Halloween decor

A quick post to share our Halloween decor before it has to come down. All of these are things we put out every year. I made the garlands back in 2009 and posted about them here. Everything else has just been collected here and there throughout the years. Signs and lanterns from the dollar tree, hat from Jeremy's wizard costume, owl lamp from walmart YEARS ago. I love having Halloween decorations up, and I'm always sad when they have to be packed away.

This post is the decor for my GABI Autumn (Photo) Bucket List, one of our October challenges.

Halloween - pumpkin carving

We spent last night working on some pumpkin carving! It's one of our favorite Halloween traditions, and it's fun to see the kids get into it.  Oscar was not grossed out by slimy innards this year.

And surprisingly, neither was Alice. It seems like most kids are put off by it at first, but she just dug right in!

She was also very focused on mapping out her pumpkin design.. She would pause every now and then to take it in and declare it "pretty!"

Jeremy helped with the actual carving part

While I helped Oscar with his

And then, as is tradition, we turned off all the lights so that we could sit and enjoy our work while sipping apple cider. Left to right- Alice, Oscar, Jeremy, Missy

Luke and Leia

Last Wednesday I pulled an all-nighter to get these costumes finished up in time for treat street at the high school.  Oscar was thrilled with his costume, and Alice kept her Leia hat on for the whole thing, so I'd call it a success!

My fierce children

A heart-melting daddy-daughter moment. 

I actually did get around to making them trick-or-treat bags... unfortunately is was the last 30 minutes before we had to leave! eek! The boot covers could use some work, but I ran out of time. They may get fixed at some point.... they may not. I'm thinking about doing a post on costume details, as that would have been nice to find when I was researching.

Class Favorite

A few weeks ago Oscar came home with a note that said he was voted as the favorite boy in the class and that we needed to help make the parade float that he would be riding on in the homecoming parade. We were a bit surprised, Oscar can be a bit.......odd (just look at his parents... they're crazy people...), but we were proud and excited for him! Here he is on the float - they all were dressed as police officers and had the other team's mascot in jail.

Here they are getting ready to go. somewhere between here and where we saw him in the parade he manage to eat TONS of candy and had chocolate smeared all over his face.

Alice had lots of fun picking up candy and putting it in her purse.  When Daddy or Nana didn't go get the candy out of the street fast enough I had to hold her back so she wouldn't get run over. She also ended up with 6 necklaces.

Here they come - class favorites!

Can you see the smarties he threw us?

Since we planned on taking Oscar to a football game, we figured we should go to the homecoming game since he had been in the parade.  It was a perfect crisp fall evening and the kids had lots of fun and Oscar even tried to watch the game.  The girl from his class that was voted class favorite was also at the game, and Oscar was heartbroken when he realized she left and he didn't get to say goodbye. He was crushed. We tried to mend his broken heart with funnel cake, but ended up leaving the game a few minutes early. Hopefully it was just because he was worn out from all this fall fun, I don't think I'm ready to worry about girlfriends.

Things checked off the list:

• Wear scarves
• Go to a football game with Oscar

Done, done, and done.

We had some more fall fun during the week.  On Tuesday I baked the pumpkin cookies with maple frosting so that night we could have cider and cookies after dinner.

Alice loved them

And so did Oscar.  Apparently this is the face that Oscar makes when he really likes something.  He looked at it like it was completely disgusting and then asked "How did you MAKE these?!?!"

We also made a ghosty footprint family.

Oscar helped paint my foot.

Ghosty family! Flat baby feet make way better ghosts..

Alice wanted to show me that the fingers were dirty (they have blood on them). 

Fall Bucket List update, still so much to do!!:

• Go for walks and gather pecans
• Go to a pumpkin patch
• Go on picnics
• Try a pumpkin spice latte
• Make Halloween costumes
• Take kiddos trick-or-treating (what sort of bag does Luke Skywalker carry?)
• Send a fun and delicious Halloween snack for Oscar's class (bonus points for healthy)
• Make caramel apple nachos
• Have a bonfire and make s'mores
• Carve pumpkins
• Drink apple cider (gallons of it)
• Go on a date
• Make leaf art
• Make handprint/footprint art
• Wear scarves
• Make pumpkin cookies with maple frosting
• Take family pictures
• Go to a football game with Oscar
• Go on a nature walk
• Scottish Games!
• Road trip to Ohio 
• Plant trees 
• Make Christmas presents
• Cook something in our dutch oven

This post is the drink for my GABI Autumn (Photo) Bucket List, one of our October challenges.

Freezer Meals - GABI Challenge

For GABI, we have another challenge besides the Autumn (photo) Bucket List - we're to make a freezer meal. This comes at a perfect time since the end of October is always very busy with costume making and fall fun.  I found a HUGE butternut squash and doubled the squash soup recipe. This gave us three meals (and it would have been four if we hadn't stuffed ourselves), two for the freezer. I also froze half a recipe of this earlier in the month with pretty good results.  Potatoes seem to get a bit weird when frozen, but nothing we can't handle.

We also froze our other large and Oscar size Spinach and Artichoke Pizzas. We did our normal pizza decorating steps (spread dough, brush with yummy goodness, bake 5 min or so, top) and then  just wrapped it nice and tight in some saran wrap.  We left the large one right on the pizza pan (we have about 6 pizza pans from dollar tree, so we wont miss one if it's in the freezer for awhile).  Jeremy put the frozen pizza directly on the oven rack (like we do with a store-bought pizza) and it was FANTASTIC! Somehow it actually tasted better than it did the first time around!  So, from now on when we do pizzas we're going to freeze one for another day. It's nice to know we can have a healthy frozen pizza option now!

To the pumpkin patch!

This past weekend, Oscar pulled the pumpkin patch out of our adventure jar. (Which was pretty perfect since it was the only weekend we'd be able to go before halloween) We headed out on Saturday morning to Mitchell Farms in Collins, Mississippi. There was already quite a crowd when we arrived, so we bought our wristbands and looked around for fun.

They had TONS of photo props, which I'm always a big fan of.  Oscar took this picture of me and Jeremy.

They had a "Magic Carpet Slide" where you sit on a carpet square to ride down.  Oscar, Jeremy and Alice all went down. Then we checked out the chickens and bunny. Alice seemed to enjoy the chickens.

And more photo props.

There was also a giant tunnel slide, which we all went down. 

And the corn pool.

Where both of the kids had so much fun we had to drag them out.

We went on a covered wagon tour of the farm and they dropped us off at the entrance of the giant maze. This year it is shaped like Cinderella's pumpkin carriage. It didn't take too long to make it out, and we headed over to another maze they had made out of giant hay bales.

After Oscar steered us out of the hay maze we checked out the little train. It was the only thing we found that required more money besides the entry fee.

I convinced Jeremy to take Alice on the train as well. 

And our last activity was picking out our pumpkins (which were also included in the price of admission). By this time we were all sweaty, tired and hungry so we stopped for drinks and a jar of local honey before heading to the car.  We had a fantastic time at the pumpkin patch and plan to return next year with a packed picnic (and maybe something to lug all the pumpkins in). We would recommend it to anyone in the area, there was so much to do!

Afterwards we took Oscar out for chinese food (his pick - yay for me!!) to celebrate his very first A+ report card. On our way home we also stopped for a pumpkin spice latte and the fall festival at the church. Oscar bounced in the bounce house and Alice won a couple cupcakes in the cake walk and then we headed home where we watched The Nightmare before Christmas and (FINALLY) put up the Halloween decorations.  It was an EPIC Saturday. I don't think there would have been any way to squeeze more fun into that day.

Fall Bucket List Update

• Go for walks and gather pecans
• Go to a pumpkin patch
• Go on picnics
• Try a pumpkin spice latte
• Make Halloween costumes
• Take kiddos trick-or-treating (what sort of bag does Luke Skywalker carry?)
• Send a fun and delicious Halloween snack for Oscar's class (bonus points for healthy)
• Make caramel apple nachos
• Have a bonfire and make s'mores
• Carve pumpkins
• Drink apple cider (gallons of it)
• Go on a date
• Make leaf art
• Make handprint/footprint art
• Wear scarves
• Make pumpkin cookies with maple frosting
• Take family pictures
• Go to a football game with Oscar
• Go on a nature walk
• Scottish Games!
• Road trip to Ohio  
• Plant trees 
• Make Christmas presents
• Cook something in our dutch oven

This post is the activity for my GABI Autumn (Photo) Bucket List, one of our October challenges.

Experimental Pizza #3

Our third experimental pizza was my choice - Spinach and Artichoke Pizza. I didn't think it was quite as good as the other two, but Jeremy liked it just as much as the ham/cheddar/apple pizza. We froze half of the pizzas for another day and I'll update on how frozen pizzas work out.


Spinach and Artichoke Pizzas
from Real Simple

Ingredients

• 1 pound pizza dough, at room temperature (we used this recipe)
• cornmeal, for the baking sheets
• 2 cups marinated artichoke hearts, drained and quartered
• 2 cups baby spinach (about 2 ounces)
• 8 ounces mozzarella, grated (1 cup)
• 1/2 8-ounce bar cream cheese, cut up
• 1/2 cup grated Parmesan (2 ounces)
• kosher salt and black pepper

Directions

1. Heat oven to 475° F. Shape the dough into 4 rounds and place on 2 cornmeal-dusted baking sheets.
2. Dividing evenly, top the rounds with the artichoke hearts, spinach, mozzarella, cream cheese, and Parmesan; season with ¼ teaspoon each salt and pepper. 
3. Bake until the crust is golden brown, 18 to 20 minutes.

Avengers Movie Night Sleepover

A couple weeks ago Oscar earned a special Avengers sleepover with Jeremy for good behavior at school. He had to get green dots all week for the sleepover, so it all was very last minute because we didn't know until he came home on Friday if it was on or not. I did a spur of the moment Avengers lunch for him for that Friday, in hopes that if he had made it through the first half of the day the Avengers lunch would remind him to be good so they could have their sleepover. PB&J Thor w/ string cheese hammers, H for Hulk cucumber, and Captain America apples. I still haven't figured out how to turn a satsuma into Iron Man.

I ran to the store in town and picked up a few supplies on Friday morning, in hopes that Oscar would bring the green dot home.  Once he got home I went to work on some goodies and Jeremy rented the movie on PPV. I guess I should note here that this evening involved lots of processed foods we usually try to avoid...

They each had a bottle of some sort of green sport drink and I used the idea from Cute As a Fox to do these Hulk faces. I just drew these on with a sharpie, since this was all last minute and rushed.

 Oscar thought I should have finished it, so he finished them for me.

Iron Man open faced sandwiches, which I saw somewhere else online and now can't find. hamburger buns (was hoping for bagels, but they don't sell bagels in my town), salami, and american cheese. There were also some Thor hammers using cheese and Pringles Stix.

For dessert there was pistachio Hulk pudding (with a baby Hulk for Alice). Pistachio pudding and Mini Oreos.

I made these Thor hammers out of marshmallows, melted milk chocolate bars, and honey butter flavored Pringles Stix. We snacked on these and some popcorn during the movie.

 And then later we had some Captain America shields.  I should have saved these for breakfast because we were all so stuffed full of junk food by then.  Iced honey buns, fruit roll-ups and sour gummy candy things.

Orange Lunch

The other week I posted a picture of a green lunch I made for Oscar during a week they were working on orange, so now here's the orange lunch. I didn't start out with a plan to make an all orange lunch (or an all green lunch), but once there was cantaloupe and satsuma in there I figured I should run with it.  Carrots, cantaloupe, string cheese, PB honey banana sandwich, satsuma and a butterscotch disc.

I feel a little guilty sending monochromatic lunches, since it's healthier to eat a variety of colors at each meal. But not that guilty - I'm sure this is way healthier than whatever they served at school, even with the piece of candy. I'm excited about lunches this month - I need to pull out my Halloween cookie cutters and start putting them to good use before it's too late!

S.M.A.R.T. - Unique BBQ

The SMART topic (SMART description mentioned in a previous post) this week was "Unique BBQ" and what would be more unique than some grilled stingray?? Jeremy brought some stingray home and we weren't quite sure what to do with it. Enter the SMART topic and a recipe from here. Just a warning, I would NOT recommend this... 

Peel and chop tomatoes and onions and garlic.

cook 'em with some other stuff.

Put that "BBQ sauce" on your stingray and grill. The stingray was pretty flavorless. It probably wasn't the worst thing I've ever cooked, but it was far far far from the best. This place STILL smells like stingray. ugh. Jeremy's cousin tried frying some the very same night and said it was delicious. We might have to lift the frying ban, but I hate the smell of hot oil, too - hopefully it won't be a double whammy.