Using Leftover Halloween Candy - October 30, 2008

Good morning!

I hope that you have your costumes all ready! Don't tell mom, but I still have one to make! :-) Of course she made the other two so you would think I could at least get one done! LOL My problem right now is finding a cheap white lab coat for our "mad scientist". If I don't find one he might have to go as Frankenstein instead.

Don't forget to check out our Sale of the Week. It's for a great DVD to learn how to decorate cakes. Learning this skill has saved me hundreds of dollars so far! Check out this week's Sale of the Week here!

Also if you missed last week's sale, Mike forgot to take it off so you can still get our Menus On A Dime e-book set for only $9.95 through midnight tonight. Find it here.

I wanted to let you know about our free e-book this week! It describes How to Make A Candy Christmas Wreath. This is an EASY and CHEAP Christmas gift if you buy your candy the day after Halloween. Please feel free to share this link with your friends, in your blog or on your website. Find it at http://www.livingonadime.com/ebooks/candy-wreath-freebie.html

We are working on putting up a new blog design for the blog which may cause it not to display properly, so if you can't get to it for a while today please be patient while we fix it! Thanks!

Have a fun and safe Halloween!

-Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

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Leftover Halloween Candy
by Tawra Kellam

To prevent sugar shock, have a big bag of popcorn waiting when everyone comes back from Trick or treating. It's easy to fix and will counteract some of the sweet stuff.

Here are sone tips for using all of that extra Halloween Candy!

• You can freeze candy up to a year in the freezer.
  


• Don't forget to buy discounted Halloween candy for Christmas stockings and parties. Most kids don't care if their Christmas candy is orange and black or if it has silver and gold wrappers instead of red and green.
  


• Use leftover Halloween candy in Christmas baking and for making gingerbread houses.
  


• It is easier to cut candy into pieces if you freeze it first.
  


• Break Butterfinger candy bars into peanut butter cookie dough.
  


• Sprinkle chopped chocolates on a white or chocolate frosted cake or use them to top ice cream and cheesecake.
  


• Mix leftover chopped chocolates into cake mixes.
  


• Cut a hole in the center of rolled out sugar cookie dough. Place a hard colored candy into the center. Bake as usual. The candies will create a stained glass look.
  

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Today's Recipes:

Candy Bar Milk Shakes

1 cup mini candy bars, chopped
2 cups (1 pint) ice cream (chocolate or vanilla)
1/2 cup chocolate syrup
1 1/4 cups milk

Chop candies in a food processor. They are easier to chop if they are partially frozen. Add the rest of the ingredients. Mix until blended. This makes a thick shake. Add 1/4 cup milk for a thinner shake. Makes 2 milkshakes.

Chocolate Chip Candy Bar Cookies

45 mini Hershey's candy bars
1 cup butter
1 cup sugar
1 cup brown sugar
2 eggs
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. baking soda
1 tsp. salt
3 cups flour

Preheat oven to 325°. Chop candy bars. Cream butter and sugars in a bowl. Beat in eggs and vanilla. Add the rest of the ingredients and blend well. Fold in candy bar pieces. Scoop batter onto a greased cookie sheet with a teaspoon. Bake 9-11 minutes until golden. Let rest on cookie sheet 2 minutes before moving to a cooling rack. Cool completely. Makes 2-3 dozen.

Frighteningly Frugal Fun! - October 21, 2008

Dear Readers,

For this week's Sale of the Week, you can get the Menus On A Dime e-book series for $9.95. If you want to reduce your grocery budget or just save time deciding what to cook, be sure to check it out! Learn more here.

In case you didn't get a chance to pop over to the blog and see the news, Baby #4 is on the way! I'm due June 21st, so mom just might get a grand-baby on her birthday (June 23rd) or our youngest may get a birthday present on the 11th! I've been 3 weeks early twice and on the due date once so it will be interesting to see where this one lands!

Have a great week and enjoy the Halloween ideas!

-Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

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Frighteningly Frugal Fun!

By Tawra Kellam

The average American family spends over $100 per year on Halloween goodies. As your kids drag you through aisles full of ghosts and goblins, the scariest thing about Halloween is threatening to leave bite marks in your pocketbook. No wonder so many moms flee screaming from the store... It can be much less expensive and a lot more fun to devise your own chilling creations. Here are a few fun recipes and tips that you can use to stave off the greenback gremlins and exercise your creative muscle. It won't hurt a bit!

Face Paint

1 tsp. corn starch
1/2 tsp. water
1/2 tsp. cold cream
food coloring

Mix all ingredients together in an old muffin pan and you are ready to paint. This amount makes one color.

Fake Wound

1 Tbsp. Vaseline
tissue
cocoa powder
2-3 drops red food coloring

Place Vaseline in a bowl. Add food coloring. Blend with a toothpick. Stir in a pinch of cocoa to make a darker blood color. Separate tissue. Using 1 layer, tear a 2x3 inch piece and place at wound site. Cover with petroleum jelly and mold into the shape of a wound. The center should be lower than the sides. Fill the center with the red petroleum jelly mixture. Sprinkle center with some cocoa. Sprinkle a little around the edges of the wound to make darker.

Wormy Apples

6 apples
1/2 cup brown sugar, packed
1/4 cup water
1/4 cup (1/2 stick) butter or margarine
1/2 tsp. each ground cinnamon and nutmeg
1/2 cup raisins
1/2 cup walnuts, chopped
6 gummy worms
1 cup whipping cream (optional)

Core apples from blossom ends, leaving stem ends intact. Mix raisins and walnuts and stuff into cavities of cored apples. Set apples, stems up in a 9x13 pan. In a saucepan, mix brown sugar, water, butter, cinnamon, and nutmeg; stir over high heat until mixture boils. Pour hot syrup around apples. Bake, uncovered, at 350°, basting occasionally with syrup, until apples are tender when pierced and skin begins to crack, 30 to 35 minutes. Remove apples from oven; cool in pan at least 10 minutes.

Set each apple in a small bowl and spoon syrup around fruit. In the top of each apple, cut a hole large enough for one of the candy worms and tuck one end into each apple, leaving most of the worm dangling. Offer cream to pour over apples. Makes 6 servings.

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Halloween Tips:

Fake Blood- Mix 2/3 cup white corn syrup, 1 tsp. red food coloring, 2-3 drops blue food coloring to darken and 1 squirt dish soap (helps blood to run well).

Abrasions -Dab brown, red and black eye shadow on area. Apply blood over area with cotton balls. Use comb to gently scratch area in one direction. Apply cocoa or dirt over wound with cotton balls.

Black Eye - Apply red and blue eye shadow to depressions around eyes.

Bruises - Rub red and blue shadow over bony area to simulate recent bruises. Use blue and yellow eye shadow to create older bruises.

Look Old - Cover face with baby powder. Draw dark lines on your skin for wrinkles. Smooth edges to blend. Cover again with baby powder. Add baby powder to your hair to create gray hair.

Deviled Eyeballs - Make deviled eggs. Add a green olive with pimento in the center for an "eyeball".

Radioactive Juice - Mix equal parts Mountain Dew and blue Kool-Aid

Toxic Juice - Add some green food coloring to lemonade for a spooky color!

Brains - Scramble eggs with some green, yellow and blue food coloring

Bloody Eyeballs - Boil cherry tomatoes 30 seconds. Allow to cool; then peel skin.

Goblin Hand - Freeze green Kool-Aid in a rubber or latex glove, float in punch.

Use the tape from old cassettes or black yarn to make spider webs.

Use cotton balls stretched out for small spider webs.

Glass Jack-o-Lantern - Outline a pumpkin face on a spaghetti or pickle jar with black paint. The paint around the outside of it with orange paint. Place a candle inside for a jack-o-lantern.

Edible Slime - Pour lime gelatin into a glass bowl. After it is partially set, add gummy worms. Chill until lightly set. Then serve slopped all over the plate.

Bloody Popcorn - Add red food color to melted butter and pour over popcorn.

Freeze gummy worms in ice cubes and add them to drinks. Cut gummy worms in half if needed.

Have a Pumpkin Hunt

Hide mini pumpkins like you would Easter Eggs. Let the kids find and decorate them. For small children use glue sticks with construction paper cut-outs for decorations.

Halloween Guess It Game

In this game, you challenge the participants to reach into mystery boxes filled with creepy things and try to guess what each item is. The person with the most correct answers wins the game. An example is if you want them to guess "grapes", you might try to confuse them by saying, "I think it's eyeballs..."

Cut a hole in the top of a shoe box or laundry box for each item to be used. Cover the box with black spray paint. Decorate each box with pumpkins or spiders for a more festive flavor. Place the following items inside, one per box. Be sure to place enough of each item so the guests can adequately "feel" the guts.

• Eyeballs - grapes or peeled cherry tomatoes
  


• Intestines - Cooked Spaghetti
  


• Skin - oil a piece of plastic bag
  


• Brains - scrambled eggs
  


• Hair - an old clown wig
  


• Bones - thoroughly washed chicken bones placed in some sand
  


• Vomit - chunky salsa
  


• Fingers - hot dogs cut into finger sized pieces
  


• Teeth - corn nuts, pine nuts or popcorn
  

Delicious Fall Treats - October 16, 2008

Hi Everyone!

We have had an exciting week around here! My grandparents are visiting from Colorado and we also have some good news that I'll make you go to the blog to find out. :-)

Don't forget to check out the "Winning the Credit Card Game" e-book sale that going on right now! Many readers have already taken advantage of this deal and we can tell by the response that there's a lot of excitement! If you haven't heard yet, now through Monday, you can get the "Winning the Credit Card Game" e-book for only $15.95 AND get the Dig out of Debt e-book series free! Don't wait too long, though! It's only available until Monday so check it out now!

Have a great rest of the week!

-Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

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Today's Tips:

• If you have extra chocolate leftover from trick or treating (yeah, right-- Who has leftover chocolate? I eat it all!)... but anyway, in case you have some, make these yummy peanut butter parfaits:
  
  Peanut Butter Parfaits
  
  1 small carton whipped topping
  1/2 cup peanut butter
  Chopped chocolate
  
  Fold peanut butter into whipped topping. Then layer in parfait glasses with chocolate.
  You could also add some chopped peanuts and chocolate syrup.
  
  


• Place a plastic spider or a pair of those plastic teeth at the bottom of everyone's punch cup for a surprise on Halloween.
  
  


• Serve your punch in a large plastic pumpkin instead of the usual punch bowl.
  
  

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Today's Recipes:

Halloween will be here in a couple of weeks so instead of the usual menu I have decided to give you a few tricks and treats to use for Halloween.

Jack O Lantern Juice

This is a twist on the usual Orange Julius.

1 (14 oz.) can sweetened condensed milk (not evaporated)
1 (46 oz.) can pineapple juice, chilled
1 (2 liter) bottle orange soda, chilled
Orange sherbet, optional

Mix all together in a large punch bowl. Top with a scoop of sherbet. Refrigerate leftovers.

Jack O Lantern Brownies

For a fast dessert or for those school treats your kids forgot to tell you about until the night before, grab your favorite brownie mix and bake it.

When cooled cut with a large pumpkin cookie cutter. Then frost with orange butter cream frosting. If using canned frosting just add a little orange food coloring to vanilla.
Decorate as much or as little as you would like.

Jack O Lantern Eggs

Hard boil eggs and dye with orange food coloring:

1. Put a couple of teaspoons of vinegar in a mug and several drops of food coloring.
   


2. Fill mug with boiling water and place egg in mug. You can let the water cool slightly before putting the eggs in if kids are doing this.
   

Use black markers to decorate with faces and other fun designs!

Jack O Lantern Pizza

English muffins
Spaghetti sauce
Cheddar cheese, grated
Black olives

Spread muffins with sauce and then cheese. Slice olives in different shapes to make eyes, nose and mouth. Broil or bake long enough to melt cheese.

Creative Halloween Decorations - October 7, 2008

Hi!

First, to celebrate fall, we have decided to give away our Halloween On A Dime e-book to all our readers. This has some great ideas for fall decorating which I am hopefully going to do today at my house! Please feel free to pass the link to your friends or post on any freebie boards you would like. Get it free here!

Also, we have a HUGE favor to ask. We are tweaking our blogs and REALLY want your input, even if you don't read the blogs. Would you please take 2 minutes to answer a few yes and no questions on our Blog Survey? Take the survey here! Thanks!!

This week's Sale of the Week is our Saving With Kids E-book package. It's half off and we are even throwing in a bonus e-book that our son BJ wrote on Saving Money. If you want to learn how to teach kids about money, get them to do their chores and finally get those toys organized this e-book set is for you! Learn more here!

Also don't forget to check the blog for the latest happenings in our life!

Have a great week!

-Tawra
www.LivingOnADime.com

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Be Creative With Halloween Decorations!
by Jill Cooper

I just stepped outside and took a deep breath and then another one and another one. No I don't have a breathing problem or anything. It's just that for the first time in months, I don't feel like I'm breathing in an aquarium. The air is crisp and cool and that means fall is here.

At one point in our lives, that would have been the signal for us to haul out boxes and sacks full of Halloween decorations and go to work. It would usually take us at least a month to put everything out. We were one of those families who would put out a "monstrous" (Ha!Ha! No pun intended) display. We literally had hundreds of people drive by our home just to see our decorations. It really was a lot of work, especially because back then you couldn't really buy much to use for outside Halloween decorations. We had to use our imagination and make our own.

We like to have fun at Halloween and not scare the wits out of everyone, so we try to keep our decorations cute and funny looking. To us, Halloween is a time for children to dress up and for one night a year be what they always dreamed of being, whether it's a fairy princess, a ballerina, Superman or even a robot. They get to be on the "stage" for one night to show everyone how beautiful, strong or funny they look. And to end a perfect night they get tons of candy, bags of candy and did I mention, a whole bunch of candy??

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Here are some ideas of things we did to have a whole lot of fun for very little money. You can use these same basic principles for any holiday decorating.

1. You don't have to have a lot of decorations for your display to look nice. I drive by one home every year and each season the owners put out one simple something. For example, in the summer they have one beautiful pot of flowers sitting on their porch. In the fall a pot of mums, for Halloween, one pumpkin with a smiley face and at Christmas one pretty lit up wreath on the door. It's never a lot, but I always get pleasure when I drive by the place and see their one simple decoration.
   


2. We work all year buying things at garage sales or thrift stores for our decorations. We started out with about 25 plastic pumpkins to set out for a pumpkin patch. The next year we added another 50 and drilled holes in the bottoms so we could put lights in them. After a few years we had 200-300 of them that we had collected. We never paid more then 5-10 cents for them. If you want to have a big display, start small and just add a little bit more to your decorations each year.
   


3. If you see something in a magazine or somewhere that you think is cute but too expensive, try to copy it and make it yourself:
   
   
   • I saw a cute rake in a magazine that I loved. It was an old rake that had a few silk flowers tied on it and a sign that said "Free leaves, rake all you want." I just happened to have a dead 50 year old rake in my shed I was going to throw away, so I pulled it out, found an old board and some paint (I could have used a marker too), painted on the words and tied on a couple of stray silk flowers that I had and voila! I had a cute rake and saved about $25.
     
   
   
   • It takes nothing to stuff some old clothes with plastic bags and make a scarecrow family.
     
   
   
   • If you are a little handy, put your talent to good use. My husband took an old metal trash can and motorized it so that the lid moved up and down and when it opened it popped out a Sylvester the cat.
     
   
   


4. We found decorations in unusual places. Once we went to the grocery store where they had a gigantic pumpkin. The thing was about 8-10 feet across. We asked the manager if they threw it out at the end of the season and he said no. We told him what we needed it for and discovered that he had seen our display and liked it. He said "Come by on Halloween morning and you can take it to use and then bring it back." It doesn't ever hurt to ask about anything. Most people aren't mean and hateful, but are usually kind and helpful.
   


5. Get more bang for your buck. Buy things that have a big impact but cost little. A couple of bags of spider webs and plastic spiders can cover a lot of area and look "cool" but cost very little. I use spider webs for everything. They're great to use to cover throw pillows for a party, put in your hair, hang on the lights or wrap around the handles of silverware. You just can't have too much.
   


6. Use what you already have around the house.
   
   
   • We were having a Halloween party and to add to the effect, we dug out some black sheets and covered all the furniture. It changed the whole look of the room.
     
   
   
   • Another year, my husband found some 10 foot long, thin metal rods. We stuck them in the ground, added styrofoam wig heads to each one and hung some large pieces of sheer fabric I had gotten for free from a friend over the tops of the heads. Everyone loved them. The sheer material had a much more realistic see through look then just a sheet. At night, you couldn't see the rod so it looked like these ghosts were floating 10 feet up in the air.
     


7. Start the day after Halloween to prepare for next year. If your kids get a bunch of plastic spiders when they go trick or treating, save them and add them to the decoration box. If your child dressed as a pumpkin this year, save the costume, stuff it next year and set it out with the decorations. Try to think of ways to incorporate any old costumes into your decorations.