own face and carve it or use some templates.  We also make good use of the safer carving tools to they can do more of their own.  And, honestly, they carve better!

Halloween night I prepare a feast.  I try to make fun foods.  One year I made "Worms in Mud", which the kids all turned their nose up and did not eat....  bunch of chickens!  All it was was spaghetti that I died black.  I put the food coloring in the water with the noodles while I cooked them and then I put a bunch in the sauce.  It did look really gross, but it actually tasted quite good!  I've also made an eyeball cake from a cake baked in a bowl and decorated it to look like a bloody eyeball among other things.

This year I'm sort of cheating...  I'm going to order the pumpkin shaped pizza from Papa Johns...  But with that I'm going to make a pasta salad with noodles that have been dyed, don't know what to call it yet, but I'm sure I'll come up with something...  Then I'm going to make "Witches Fingers" (breadsticks dyed green, then brushed with egg white and sprinkled with shredded parmesan cheese to look like hair and a sliced almond for a fingernail.)  I'll probably serve some sort of "blood" or tomato sauce for dipping :)  And I'm going to make these bloody eyeballs.

At any rate, it should be a lot of fun for all of us, and I look forward to enjoying the time together with my family.  And that, family time, is what it's all about to me....  No matter what holiday it is :)