A Not So Haunted Halloween...

My Little Buddies Ready for Snacks!!

I love, I mean REALLY love, making holiday themed snacks and meals. Sometimes they can get a bit too involved, but I find the most successful runs I've had have 2 things in common - they are fairly simple and fairly healthy. In that spirit, I wanted to share with you all some fun Halloween treats. What'd a mom to do when she wants to have a mini Halloween get together, but her children are in school all day and crazy busy the rest of the time? Offer to bring food to other people's children of course! Several of our friends with younger children hold a weekly playgroup, and were willing to allow their little sweeties to be my guinea pigs (don't worry, my children enjoyed the leftovers as an after school snack!).

Step one to planning your fall gathering is finding a location - I was very lucky in this regard, as our friend Stephanie is a fabulous hostess. Here house is always adorably decorated for the season, and she makes (and sells) felt wall hangings that are the perfect compliment to her decorating style. Shameless plug - if you'd like to see more of her designs, check out her Season of Restoration  shop on etsy.  The highlight (in my humble opinion) of our fabulous hostess, is her fancy coffee - I enjoyed a pumpkin spice coffee with sweet Italian cream, perfect for the fall weather that is finally reaching Richmond.

Step two - plan the menu! This took me to my fail safe planning destination - Pinterest!! You can find all of the original pins/ blogs for these ideas on our Pinterest page in the Blog Sources board. I decided to go with banana ghosts, pumpkin oranges, and a pumpkin spiced "puppy chow" mix. The bananas and oranges were a breeze to assemble and a big hit with the preschool crowd. The original poster of the bananas used mini chips for the eyes, it was a little more cute that way, but I think it looked ok with regular chips, and not worth the added chip buying - unless you have them around. I also looked at some ideas with skin on citrus "pumpkins" - with Sharpie drawn jack-o-lantern faces. They would be great for an elementary school party, but with preschoolers I decided that already peeled, skinless clementines were the way to go.

Top Pic was my first try!

Then I tackled the puppy chow... You can get the complete recipe here at Sally's Baking Addiction, one of the cooking blogs I love to use as inspiration. Being me, and absolutely hating colored candy melts (it's a real issue sometimes) I went with her suggested substitution of white chocolate. Helpful tip... She isn't kidding when she says to melt the chocolate first and then add the spices. I thought I'd "save time" by adding everything to the chocolate at the start... The joke was on me as I had to get more chocolate and try again! I did melt it on the stove instead of the microwave, and that works fine as long as you watch the temperature (medium at the highest!). 

Surprisingly enough, with both the littles at the party, and my kiddos after school, the fruit was the biggest hit (followed by the cream pumpkins picked out of the mix). The moms seemed to enjoy the puppy chow mix, as did my oldest - I'm wondering if pumpkin spice is an acquired taste? When I make this again, I think that I will replace some of the nutmeg and cloves with cinnamon. 

** ALLERGY DISCLAIMER**  

Knowing that one of our little guys has a peanut allergy, I checked the ingredients on the cereal.  The Cinnamon Chex is made with peanut flout, so I substituted Cinnamon Life and it was still tasty - and no different in texture than previous mixes I've had with Chex (the Chex is gluten-free though, so make the best choice for your crowd!). However, I never thought to check the chocolate. Thankfully mama was vigilant and I had the chocolate wrappers with me. The chocolate chips for the bananas were fine, but the white chocolate had a trace risk of peanuts. I've now learned that chocolate has a fairly high risk of peanut contamination! 

             

  

All in all, I had a great day with some absolutely adorable children. A big thanks to their mothers for sharing them with me! 

I want to leave you with a couple of ideas for big kids on the go as well... 

Christine made these spooky donuts for her family and they had a great time- breakfast and a toy in one! I think that I will be making these this Halloween, and taking advantage of her helpful hint (as I don't love extra plastic "junk" around our house) ... Buy cheap teeth, they can play fir a bit, then the teeth break and are gone! 

And I'm planning to make these jack-o-lantern peppers for dinner tonight. I'll comment tomorrow with the review from my guys and a picture. 

Hope you all have a great fall, I'm off to work on some fun ideas for Thanksgiving and Christmas!


Enjoy the Moment.... Stacy