Halloween Weekend

What a FULL weekend! Friday night, we went to the Ranchers Heritage Museum old time Halloween event. Saturday night, we went to a TOMBSTONE Pizza Halloween Party. Tonight, good ole trick or treating.  Lots of family fun!

Friday was a really cool experience. We had heard that the museum had this free event for families and we had been wanting to check out the museum anyway, so it seemed like a good fit.  Costumes were encouraged as volunteers would be giving out candy at different stations throughout the museum.  We weren't really sure what that meant since we had never been before.  Boy were we impressed!  We walked up to a beautiful building, walked through it to the back and - wow! What a layout.  The grounds were much larger than they appeared from the front of the building, and spread out across it were many buildings that represented the way that cowboys and ranchers lived in the 1800s.  We saw different types of homes, a train/train station, carriage house, school house, cowboy commissary, stables/barn, pay office, etc. It was very interesting. The volunteers were dressed as cowboys or as women of the time.  We had so much fun!

Saturday we went to a friends house for a Halloween party.  The party was sponsored by TOMBSTONE pizza through a website called House Party.  My friend applied to host this party and was selected. Then, she received a party pack that contained everything she needed to through a party, paid for by TOMBSTONE. It was cool.  We had TOMBSTONE pizza, Nestle Tollhouse cookies, Nestle candies - all on TOMBSTONE'S dime.  They even provided coupons for the guests to go get pizza, cookies, and candy at a discount.  The hostess planned a Frankenstein craft for the kids - it was a hit! We left with smiles on our faces and some swag!

Halloween evening was really fun. We had to go to a different hood than our own because of the heavy student demographic!  We found a charming, wonderful neighborhood and started enjoying ourselves.  We started at about 6:30pm but found that the streets really started getting crowded after dark.  It was fun to see what costumes were popular this year.  Aidan was the only Anakin Skywalker we saw and Liv was the only Alice.  They came home and sorted through their loot, and all in all were very pleased!

Now I gotta start thinking about Christmas . . .

Pumpkin Contest!!

We are all about Halloween around here! We've got our fun decorations up around the house, a couple of pumpkins out on the porch, and we are eagerly awaiting trick or treating.  In the meantime, we have entered a pumpkin in a contest at Aidan's school.  Aidan came home with a flyer that gave us all the details and he was super excited to participate.

I asked him what he wanted to put on the pumpkin as the contest required paint and no carving.  He thought about it and waffled between a Frankenstein, Vampire & a Dragon. We finally narrowed it down to a Dragon! Aidan and I looked online for some images and we saw a few that we liked. The trick was, which one Mommy could draw on the pumpkin!! 

I gave it a shot and drew a long dragon that wrapped around the pumpkin.  Then came time to paint! We only had three colors - blue, green, and hot pink.  Aidan decided what colors he wanted where and we set about painting the dragon.

It took a couple of days because the paint had to dry between coats.  The pumpkin skin didn't take the paint very well, it even peeled off a couple of times!

Eventually, it was done and ready to go to school.  What do you think?!

Apple Update!

We made PIE!! And it wasn't as difficult as we thought it would be. Homemade crust, filling and a pretty little pie plate - and Voila! Yummy pie!

Livi and Aidan helped out with every step. From gathering ingredients, to measuring ingredients, to mixing ingredients. We had a lot of fun!

And the pie? DEE-LICIOUS!!

Went Apple Pickin'!

We went to the Fuji Apple Pickin' at Apple Country Orchard this morning. Lovely morning, kinda odd little shabby orchard!

We were looking for something different to do and came across the orchard online.  Picking apples sounded fun, something we could all do and it would get us outside and breathing the fresh air.  Olivia asked if she could bring a friend so we asked Katy to come along.  She was thrilled with that, and Aidan was too. 

We headed to Idalou on Highway 62 and were soon there.  We knew by the old timey and not quaint sign that we might not be getting what we came for!  We walked into the front little shop and looked at all the ancient gifts but were soon met with the most wonderful smell!! There was a little bakery/cafe in the back and they had been making apple pancakes all morning - yum! We didn't have any however, we were there for apple picking and that's what we wanted to get to.  Didn't want to waste the lovely weather!

We got our buckets and headed to the orchard.  We were hoping to find Fuji and Arkansas Black apples. Never heard of Arkansas Black apples so we were curious. It was a nice little walk thru the orchard and we soon came to the row that we wanted to investigate.  While there were many apples on the ground around the base of the trees, we still managed to find some apples still on the branches.  Aidan picked the first one - it was really fun!  He just reached right into the leaves and plucked!  Livi and Katy had fun too.  We were allowed to eat the apples while we picked so, we picked about four and ate one then did it all over again. the apples really were delicious and seemed to taste better than the ones at the grocery.

We thought we were picking Fuji apples but it turned out we had picked Red Delicious apples. Of course, we could have gotten those at the dang grocery store but oh well! At least these were super fresh!  We picked about four pounds of apples at 89 cents a pound. We walked outta there with lots of apples for $5!

My plan is to make my first from scratch apple pie and apple turnovers.  The kids are gonna help me, we are gonna make an afternoon of it.  We will let you know how delicious they are!!