Halloween Crafts

The older I've gotten the less appealing Halloween has become to me.  It seems like such a pointless holiday.  I don't care for the scary, bloody and eerie aspect and now that I have kids, the stress of finding costumes coupled with hyper, anwry kids begging for candy 24/7 has really given me a negative attitude about the whole thing.  I realized this year, though, that to a kid Halloween is so much fun and I don't want to let my negativity rub off on my kids nor do I want it to lessen the excitment for them.  I decided that instead of just brushing the holiday off, I would try to make it a time to have fun and positive experiences together as a family.  Here are some of the things we've done so far.

We decorated our door to look like a monster and Hyrum spent sevearl hours creating the witch leaning in the corner.  He saw a Wizard of Oz witch decoration at Walmart and after I refused to buy it he decided to make his own.  I think it turned out pretty good considering the resources we had to work with.
 

This is a pumpkin vegetable tray we made and took to a Halloween carnival. 

These fun spiders turned out too "sweet" to be scary.  We made them using styrofoam balls painted black, colored wire, gumdrops, gummy life savers, a candy necklace and straight pins.  The kids had a great time eating the leftovers. 

Halloween just wouldn't be Halloween without some caramel apples.  Hyrum and William's school was selling caramel apples as a fundraiser, but since Hyrum can't eat real caramel we decided to make our own.  They turned out really yummy, I was impressed.  The boys thought it was pretty cool that they got to eat their very own apple right off the stick.  (I usually just cut the apple into pieces and they all share since it's less messy that way).

There will be more Halloween fun to come...