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Friday, September 23, 2022

Ghoulish Halloween Ideas

Just a few ideas for your special celebration of scary fun and some really Ghostly Halloween Party Food. Easy and fast to make and will be a hit with the kids and the adults.

Spooky Spiders

Spread peanut butter or process cheese spread onto round butter crackers then place four chow mien noodles or small pretzel sticks on each side of the cracker making eight spider legs. Stack a cracker on top making a sandwich. Dip raisins into peanut butter or cheese spread and place on top as spider eyes. Peter butter makes a great glue.

Bloody Bones

Spare ribs with your favorite barbecue sauce. Arrange ribs to resemble a human rib cage. Place a half of a red pepper or tomato in the middle as the heart and put a real knife or fake knife into the heart.

Bloody Brains

Any type of cooked spaghetti or spiral pasta with red sauce.

Monster Hands

Place a candy corn into each finger of a plastic deli glove then fill with popcorn until plump and tie off at the wrist of the glove.

Yummy Eyeballs

Slice carrots, cucumbers or radishes in bite size circles. Put a dab of cream cheese on top and then put 1/2 a pitted black or green olive on top.

Fingers and Dip

Peel and slice carrots length wise into finger size pieces. Attach almond slices or plain potato chips pieces onto one end of the carrots with cream cheese as the fingernail. Use the same idea using pretzel rods. Supply your favorite dip.

Apple Bites

Core and slice an apple. Spread peanut butter to one side of the apple slice. Put three or four tiny marshmallows for teeth on top of the peanut butter. Top with another apple slice, peanut butter side down.

Mummy roll-ups

Use a cooked hot dog or breaded chicken strips or nuggets place in tortilla with ketchup and roll up burrito style leaving one end open. Use ketchup to dot on eyes of mummy.

Food Faces

Create scary, silly, or jack-o-lantern faces using meat, cheese and vegetables pieces on round foods such as pizzas, cheese crisps, quesadilla or tostadas. You can use homemade pizzas or frozen cheese pizzas. Use pepperoni and black olives as eyes, red pepper pieces to form a nose or diced onions to create teeth. For cheese crisps use black olives for eyes shredded lettuce for a mouth, salsa or sour cream for noses or mouths. Be creative.

Bagel Monsters

Slice bagel in half. Spread on cream cheese fill with meat and use a piece of ham to make a tongue coming out of center of the bagel hole. Attach black olive or pepperoni eyes with cream cheese put lettuce leaves as hair and a carrot nose.

Easy Halloween Party Decorations

Pull out your Halloween decorations. Any and all skeletons, bats, spiders, snakes, pumpkins, jack-o-lanterns, witches hat, spider webs, black cats, etc. will do. But don't stop there.

Black tulle draped over furniture gives an eerie effect. White tulle draped gives a ghostly effect. Stuff the tulle to form a ghostly shape and hang it up where the breeze can make it flutter. Hang up several ghosts and hide a rotating fan out of sight to blow on them. For a party use helium balloons for the ghost head. Drape one layer of tulle over the balloon, gather it then tie it closed. Tie the balloon strings to the back of furniture so the helium balloon ghost won't float away. Helium will only last for the evening so save this tip for party time.

Bales of hay look great and provide extra seating. Fog machine, strobe lights, and black lights provide more eerie effects. When using black lights try to have them in an area that has no other light source. If possible designate a room where the door can be shut, it highlights the effect.

Glow in the dark paint also works well with a black light. Paint butcher or brown wrapping paper and tack that up on the walls, rather than painting the walls themselves. Dry ice put in containers or hollowed out pumpkins is great fun. Just add water and watch the fog start rolling in. Kids are amazed by it. Keep it where the kids can't touch it because the ice itself can give you a bad burn if touched with bare hands. The ice is so cold it freezes skin. Buy the dry ice only an hour or two before the party or when you expect trick or treaters to arrive. Keep in your freezer.

Create a creepy wedding alter. Tack large black garbage bags on a wall. Drape the bags over an arch. Ask your grocer's floral department to save you red roses that they were going to throw out. Dry the roses. Red roses turn an ugly black. Place in spray painted black vases on either side of the arch. For your bride use any long white dress, preferably with long sleeves. Drape the dress from the ceiling with fishing wire so it looks like a ghost. Add a skeleton head and a veil made from tulle. Blow up white latex gloves and place in the long sleeves. 

Bewitching Halloween Ideas 

Here are a few creative ideas for outdoor decorations:

Cut ghost shapes out of quarter inch plywood with a jigsaw. Then screw in a painted stake to the back of the cut out, be sure your screws are screwed in from the front of ghost. Paint white then use black paint to make eyes and mouth and push into the ground. Using the same idea cut out shapes of a tombstone and use spray paint with a faux stone finish in grey. Let dry, then paint RIP with black paint. Foam board can be used instead of plywood but it won't last more than one season. The plywood will last for several years and since it's flat it doesn't take up much storage space. Place a skeleton hand on each side of the tombstone on the "grave" as if the dead person was coming out.

Make a headless man using an old pair of jeans, shoes, gloves, shirt and jacket. Stuff jeans with rolled towels, newspaper or plastic grocery bags. Arrange jeans "legs" on a chair that has a back support or on a bench up against a wall. Then stuff the T-shirt and stuff the arms. Place the shoes and gloves where they should be. To arrange the limbs sometimes takes some finessing. Use fake blood or ketchup around the neck and you're finished. Have your headless man hold a jack-o-lantern as his head. On Halloween night or party time, spread raw hamburger where the neck should be and use ketchup for more blood.

Scary forest. Trim your trees and save branches from 5 to 7 feet long. Spray paint black. You could also use dead tree branches as well. When dry place upright along the sidewalk up to your door to create an eerie forest. These could also be used inside. For an added touch hang cobwebs from branch to branch.

Pumpkins aren’t the only source for jack-o-lanterns.  The suggestions below have to be carved no more than a day ahead since they won't last. Watermelons look menacing with their outside green skin and bright red flesh inside. Scoop out the flesh but leave at least a couple of inches of red. Try small nearly rind less watermelons as well as larger melons. Another option is to carve eggplants into small demon faces. Buy the largest you can find to make carving easier. The weird shape of the eggplant adds to the fun.

Halloween Party Activities 

Trick or treating is the time-honored activity but that doesn't mean you can't create your own traditions. Here are a few ideas to get you going. Use them on the days leading up to Halloween or to keep kids occupied during a Halloween party.

Paint your child's palm black and stamp them on paper. For a bat place hands together with thumbs touching keeping fingers close together. For a spider keep wrists touching spread thumbs and fingers apart. Add eyes in color paint. Using this same idea paint the bottom of your child's feet or foot white. Stamp onto black paper. Let dry. Turn paper upside down and paint black eyes and ghost mouth on the “heel” head of ghost.

Copy off Disney or any cute characters and let children make them into scary characters.

Make skeletons using Q-tips as bones and glue onto black paper. On black paper use white chalk to create a spider web or glue Q-tips to create a spider web.

Make a bat by stuffing a black sock with batting, glue eyes on it and cut out bat wings from black craft foam and attach with hot glue or a stapler. Make pumpkin pots by painting the outside of a terra cotta pot orange. Turn upside down and paint a jack-o-lantern face with black paint and then glue a piece of wood or stick in the drain hole as the stem.

Jack O Lantern Necklace For older children paint a walnut completely orange. Let dry and then with a black sharpie draw a jack –o-lantern face on the walnut with the pointed side as the top. Cut a piece of black ribbon big enough to fit over your head. Hot glue each end to the top of the pumpkin making a necklace. Cut out three leaf shapes from green felt and hot glue to the top of the “pumpkin” covering up where the two ribbon ends meet.

String hollow macaroni onto a shoelace (the plastic tip of the shoe lace makes stringing easier) to make "bone" necklaces.

Draw scary monsters. Give each child a sheet of paper that has four lines drawn horizontally across it. Everyone draws a head with the neck just showing beyond the first line. The paper is fold so the head is hidden and only the neck shows on the remaining ¾ of the sheet. The child passes her sheet to the child sitting to next to her. Each child then draws the body including arms/wings/tentacles to the waist of the monster. Again the waist appears just a bit beyond the second line. The sheet is folded to hide the body. The sheet is passed again and the legs are added. The sheet folded and the feet are drawn on the last one quarter of the sheet. When that's finished, the sheet is unfolded to reveal the monsters. Here's an example, a dragon head, a bear body, octopus legs and lizard feet.

Halloween Party Games 

Bob for apples

Costume contest; make sure to have a prize for everyone.

Play pin the tail on the black cat or face onto the pumpkin. Use the idea of pin the tail on the Donkey.

Fill a jar full of candy corn and have the kid's guess how many candy corns are in the jar.

Play flashlight tag in the house or around the neighborhood.

Tell scary stories in the dark.

Watch scary movies

Everyone participate in making a witches brew. Give the children a selection of ingredients, such as fruit and vegetable juices, milk, nut milks, tea, soda, chocolate syrup and a few odd ingredients such as coffee, lemon juice, ketchup, soy sauce and so forth. Each child selects one of the ingredients to the brew but every child has to taste the brew. So while one child may want to add soy sauce for example so the brew doesn't taste good to the other kids, that child has to taste the brew as well.

An adult should add the odd ingredients so the brew doesn't have a entire bottle of soy sauce, but just a few drops.

Play the feel and guess game or eat and guess game

Blind fold the child or without the child looking have the child touch or taste each item. You can either have them guess what they think it feels like or guess what the item actually is. If you have peeled grapes to eat tell them it is eyeballs and they have to guess that it is actually grapes or if they are feeling the grapes ask them to guess what the item is. For this it would be best to give them a list of items like eyeballs, fingernails etc. and write a number by the matching item. So number 1 is eyeballs and so on. This game could be a little difficult to keep the children from yelling out answers and sometimes there is more than one answer. Grapes could be eyeballs or frog eggs.

Here are some items to use:
Peeled or frozen grapes: eyeballs or frog eggs
Spaghetti or spiral pasta: Brains
Yogurt: Slime
Potato chips or almond slices: finger nails
V-8 juice: Blood
Gummy worm: earth worms
Sun Flower Seeds: Witch's Teeth
Fruit roll ups cut in strips: old band aids
Ham Cubes: cut off fingertips
Bell peppers cut in strips: witches skinny fingers
Raisins: shriveled spiders or boogers
Smashed mini wheat: eyelashes
Pretzel rods or sticks: bones
Halved tomatoes or bell pepper: Heart
Sausage links or hot dogs: intestines
Cooked chicken breast: liver
Thin round cheese slices: pieces of skin
Peeled grapes: eyeballs
Pepperoni slices: scabs

Halloween Party Food 

Halloween is a great time to host a party. One of the most enjoyable aspects of Halloween is the food. There are hundreds of recipes that have been specifically created for this spooky holiday. The following ideas will help you plan the yummiest menu possible.

Serve a minimum of sweet treats. You don't want your guests suffering from 'sugar overload' during the party. To celebrate the occasion, serve chicken fingers with a blood (any red dipping sauce.) If you prepare them from scratch, it's not hard to make them resembling the more human variety. Add a sliced almond for the finger nail for a realistic approach.

Another dish to try is to add equal parts red, blue, and yellow food color to spaghetti after it's been cooked so it turns an ugly brownish color. Serve with a green pesto sauce and call it snakes in the swamp.

Make goofy eyeball meatballs. Shape seasoned ground meat into an oval with a flat top and bottom, bake until done. Cut a round circle out of mozzarella cheese about the size of a half dollar or one inch in diameter. Cut grape tomatoes or cherry tomatoes into three slices. Cut black olives in half. Assemble the goofy eyeballs by placing a slice of cheese on the meatball, then a slice of tomato on the cheese and top with a black olive half. Vary the placement of the toppings so the eyeballs are looking in different directions.

If you will be serving punch, why not serve the ghoulish variety? Simply make your favorite punch and add a few ghoul hands. To make these hands, fill non-powdered rubber gloves with cranberry or other red juice. (Don't overfill, the fingers of the glove should still move easily.)

Close gloves tightly with rubber bands and freeze flat on cookie sheets, which have been lined with paper towels. When ready to serve, open gloves with scissors and add to punch. You may want to break off one or two fingers and add them separately.

A fun punch can be with one quart of lime drink, one quart of lemon lime soda and one cup of lime sherbet. The sherbet should be added right before serving. Stir so the sherbet foams up a bit with the soda. Dust the foam lightly with cocoa powder to resemble dirt.

It's not a good idea to use dry ice in your punch to make it smoke. Curious hands may try to touch the dry ice resulting in freezer burn. Instead place the dry ice in containers out of reach, such as the back of a table and you'll still have the atmosphere of the smoky fog without the worry of accidents.

Keep the food simple and familiar but with a twist. Rename favorites in the Halloween theme. Use food coloring in blues, greens, and browns to alter the way a dish looks. Or use familiar food in unfamiliar ways. For example blanch a cauliflower head, break apart and then reassemble (this makes the cauliflower easier to serve) cover the cauliflower with ranch dressing then using ketchup in a squeeze bottle outline each floret with the ketchup so it looks like a brain.

Grave Yards Ghosts and More

You could spend hundreds of dollars decorating for Halloween using store-bought decorations or you could use your creativity and save that money. Here are several ideas to get you started.

Plastic Spiders in Ice Cubes Wash plastic spiders in soapy water and rinse well. Place one spider in each ice cube section. Freeze. Another alternative is to buy bigger spiders. Wash and rinse. Fill a round quart-size container half full of ice cubes. Place three or four spiders on top of the ice cubes. Fill with water to the top of the ice cubes. Freeze. Then fill to the top of the container with more ice cubes and water. Freeze again. This keeps the spiders from floating to the top. Place the ice cubes in glasses or the large ice cube in a punch bowl.

Muddy Ice Cubes Mix red, yellow, orange, green and purple food coloring in orange juice to make a mud brown color. Freeze in ice cube trays. For an added touch, add plastic worms to each cube.

Boo Bottles Easy, peasy and cheap as in almost free. Remove the labels from empty gallon containers of milk or water. Draw on ghost faces on the containers in black using paint or markers. Fill with a layer of clear or white pebbles to weight the containers down so they won't blow away. Stop there or add a touch of lights. Wrap small flashlights that only cost about a dollar with beige or white masking tape. Widen the neck of the gallon container so the flashlight barely fits in with the light shining down and the switch at the top. Use a bit more masking tape to fasten the flashlight securely. Or fill the containers with Christmas mini-lights on a white cord (a green cord shows through the container and ruins the effect.

Spooky Mini Garden Paint a terracotta plant saucer black. Fill with moss, and rocks Place small succulents here and there among the rocks and moss. Add in artificial crows, a skeleton and skulls. Top the saucer with a glass lid to enclose your spooky garden. The succulents will live for a week or two without additional watering.

Bloody Napkins and Tablecloth This is messy and can stain so do this somewhere clean  up is easy, say the backyard. Cut napkin-size squares from an old white sheet. Fill a spray bottle with double strength red kool Aid. Don’t add sugar you just want the color. Fill a squirt bottle with the red Kool aid as well. Spray and drip the "blood" on the napkins and white sheet.

More Halloween Decorations

Turn items you probably already have in the house into cute but cheap Halloween decorations. Not only are these ideas cheap but they don't take all that much time.

Egg Carton Bats Spray paint cardboard egg cartons black - inside and out. Cut a section that has three egg depressions. Turn upside down. The middle hump (was an egg depression when right-side up is the head of the bat. Glue two googly eyes in the middle of the hump. The humps on each side are the bat wings. Hot glue fishing wire to the back of the head. 

Log Jack-O-Lanterns  Use landscaping logs from the gardening department for small jack-o-lanterns and larger round logs you find in the forest for bigger jack-o-lanterns. The smaller logs should be cut into sections from 4 to 6 inches tall. The larger logs from 12 to 15 inches tall. Spray paint orange. Find branches that are stem shaped -- wider at the bottom and narrower at the top. Spray paint the stems black. Glue to the top of the log. Paint faces on the logs in black.  

Mummy Doors Cut sheets of cheesecloth into 8 inch strips. You can also use old white sheets for this. Wrap the door crisscrossing some of the strips. This works best with two people one on either side of the door. Before the last wrapping, add two large white circles with black centers as the eyes of the mummy.  

Lollypop Ghost These are so easy and cheap you could hand them out as treats on Halloween. Use round ball-shaped lollypops. Cut two squares of white paper or cloth about  4 inches square. Place the squares on top of the lollypop. Tie with black ribbon right under the lollypop. Draw a ghost face with a black marker. You're done.

Balloon Spider Web Blow up the balloons. Spray with adhesive or paint with white glue. Wrap the balloons in white string crisscrossing but leaving lots of space between the string to resemble a spider webs. Spray or paint again with glue. Let thoroughly dry. Pop the balloon. The string web should remain in place. Glue several spiders to the outside of the web.

Ghost Doll A little tricky but worth the effort. And they're cheap to make. Place a baby doll in a sitting position with its arms straight out. A vinyl or plastic doll with no hair works best for this. Soak cheesecloth in a heavy starch solution. Wring out. Drape the cloth around the doll, molding it the head and around the arms and legs. Let dry. When you remove the doll the cloth retains the doll's shape for an eerie looking ghost. 

Hope you can find a load of fun to make your Halloween a most Scary One!




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As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase though a link!"


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As an Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase though a link!"

Saturday, June 18, 2022

Make An Herbal Healing Salve

Herbal Healing Salve Recipe




A healing salve that is simple and effective to make:

  • Add herb-infused oil, coconut oil, and beeswax to a double boiler and heat until melted.


  • Add essential oils and then pour into containers to cool.


Herbal Healing Salve

yield: 16 OZ
 
prep time: 10 MINUTES

Ingredients


1 1/2 cups calendula and comfrey oil (the amount in the recipe above)
4 tsp beeswax pastilles
3 Tbsp coconut oil
20-30 drops of quality essential oils

Instructions


Heat herbal oil, beeswax, and coconut oil over low heat until melted. 
Check the consistency by sticking a popsicle stick, skewer or spoon into the ointment and letting it cool. If it's too soft add more beeswax, too hard add more olive oil. 
Add optional essential oils (I like lavender) and stir.
Add to any container you like and let cool.


Dab a little on burns, bruises, cuts, bug bites, scrapes, diaper rash, etc. Don’t go crazy, a little goes a long way! I have been known to use this on my hands when they get chapped in the winter too. It’s very soothing!

This healing salve/ointment is fantastic for helping with all kinds of skin issues.




"This website and it's posts may contain affiliate links.

As an Amazon Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase though a link!"


Join our network at PaganKnot.com and Be Proud!


"This website and it's posts may contain affiliate links.

As an Associate I earn from qualifying purchases.

I may receive a small commission, at no cost to you, if you make a purchase though a link!"