Halloween 2016

Miss Arden was a duck this year for Halloween! I found her adorable costume at Divine Consign a few months ago at their last sale & crossed my fingers that she'd still fit into it by October...and she did!

{Side note:Divine Consign is a semi-annual kids consignment sale that we absolutely LOVE! They have a fall/winter sale and a spring/summer sale, and I've been 3-4 times now. Each time I've been able to stock up on clothes, gear, and toys for Arden - and usually our stash can get us all the way through until the next sale. The prices are awesome and DC makes a point to have really good quality-control on the items they accept, so you don't have to pick through stained or worn-out items. They also have a ton of seasonal items, so at the last sale I was able to snag Arden's Halloween costume, a handful of Thanksgiving and Christmas outfits, and even a few Christmas gifts that we tucked away. At the sale before that I was able to stock up on swimsuits, etc. Basically they have all the stuff that you'll need over the course of the year, and with a little advance planning, you can get (almost) everything you need at really fabulous prices. Besides kids stuff, they also have a great maternity section - I cannot wait for the next sale in February so I can snag some new clothes for me!}

When we first put Arden's costume on she was so confused by the duck feet, it was funny!

We decided not go go trick-or-treating this year for a few reasons: 1. Arden's bedtime is 7pm, and it usually doesn't get dark until about 645pm. I felt like it wasn't worth keeping her up super late since she didn't even really understand what was going on. 2. There really isn't trick-or-treating in our neighborhood so we would have had to drive somewhere, thus prolonging the delayed bedtime mentioned in point #1. And 3. Arden has just really started walking by herself in the past week or so and still isn't totally steady on her own - I feel like kids need to be able to mostly walk up to doors by themselves to trick-or-treat (even if a parent was close by)! 4. We don't let Arden have candy, so the trick-or-treating haul would have been a little pointless. Yea, people tell us we're mean - it doesn't bother us. She's so little that she'll eat whatever you give her and right now, I just don't see the point in filling her up with sugar. We have plenty of years ahead of us where she'll know what candy is & be exposed to a lot of it (at school, holidays, birthday parties, etc.) so we're just keeping the sugar away for now while we still can!

So instead, we just took a bunch of cute pictures at home, and then Arden visited both my job and Taylor's job, in costume!

We were unfortunately out of town when our church did their "trunk-or-treat" event - that would have been fun. Next year we'll definitely plan to go to that as well as have our first experience trick-or-treating!

Witch Wands

One of our good friends from small group, Shelbi, invited us to her Halloween/Birthday/Ranger-game-watching party this weekend. She asked that guests bring a Halloween treat from a pot-luck list she created. All the treats she listed were creative Halloween snack recipes from a website called Our Best Bites. Genius idea? I think yes! So fun. I love the idea of encouraging people to try new recipes! I browsed the website and decided on Witches Wands (thank you OBB for this awesome idea and all the suggestions and tips on how to make them!). I've never made chocolate dipped pretzels before, and I loved the idea of being able to chose whatever chocolate and decorations you want. Lately I've been really inspired by blogs & websites (like this one and this one) that show the step-by-step process for various recipes (they make everything look so yummy and easy), and I wanted to try to do something similar for our Halloween treat. But how to deal with gooey chocolate and a camera at the same time??? Conveniently, my sweet husband is very good at taking pictures, and agreed to be my photographer while I worked. So without further ado, my version of how to make chocolate dipped pretzels:

Like I said before, the best part of this recipe is that you can choose any kind of chocolate (or caramel) to dip the pretzels into. I got both dark (my favorite) and milk chocolate for dipping, plus a bag of white chocolate chips for drizzle. You can absolutely make these for any occasion - these would look awesome with red and green sprinkles for Christmas, or pink hearts for Valentine's Day! 

It's definitely best to use a tall mug for dipping the pretzel rods; if you use a short mug it's hard to get enough of the pretzel covered. I poured in one and a half cups of chips and a teaspoon of vegetable oil and microwaved it in 30-second intervals, stirring in-between. Adding a little vegetable oil is an awesome trick for melting chocolate for dipping - it makes it a lot thinner. Just be careful about putting too much in because then it gets too runny and takes forever to solidify. 

Dip pretzels 1/3 to 1/2 way down the rod. I discovered that the ones dipped 1/2-way look a little prettier, but it's totally up to you (and how much chocolate you like!).

Ta da! You now have a chocolate dipped pretzel! Let the excess chocolate drip off (you can twirl the pretzel around to shake off some of the chocolate if it's too thick)

Drying the rods was the most challenging part of this whole recipe. We tried holding them upside down until they were a little more solid...and that did not work (the ends just got drippy). We tried just setting them down on foil...and they made a puddle. OBB suggested drying them on a cookie rack, which possibly could have worked, but I was afraid ours were too gooey since they had puddled on the foil. Finally I tried standing them up in a short glass, and success! You can only fit like 4 in at a time (so they don't touch each other), but it worked.

The last step is the decorating! By this point I had given up on attempting my white chocolate drizzle, and instead settled on cute Halloween sprinkles. We waited a few minutes after dipping for the chocolate to solidify a bit and then sprinkled away.

The finished product looked great! Super festive, and quite impressive :)

I filled cute black containers with candy corn, stuck the pretzels inside, and Presto - cute presentation!

Pumpkin Carving

I love pumpkin carving. While I'm not exactly crazy about Halloween, I always have to carve a pumpkin each year (it's equivalent to turkey or a tree for me, you just have to do it!). Of course, we roast (and eat) pumpkin seeds while we're carving. Yum. Taylor is very creative with his designs, no triangle eyes for him! I generally try to stick to something easy - I'm a little bit a perfectionist, so my pumpkin needs to look neat when it's done. Last year I branched out a little and was pretty proud of how they turned out. Here are our pumpkins from last year:

Mine is on the left, Taylor's on the right

 Halloween pumpkin 2009

I was worried about missing carving this year, but thankfully my sweet husband had two good looking pumpkins ready for us to carve when I got home from my trip last Sunday. Mine is the one on the left, Taylor's is on the right. Why did he choose the tall pumpkin instead of the pretty round one, you ask? Just check out his design! 

B-e-a-utiful choices (straight from a pumpkin patch - okay, Central Market)

Taylor worked on his design quite a bit...you can tell what he was thinking about all weekend! Go Rangers!

Let the carving begin! 

I decided to go with a classic design (read = easier). One year maybe we'll invest in "real" pumpkin carving tools instead of using kitchen knives!

The finished product!

 Halloween pumpkins 2010

They turned out pretty well if I do say so myself!