Childrens Halloween Party

We have been to my Brother and Sister in Laws social club this evening for the children Halloween party and it was and always is a fantastic night.

It is a night for all the children and most of them dress up (except for MaxiMad who goes as himself) and have a great time.

Cheesy tunes are played by the Menacing Boys Disco, parents are dragged up on the stage to show off the dance routines to the children and party games are played. 

Apples are bobbed and fancy dress competitions take place.

Toffee apples, Halloween cakes and toffee lollies are eaten.

It is always a wonderful experiance and tonight is was no exception.  So thank you SIL, you made it a great night as always and we will see you on Thursday for the Children's Bonfire Night Extravaganza, which I am especially looking forward to (inside and outside disco, jacket potatoes, hot chocolate and fireworks).

PS Sorry for the lack of pictures I was far too busy enjoying myself and dancing myself silly with my two wonderful boys!

Pumpkins and all that

We decided that we would carve our precious pumpkins today.  We are so proud that we managed to grow them ourselves in the garden.  Like all things in TheMadHouse, it was a family affair, but MadDad took centre stage.

Although MiniMad is a super duper scooper

Watch out man at work and concentrating hard

Nothing too scary, the minimads dont like scary

A face and a bat

Then roasted pumpkin seeds, delicious and so simple.

All you need do is scoop out all the seeds and clean them.  We like ours salted, so I boil then in salted water for 20 minutes, then toss them in garlic butter or olive oil and pop in a roasting sheet (single layer) in the oven for about 30 mins at 180.

The mini's were waiting for them as they came out of the oven and they lasted all of an hour.  I have orders to buy any inexpensive pumkins I see for more!!

We also harvested some of our sprouts today to go with the roast chicken and Yorkshires. I love the way they look for architectural.  I also love the fact that my children know that sprouts grow on a stick!!

 I am not keen on the taste, but will eat them and grow them as my children love them and I am all for encouraging eating vegetables when they want them.

Wet weather Halloween decorations

Well today has been very wet, so I decided to do some very easy Halloween decorations with the boys that required minimal preparation or involvement on my part.

So we made paper pumpkins and drew faces on orange balloons. 

Whilst MaxiMad was a football practice I did was cut the paper for the pumpkins and black triangles for the mini's to decorate them with.  I also blew up a couple of orange balloon's (I need to get some more as they really enjoyed this part)

All the mini's did was colour in the paper with orange crayons and then stuck the black card where they wanted it to decorate them.  I then hung the pumpkins on garden twine and popped them up

One tip - make sure you use permanent markers on the balloons, otherwise you will end up covered in felt tip.  I keep a set out of the reach of the boys for times like this.

Salt Dough Halloween Decorations

We love salt dough here in TheMadHouse.  It is an inexpensive and fun way of making and modeling.  I picked up a set of cookie cutters from tesco for 99p.  They are small, but they are fine until we fine some larger ones and have a few spare pennies.

Basic recipe

2 cups of plain flour

1 cup of salt

1 cup of warm water

I also add 1 tablespoon of lemon juice to make the final decoration harder.

Mix the flour, salt and lemon juice adding water until you get a firm dough. Then knead the dough.  The more you kneed the more pliable the dough will become.

We basically roll out the dough and cut out our decorations with a cookie cutter.  Then use a straw to cut out a hole for ribbon.

We cook our dough at the lowest oven temperature for 3 hours, then leave overnight before we paint and decorate them.

I dont have any pictures of the actual rolling, cutting and painting process, as I had my hands full with the MiniMads!!

But here is what we have done with them.  We have made single decorations for the fairy twigs.

We had lots of fun sticking on little sequins, which were actually table confetti from the pound shop.

The rest of them had holes that were far too small to thread with the garden twine, so we just popped them on the dresser.  Kind of like a little Halloween display.

When I collected MiniMad from Preschool yesterday afternoon, one of his teachers told me that he was going to make her a badge to go with the stickers she already had.  So we used one of the decorations and added some ribbons from my stash and then popped a safety pin through the ribbon.

Just a little something from MiniMad.

More Halloween Crafts

Seen as I have the colour changing pens out already for the Autumn tree collage I did with MiniMad this morning, I decided to do some secret Halloween pictures for when the boys came home from school and preschool.

Again you can not get much more simple than this.  I used the white (colour changing pen to draw Halloween shapes and words on white paper and let them lose with the others, so they could find their messages and pictures.

Not elegant, but fun none the less.  You dont need to have colour changing pens to do this though, you can use a candle or a white crayon and water paints as we did over the summer, wax relief painting.

Boo - our Halloween ghosts

You will have gathered by now that I like simple ideas, often the simpler the better and you dont get much more similar than ghostie paper chains.

The only prep work required by me was to fold the roll of paper (ikea) and cut out the ghosts (I didn't even need a template - smug).  I then drew the eyes and mouth on one and maximad did the rest.  Voila, effective, simple, inexpensive and family inclusive halloween decorations.  I saw this originally on Skip to my loo and she has templates there if you need them too.

Keep an eye open for more easy and simple Halloween crafts you can do with children.

Hairy Hotdogs

I am not sure where I saw this idea, but it is on loads of blogs and thought we would give it a try.

Basically you get a jar of hotdogs or bratwurst and cut into chunks and skewer them with spaghetti. MaxiMad took great care at this and loved doing it, while MiniMad, just shoved them in and started to eat the bratwurst before I had even cooked them.


I then cooked them until the spaghetti was soft and warmed up some premade pasta sauce and grated cheese.

Et Voila - hairy hotdogs, scary sausages or what ever you want to call them.

The boys polished them off, this would be a fun idea for a halloween party.