A Christian Halloween Story

I must admit that I very much enjoy Halloween. Walking on the creepy side, dressing up as something we wouldn't be in ordinary life, and playing with our fears rather than running from them is all appealing to me. Yes, I am a full-fledged Christian and yes, I fully enjoy celebrating Halloween.

That said, any way that I can find to further teach about Christ and His values to my children is fantastic. And when the world celebrates and I can use that celebration to turn my children's thoughts towards the Lord, I say great! So I was very happy to find this illuminating (pun intended!) story about walking with Christ and Jack-O-Lanterns. Here is the story:

Once there were three little pumpkins (point to them). The first pumpkin (point to the pumpkin without a face) said, “I want to remain just as I am. I never want to change.”

The second pumpkin (point to the pumpkin with a drawn-on face) said, “I want to be a jack-o-lantern, but I don’t want to let go of what I already have. I want to change but I’m afraid to let anyone carve eyes, nose and a mouth out of my shell. So I won’t change either.”

The third pumpkin (point to the carved pumpkin) said, “I want to shine like the sun and in order to let the light come out of me, I need to lose part of myself. I need to change. Open my eyes, ears, nose and mouth and put a lit candle inside me. (Take the lid, set a lighted candle inside and take out the eyes, ears, nose and mouth.

The pumpkin wanted to become a jack-o-lantern, even at the cost of losing some of itself. And so, the light shone out of its eyes, ears, nose and mouth. The light of the third pumpkin, together with the light of all the other jack-o-lanterns, made the night become brighter than day. And darkness went away forever.

I found this story at Suite101, where you can also find a wonderful pumpkin prayer. I have put a pumpkin with our table centerpiece and we now say this prayer daily for the season.

Happy Halloween Season!

Fun Food for Halloween

My favorite place to create is in the kitchen, and oh does Halloween have so many opportunities for fun creations! Here are some fun ideas I have found. 

I would suggest purchasing a plastic decorating bottle. You can find these at Wal-mart in the cooking section (by toothpicks and mixing spoons) for $1, or get a thicker, higher quality Wilton bottle at your local hobby/craft store for a few dollars. I use mine so often! I fill mine with pancake batter and make seasonal shapes, fun shapes, and my kids' names onto the pan. Fill it with melted chocolate or candy melts and squirt onto waxed paper to make different things, such as the bat Oreos below. Use it for flooding cookies with icing. The uses are many!

These "ghouls" look so cool, and they are simply yogurt-covered pretzels with mini M&Ms for eyes! They are shown here on top of brownies, find the whole recipe/idea at Chasing Tomatoes.

I served these spider and web pancakes over the last weekend. It was a blast and the kids loved them! You can find the recipe and technique over at So Wonderful, So Marvelous. I used cocoa to color mine, rather than food coloring. They didn't come out nearly as dark as the ones in the photo, but I didn't mind.

Loving these mummy Oreos on a stick! Find the how-to, as well as other fun Halloween cookie ideas at How Does She?

While you have those Oreos on hand, you can also make these adorable bat cookies on a stick. Find the how-to at The Party Animal.

This candy corn pudding isn't candy corn flavored, but it sure is fun! The flavors are actually butterscotch, banana and cream. Find the yummy recipe at Life is a Banquet. 

I saved my favorite for last - how great are these melted witch cookies?! These were found on Death by Cupcake's Flickr page.

Have Fun!

Nola Girl: Our Fall and Halloween Porch

Wow! Has it really been a week since I have posted? We have had such a busy week! I hope to make up for it by posting every single day next week. After waiting as long as we could stand, we decorated our porch for fall/Halloween this afternoon. Hey the official first day of fall is only a few days away, right?

I have had a little one for the last six+ years, so we have been using cutesie, kiddy decorations. I don't want to be gross or scary, but now that Little Bill is older I do want to walk a little towards the creepy side.

My mother got new benches for her front porch and passed this gold metal one on to me. I painted it black to match my shutters, which also happens to work nicely for Halloween decor.

I found small crows and tarantulas at the dollar store, and black rats at Wal-mart. We put them all over the porch. Since they're black, you have to look closely in the photo to see them though.

I really wanted a dead tree for the porch. I looked in the woods near our house, but there was nothing dead in there. I even went to Lowe's and Home Depot asking for dead trees, but apparently they don't throw dead trees away, they send them back to the nurseries. Finally I found out that my neighbor had a dead tree that she didn't want. But, as you can see in the photo above, it is pitiful.

I happen to have a tree in my front yard that is in desperate need of a good trimming. So I trimmed some branches off of the bottom, stripped them of their leaves, and hot glued them to the pitiful dead tree.

Jill painted a skull and crossbones onto the pot of the dead tree, and I hung a large and small crow on the branches and put the tree by the front door. Loving it! Oh and I got the fall wreath at Wal-mart and had a little scarecrow that was falling apart so I cut the top half of him off and stuck it in the wreath!

Got this large scarecrow from Wal-mart to sit on my rocker. Apparently our cat, Fuzzy, enjoys his lap already.

Our fall/Halloween front porch! So much fun!