I’ve been slow about getting around to sharing our Halloween/Autumn projects this week. If we aren’t out on an adventure, I find my kids need something to keep them creatively stimulated. I’m half cursing myself for passing that trait on to both of them, but the other half of me is grateful for their need for creativity too 🙂
We made some apple pumpkin pictures. I find my kids love printing with fruit and vegetables. Any variation from painting with a brush is always welcome. I just cut an apple in half, blotted it with kitchen roll to get rid of the dampness and they dipped them in orange paint to make little pumpkins. When they were dry, the girls added green pipe cleaners as stalks and multi-coloured googly eyes I found in the pound shop 🙂
I saw an alternative online to making a whole candy apple. My kids never eat much of the apple and just bite the sugary coating off it 🙂 So I decided to try making candy apple slices instead. I just cut rounds of apple and used the half moons too, since I hate waste 🙂 I put them on lollipop sticks and melted some chocolate in the microwave for dipping. We didn’t have a huge amount but we just worked with what we had and covered one side of each slice. I felt encouraged, seeing one of my daughters eating the whole thing, but the other insisted on only licking the chocolate bowl 🙂 They added Halloween sprinkles and put them in the fridge to set. I liked eating them too 🙂 It’s like a slightly healthier mid-afternoon chocolate hit when I sit down to do my writing 🙂
We have been going on lots of long autumnal walks to see the last of the leaves and the girls love foraging for things 🙂 They have identified every conker-producing tree on our walks now and seem to find more than I thought it possible for one tree to produce. I keep finding them in my pockets and we have so many our conker collection bowl is full 🙂
I signed the girls up for a Jumping Clay half-term class. They make little models and follow the videos together at home. Each day, there has been a Halloween-themed figure for them to make. The first one they made was Frankenstein and they were proud of him 🙂 It took them nearly two hours to make it and it was a welcome spell of peace in our house.
My friend told me about an offer in a local coffee shop that was on for the Halloween holidays. The kids got a hot chocolate and Smarties cookie for £3 each. We got them to take away and they had them on a sunny morning in the garden. I thought they’d be small because of the price, but the cookies were the size of the girls’ faces 🙂 They got cream, marshmallows and a flake with their hot chocolate too and were on a bit of a sugar high afterwards 🙂 We were lucky to get such a lovely morning to sit outside and the girls did some cloud-watching before their hyperactivity took hold 🙂
The Funky Thrifter 