Your Guide to Everything Halloween: What's On the Menu?

Adult Only Get-Togethers

Try the Dracula's Kiss (pictured) for your Halloween cocktail party.

Midori (melon liqueur) is perfect for glow-in-the-dark cocktails like the Squashed Frog.

And, of course, there's always the classic Zombie, or its more feminine counterpart, the Voodoo Queen.


For Everyone

Speaking of Voodoo Queens, for Halloween Recipes you just can't beat Britta, the self-proclaimed Webmistress of the Dark.

My favorite recipe on her page, though I have yet to try it for fear of messing it up because her pictures are just so gorgeous, is the one for her Eerie Eyeballs. Please, if you try this recipe, let me know how it turns out! Is it as "easy" as she says?

Well, if that one's tough, there's no worries with the next recipe. I can vouch for it personally, as I make it every year for our Halloween gatherings with my favorite Pillsbury crescent rolls: Crescent Mummy Dogs (pictured, left).

Archie McPhee's, as well as some science shops and education supply stores, have inexpensive brain molds like the one used in the picture here. Use the brain mold for red jello, or ice for a cooler or punch (both very easy), or try something more complicated and serve up your own unique brain dish surrounded by a red sauce or jelly for impressive results.

By the way,under the brain picture in that last link are some excellent examples of Finger Cookies, which I have also heard referred to as "Witch's Fingers". if you skim down the page a way you'll find the recipe; to save you time I'll paste it here:

"Finger" Cookies
makes ~ 5 dozen
Yield: 5 dozen

1 cup butter, softened
1 cup powdered sugar
1 egg
1 tsp almond extract
1 tsp vanilla
2 2/3 cups flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/4 tsp salt
3/4 cup whole blanched almonds
raspberry jelly

In bowl, beat together butter, sugar, egg, almond extract and vanilla. Stir dry ingredients together, then add to wet and stir thoroughly. Cover and refrigerate 30 minutes.



Working with one quarter of the dough at a time and keeping remainder refrigerated, roll a scant tablespoon full (I used a 1 oz. cookie scoop) of dough into a thin log shape about 4" long for each cookie. Squeeze clost to center and close to one end to create knuckle shapes. Press almond firmly into the end of the cookie for nail. Using paring knife, make slashes in several places to form knuckle. You want them a bit thin and gangly looking, since they'll puff a little when you bake them.

Place on lightly greased baking sheets (or use silicone sheets or parchment); bake in 325F oven for 20-25 minutes or until pale golden. Let cool for a few minutes.

Meanwhile, melt jelly over low heat in a small saucepan.



Carefully lift almond off of each finger, spoon a tiny amount of jelly onto nail bed and press almond back in place so the jelly oozes out from underneath. You can also make slashes in the finger and fill them with "blood".

You can also form toes - just make the cookies shorter and a bit wider and only add one joint instead of two. No almonds for these, just indent where the nailbed should be and add a bit of melted jelly to highlight once they are baked.

Note from Viv: You can also use store-bought frozen cookie dough for the Finger Cookies, and then follow the directions above for rolling and assembling them.

Your Guide to Everything Halloween: Serve Swamp Stew!

I received this recipe for Swamp Stew in my inbox today, and I just had to share it with you all right away! It's from a new book, called Enchanted Thyme, by Ariane Smith (more about that below the recipe). You can double-click on the picture below to "biggify" it.

~Viv


Children's author and storyteller Ariane Smith, whose recently published book Enchanted Thyme is bubbling with healthy recipes, has added another spell to the Halloween experience through her stirring, family-oriented brews. Her mesmerizing tales were on display at the October 11 FoodNetwork Wine & Food Festival at Chelsea Market in New York City, where she performed along with well known chefs such as Bobby Flay and Rachael Ray.

The recipe does not call for toads or spiders but depends upon less exotic fare found in a typical coven. Chef Michael Wilson, whose well appreciated spell casting abilities have been directed towards a series of recipes in the book, concocted Creepy's Swamp Stew especially for Enchanted Thyme.

The boo-k incorporates many such recipes that can be made by children eight and older or as a family project.

Follow the Halloween Haunting!

Kimba over at a Soft Place to Land has created a Mr. Linky list with some great Halloween blog posts you'll want to check out! If you have a blog and are writing Halloween posts, you can link there, too.

Don't forget to follow the links back to Cool Moms Rule! We'll be having lots more Halloween posts for you all to enjoy, including: more home-made decorations for the big night, the best Halloween deals, quick and easy costumes, party foods, favor bags (and what to put in them), and a look inside our own Haunted House!

~Viv

Your Guide to Everything Halloween! Part II: Halloween Party Invitations

Cheddar and our new, emergency back-up cat, Fancy, help with Halloween preparations

We are hosting a spooky Halloween party the weekend before Halloween for the kids, so that was my main focus in searching for supplies. For younger children, I recommend not scheduling your party on Halloween night unless you want to take the kids Trick or Treating in your own neighborhood during the party and it's okay with the other parents.
My kids are older than many of yours, so I knew their friends weren't planning on Trick or Treating, but I still planned for the weekend before Halloween so they could spend Halloween night with their family.

I chose a more mature theme of spooky gothic influences for our Halloween party. You may prefer to go less spooky and more friendly and fun, depending on the ages of your children.

I found stationery for our invitations at our local Walmart. It's simple computer paper with a border that appealed to me--black, thorny outlines around an orangeish frame. That's the paper I picked, on the left.

I had thought about making the invitations with stamps and card stock, but this paper made it even easier for me to create the invitations. All I had to do was print them up on the computer with plain black ink.

Next, I came up with the prose for the invitations with a little creativity. I wanted our home to seem like a haunted house that we were enticing our unwitting guests into entering.
I spent some time finding the right font (Gothic small caps, continuing with my Gothic theme) and playing around with the wording. I added some dead black roses from Photoshop. Here's a printed invitation in the picture to the right. Notice how the strikethru font, which is an easy option in Microsoft Word or Photoshop, adds to that "unwitting guests" idea. By the way, I prefer using my Mac for work like this, but our printer is hooked up to the kids Windows-based computer. What's nice is Photoshop files transfer easily between platforms.

Here's what the invitations say, in case you can't read the font in the pictures!

Grab your Ghastly Garb and Follow the Other Victims Guests!
We Invite You to Join In a Night of Ghostly Revelries at the Old Mausoleum.

Featuring Gruesome, Gory Games
Maniacal, Monstrous Movies
Horror D'Oeuvres
Beastly Beverages
Fiendish Food

Saturday
October 25th
From Twilight (8:00 PM)
Until the Witching Hour (Midnight)

I also used R.I.P. down at the address and phone number, and then used strikethru to make it R.S.V.P. I'm excluding the address here since I doubt any of you will be able to make it to the party ; )

But I wasn't done with the invitations. I wanted a unique way to present them. Since the kids were handing them out at school (which, by the way, is a no-no in some elementary schools, so be careful! Mine are in middle school in high school), I needed to either dress up the envelopes or skip them altogether and save some cash.

I actually bought envelopes but came up with a better idea that fit right in with the whole gothic flavor: I folded the envelopes over and sealed them up with blood-red sealing wax!

I found a sealing wax set from Barnes and Noble that had the red wax I wanted. It came with a heart seal, not at all appropriate for a Halloween party full of tween and teenage guys! But I love stationery and sealing wax, so I had seals to substitute. I ended up with a "scribe" seal, which has an old-fashioned quill pen imprint.

I also thought of tying the invitations up with red ribbon before sealing them, but the boys thought the ribbons were too "girly." I still think that would be a great idea for those of you with daughters, though!

On the reverse side of the invitations from the seal, I wrote the names with a flourish, using a black calligraphy pen.

Oh, and to prove I am not Martha Stewart, I got the date on the invitations wrong and put the 24th! Which I realized only AFTER they were sealed. Doh! The boys are telling their friends Mom messed up, as usual. : P

I set out an invitation, sealed with wax, on top of a styrofoam tombstone, with some of my other Halloween decorations in a nice tableau for all of you, but my very floofy cat, Cheddar, decided he wanted to be in the picture, too! (We have three cats now: floofy cute Cheddar, tough guard cat Colby and emergency back-up girl cat, Fancy.) Anyway, here's the final product! Ta-da!

Halloween is Almost Here, But You Still Have Time to Party!

With Halloween just less than 2 weeks away, it's time to start partying! Invite some kids over and throw your own bash, thanks to this Halloween Party kit put together by Cool Moms Rule!

Here's what's in the Halloween Party kit:

• Black Crepe Streamers for decorating
• Halloween Confetti
  
• Halloween Tablecloth, black with Jack O' Lanterns
• Spooky Black Plastic Cups
• Spooky Black Tableware
  
• Halloween Paper Plates, white with Jack O' Lanterns
  

All you have to do to WIN THE HALLOWEEN PARTY KIT is leave a comment on this post with your email! Tell your friends to drop by for a chance to win, too! We'll announce the winner and have the kit out to you over the weekend.

~Viv

Update: Congratulations to MamaZen, who won our Halloween Party kit! Stay tuned to Cool Moms Rule for more contests coming up soon! Oh, and please consider voting for us over at Fuelmyblog, via the button on the sidebar>. Thanks!