Halloween: Cupcakes, Pumpkin Carving, and Treats Oh My!

This year Halloween kinda crept up on us, so we had a lot of last minute things to do. Luckily, the grandparent gifts were done way ahead of time, thank you to Xazmin for some inspiration for the pickle jar jacko'lantern candle holders. Making them was quite an ordeal. Imagine large amounts of tissue paper and Mod Podge all over, and by all over, I mean the 3 year old and not the glass jars!
First thing on our uncompleted Halloween to do list, was make cupcakes for our family party. Daddy and ER worked on these together, and the lesson learned this time around? Marble cake is not the easiest to work with when you're in a rush. Trying to mix chocolate batter into yellow cake batter in itty bitty cupcake liners when you've still got cleaning to do is definitely not a good thing!

ER had several special tasks, mixing and mixing while Daddy read the directions and tried to stay two steps ahead of ER being one, crumbling and crushing cookies was the other.

We made worm cupcakes, modeled after Bobbi's at Casa Camacho. Ours did not turn out quite so pretty. I was too lazy to get out my frosting tips, but they were still a lot of messy fun to make. Brad was very involved with the gummy worm placement.

He also helped tint the frosting to the perfect shade of orange and made the lines for our pumpkin cupcakes based on Susana's at My Family My Forever. We barely had time to clean up before Grammy and Papa, Uncle Dave, and Grandma Norma were at our front door.

The next few pictures are for Uncle Jeff and Aunt Jody, who we can't wait to see when they visit in December. They wanted to treat ER for Halloween, so we picked up a set of Littlest Pet Shop Animals for ER for them. She got the Pet Clubhouse for her birthday, but has been wanting some extra pets to add to her collection. Thank you Uncle Jeff and Aunt Jody! Now we have lots of little friends and new accessories to play with.

ER's got lots of other fun treats too, thank you Grandparents, Uncle Dave, and Annemarie! She loves the books, stickers, clothes, and stuffed animals. Out of all the candy she got, I think she was most excited about the candy bracelets and necklaces from my Godmother Annemarie. Uncle Dave, we can't wait to read one of our favorite books, If You Give and Mouse a Cookie by Laura Numeroff, while holding onto our very own Mr. Mouse!

FYI parents Kohl's Care's for Kids current featured author is Laura Numeroff and you can get one of her popular titles in hardcover or a plush animal characters that go with each book available, each just five dollars. This is a great way to add to your child's library, and kids always love retelling the story and going on new adventures with book characters they are familiar with. They make great gift combos, since you can get a book and toy for ten bucks.

Numeroff's books are especially good for preschoolers and kindergarteners, they'll love the fun stories and how one thing leads to another. Many a child came into my kindergarten class being able to recite her tales. I used to do a writing activity with first graders, where they had to model a story in the same format as Numeroff's. It was always very popular with the kids and even the ones who had trouble with writing liked creating elaborate tales about If you give a ______ then s/he'll probably ______. It is also easily modifiable into a collaborative kindergarten class book.

We had our families come over early so we could visit and have dinner together before our town's trick or treat time began. Ours are from 5:30-7:30 and I like having a set window of time. It's early enough so that it's still daylight and a bit warmer for the littlest kids. It's also great to have it over so that you don't have to worry about kids knocking at your door at nine at night.

But candy time had to wait a little bit more, because we hadn't even carved our pumpkin yet! Brad had to rush to get it done before he picked up dinner from Potbelly. It's the first time we've had their sandwiches, and they were really good and quite reasonably priced. I love a good turkey and mayo sandwich, the toasty goodness made it so yummy!I barely had time to finish my last crumb before it was time to go. That's our neighbor Brian giving ER one of her first treats! Even though it was just after 5:30 it was already pretty cold, can you tell by how much my mom is bundled up? By the end of the night ER was in her mittens, but still trudging along until her bucket was nearly over flowing. Only one house that made spooky noises and had very elaborate decorations scared her and we made it back home in time for her to still pass out some candy. We got a lot from the various outings we went on, and over bought between the packages we picked up and my mom brought. I have no idea what we're going to do with the mountains of candy we now have. I hope it doesn't all end up having to be burned off on the elliptical☺