Affordable Family Fun, Crafts, Recipes, Games and more!
Announcement of upcoming event. It’s a week away, November 13th, and you do not have to be local to attend. They are inviting participants to attend and participate from the comfort of our homes via online. It cannot get more convenient than that! Check out the details below and register/attend if you can. Family + Games? They have my attention! I am curious to learn more next week.
As soon as the first neighbor starts putting up Halloween decorations or a pumpkin is spotted at the store, my children start to get giddy and asking for some Halloween fun. Luckily this year Kraft Foods helped us out by sending us an awesome box full of Halloween inspired goodies! What do you do with such a large box? Try everything!
Since my children have been trained to be marshmallow lovers, we decided to start with making our own White Chocolate Crispy Pumpkin Spice Treats. More specifically, ghosts and pumpkins.
What You Need:
Directions:
Step 1: Follow the directions for how to make Crispy Marshmallow Treats on the back of the marshmallow bag. We decided to make these before we even knew the recipe was on the bag! They made it easy for us! 
Step 2: Once you press them into the pan, let them sit for a little bit to cool. Hint: spray hands with cooking spray to keep the mix from sticking to them.
Step 3: Then use the cookie cutters to make your spooky cutouts. Press the mix firmly into each cookie cutter to make them firm. Gently push out each shape onto a piece of wax paper or plate to finish setting. Add a stick to it, if desired, for a popsicle look.
Step 4: Once the treats are completely set, melt the white chocolate and dip the back of the now Crispy Monsters into it.
Step 5: Add desired embellishments. We had mini chocolate chips on hand that worked pretty good for the faces.
Here are some other fun Halloween Ideas you can try:
1. Wormy Brain using a Brain Mold.
2. Spider Cookies out of Oreos and licorice, similar to the on on this Spider Cupcake above.
3. Creepy Spider Worms made from Jello and Straws. We are going to have to try this!
Would you like your own prize pack?
Each prize pack is roughly a $100 value and includes:
A package sure to create some fun for the whole family! All you need to do to enter to win is to complete the mandatory entry below. All other entries are optional.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
Product was provided to facilitate some Halloween Fun in exchange for sharing our creations.
Every year I forget about simple Halloween Decor. This year I was at the store and saw a cute bunch of tiny pumpkins and remembered Pumpkin Painting, so I snagged them!
Whenever the kids get antsy for a project, we will pull out a pumpkin and let them paint it to their hearts content. Then we use the finished and unfinished pumpkins as counter and table decorations in our kitchen.
You can paint them any color you want, make faces and get as fancy or keep it as simple as you like. We used glow-in-the-dark paint to finish these 2 off.
As you can see, they love them and are so proud of their work.
My favorite pumpkin looks are the cute ones with stripes and polka dots. You can use masking tape to help make the stripes and dots. But, that will have to be for next year for me!
I caught your interest at the mention of Pinterest, right? I recently joined the V.I.Bee Team via HappyFreebie where I will have an opportunity to share some reviews and may even have a chance to throw a Party via Pinterest. My brain is spinning at all the possibilities of themes or products I could feature during a Pinterest Party. Right now I have Baby/Nursery on the brain, but Camping/Outdoors would be fun, or Birthday, or Dream Backyard or…I NEED SOME HELP!
I would really love your input…Send me some ideas or some names of your favorite products that you would like to see more of.
If I can get a great list of ideas and products, we will have some serious fun!
AND
For those who have not heard of HappyFreebie and wondering what it is, let me tell you…
“HappyFreebie is all about cool, new products for moms and dads. Each featured product comes with a giveaway and a discount. The giveaway makes it fun to find out about new products. The discount lowers the hesitation we all have to try new products. As you enter to win, buy at a discount, or refer your friends, you get points which accumulate over time and give you awesome rewards. For instance, when you get 1,000 points, you start getting double entries. Win. Save. Play. Every Day.”
I will be sharing more about entering giveaways (not just via HappyFreebie) in the near future. But until then, know that I personally love how easy and time saving it is to enter giveaways via HappyFreebie. I have been lucky enough to be a winner twice since I discovered them earlier this year.
Go check them out, enter a giveaway and make sure you tell me what your favorite products are or a theme you would love to see via Pinterest Party!
What do you get when you add these 2 together?
One yummy treat!
My son’s kindergarten class made these their last week of school and he loved them! When I mentioned that we may have them for a treat for family night, he declared he would be in charge of making them. They turned out to be a huge hit. They were super simple to make and easy enough for a 6 year old to do it all by himself…with a little mess!
Step 1: Make your favorite cookies ahead of time. We used chocolate chip cookies, but next time I think we will go for a double chocolate chip cookie recipe or something fun. Also, do not worry about baking huge cookies. The ones we made were probably around 3 inches wide and a little too big. They were very filling!
Step 2: Layout two cookies and add a scoop of ice cream on top of one cookie.
Step 3: Gently press the 2nd cookie on top of the ice cream.
Step 4: Eat and Enjoy!
See I told you…super simple to make. Now go stuff your tummy with some cool ice cream cookie yumminess. It’s summer and we all need a cool treat every now and then!
I don’t normally get personal on this site. I try to make this more of a place to inspire you rather than all about ME, but I feel like I need to get this out there…I have been on the edge of a blogging burn out for the good first few months of the year. I was debating on quitting, handing the site over to someone else or something crazy. From September up until the middle of December I had been able to keep up with a regular weekday posting schedule. That’s 4-5 times a week. A first for me! I was pretty dang proud of my consistency. Then the year started with a preschooler who refused to nap, a less than ideally healthy me and our family life started getting really busy. So after talking to the Hubster, we decided to slow down my posting to 3 days a week and with the help of friends and many guest bloggers I was able to prep the site to run on its own for 2+ months. It was crazy to prep, but it was amazing the relief I felt and my ability to focus on my little family. And boy, oh boy am I glad I had that time because we had a lot of really good changes happen all at once!
Image: digitalart / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
We had an amazing opportunity to purchase our first house, which equals no more renting. We are very excited about that! The Hubby had a change in his work schedule which allows us to have a more consistent schedule and spend weekends together as a family. Both of these things pretty much were wrapped up/happened all at the same time. We were hoping to close a couple weeks early on the house and have 1 or 2 weekends to transition between homes. Our closing was pretty smooth, but as most closings go, it got crazy towards the end. Because of some small paperwork delays, we closed later than our original close date on a week day (not a weekend as we hoped) and the seller, determined not to extend a 2nd time, ended up closing in the last few hours of the final day. Good thing, too, because we were packing the truck that day not sure what we were going to do with all our stuff and a 24 hour rental truck! lol But it all worked out! The only bad part was that we were not able to do basic prep to our new home before we moved in and only had 2 days to clean our rental out. (The house had been vacant for many months and needed a good vacuum, carpet cleaning, extreme wipe down of everything and paint job. I did not realize how bad/dirty it was until much later….something I’m going to give the blame to higher powers because that was a serious blessing not to notice! lol) With some extreme help of my mom and sister we were able to extreme clean the rental the remaining 2 days of our contract (I am cheap and wanted our full deposit back, which we got!). Then it was back to our new home for me to start the deep cleaning. I think I made it only one more day, Friday, and vacuumed the house like crazy before we had the carpet cleaned that Saturday. The next few weeks are a blur. We soon figured out that we had more good news, hopefully, on the way! My body was exhausted from everything I had been doing (and I was terrified to push it any more for fear of another miscarriage) that I listened to my body and let myself rest… a lot! The couch became my good friend during that time. =) I am officially past that 3 month mark and feel a little better about sharing the news. So, YES, we are expecting a new addition to the family late Fall!
See, I told you…Lots of good things happening, but oh so crazy times! I am so glad I had the time to focus on my family and the amazing thing is, is that my site actually did better with all my pre-planning, post less and on “auto pilot” than it did when I wrote a daily post 4+ times a week. Now that I almost have no other distractions, it is time for me to get back. I am making a plan to help me get my motivation back in all departments and I’ll share that with you soon….hopefully, Thursday.
Until then, share with me:
How do you keep everything in order or plan your day as a mom and stay motivated?
