Try these easy kids Halloween recipes including Toxic Aquarium, Witch’s Brew, Slime, Face Paint and Pumpkin Cookies. They’re easy to make and lots of fun!
Halloween Ideas and Recipes – Halloween’s Murphy’s Law
Halloween has always been one of my favorite holidays. That isn’t surprising since I feel candy should be placed at the top of the food pyramid so, of course, when I was expecting with my first child I had wonderful visions of all the fun things we would do on Halloween. (Those thoughts ranked right up there with what color to paint the nursery.)
With my first child, I spent hours hand sewing sequins on yards and yards of tulle envisioning how proud my fairy princess would be when everyone would say “my what a lovely costume your mom made you”. Instead she burst into tears and said she wanted to be a Smurf in a store bought costume like everyone else.
Then comes along child #2 who announces at 8:00 p.m. that he has to have 5 dozen cookies in the morning for his Halloween party. Piece of cake! Why, hadn’t I seen Martha whip out a dozen elaborately decorated pumpkin cookies in just 10 minutes that very morning? Ten hours later I add my last pumpkin nose and crawl into bed with visions of pumpkins cookies dancing in my head.
Of course, if you live in a drought ridden area, the last rule of Halloween “Murphy’s Law” is that when you put all of your Halloween decorations out, there is almost a 100% chance that it will not only rain but storm with 50 mile an hour winds. This works especially well if you hung out 20 cotton sheet ghosts and mistakenly forgot to use permanent markers for their faces – You thought you had problems when your mascara runs!
All joking aside, the kids and you can really have fun with some of these Halloween ideas from Dining On A Dime, volume 1!
Slime
1/2 cup white glue
6 Tbsp. water
food coloring
1-4 tsp. Borax
1-4 Tbsp. water
Mix the glue, 6 tablespoons water and food coloring until it is dissolved. In a separate bowl, dissolve 1 teaspoon borax into 1 tablespoon water. Add to the glue solution. You will get a very thick clump of slime when the two mix. Pull the clump of slime out of the glue mixture and put it in a separate bowl. Mix another batch of the borax solution and add to the remaining glue mixture. Repeat until all the glue mixture is used (about 3-4 times). With clean hands, knead the slime to mix. This will take about 10 minutes and is not very difficult as the slime easily separates between your fingers. If a looser, more slimy texture is desired, knead in a bit more water. The more water you add, the slimier it gets. The slime does not leave a residue and does not get stuck on anything. Store in an airtight container. This can easily be doubled, tripled or quadrupled.
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. Repeat for each color.
Pumpkin Cookies
1/2 cup shortening
1 cup sugar
1 cup pumpkin
1 cup raisins
1/2 cup nuts
1 tsp. vanilla
1 tsp. soda
1 tsp. brown sugar
1 tsp. cinnamon
2 cups flour
Cream shortening, sugar and pumpkin in a bowl. Add the rest of the ingredients and mix well. Drop by small spoonfuls onto an ungreased cookie sheet. Brush tops with milk. Bake at 375° for 8 minutes. Top with frosting.
Frosting
2 Tbsp. butter
1 1/4 cup powdered sugar
1/2 tsp. vanilla
4-5 tsp. milk
Melt butter and blend in powdered sugar. Add vanilla and 4 tsp. milk. Stir until well blended. Add one more teaspoon of milk if needed to make smooth.
Witch’s Brew
6 cups grape juice (purple)
3 cups club soda halved
seedless grapes
apples
Mix the grape juice and soda in a pitcher. Cut the apple into small chunks. Float the fruit in the brew just before serving; the grapes and apples will look like eyes and teeth. Make a swizzle broomstick from a straw and black paper cut into a fringe.
Orange Pumpkin
Make a treat for the kids in their lunch boxes by carving a jack-o-lantern out of an orange. Use a toothpick to score a jack-o-lantern face in an orange. Then gently remove the pieces. Be sure not to go so deep as to hit the pulp. Place a broken piece of pretzel in the top for a stem.
Toxic Aquarium
1 box each blue and orange gelatin (3 oz. each)
lifesavers
black licorice nips (as barrels)
gummy fish, skeletons and worms
Mix gelatins together according to the directions on the package. Float lifesavers, fish, skeletons and licorice in gelatin and let set 4 – 5 hours in the refrigerator.
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You think like I do. I don’t have any kids so I take the dog trick or treating. We GIVE OUT candy to kids and bones to dogs.
Wish I could see the toxic aquarium.
QUESTION: people on your site are very nice. What do you do to keep out the trolls (those who take pleasure in making others’ lives miserable?)
I’m not sure why but we are really exceptionally lucky in having really nice readers coming here which is a compliment to you guys. I am always so grateful for that. Now we do get someone who are tacky every once in awhile but I have what is called a delete button and I must admit sometimes it feels so good to use it. : ) This may sound cheesy but I feel like when people are coming to our site it is like visiting our home and in the same way I would never allow someone in my home that would cause harm to my family I don’t want those same type of people coming to my web site. It is like I use to tell the neighbor kids that would come to our house, “You play nice or you go home.”
We all have enough garbage to deal with in life you don’t need more of it here. I want you to enjoy coming here. I wasn’t as good years ago at using the delete button so we still have some older comments that I maybe would rather not have but it is getting better.
All that being said surprisingly we really don’t have very many though that I have to delete. I think it is because our sweet readers just attract more of the same so it is my hats off to you guys.
Thank you for responding. I don’t tolerate conflict either. Its a waste of time that should be used to produce results.
One thing I like about Halloween is it challenges creativity. The Toxic Fish Aquarium is awesome and so with the rest of your Halloween ideas!