Halloween Treats

This week is Halloween. I have to admit that it is growing on me a bit more each year, but I am still not a huge fan of super scary things and dressing up. Spooky is ok, but not scary, haha. One thing I do like about Halloween is the candy. I tend not to feel as bad about eating all of the treats because they are in small packets; that means less calories, right? Haha. Anyways, I thought that we’d share some of our favorite Halloween treats this week with you plus I have a recipe for you that is so easy. It is one of my favorite candy bars, but it’s homemade so it is a little bit better for you. I had a craving the other night and had to have them right away and since then I have made a few batches of these crunch bars. So give the recipe a try and have a Happy Halloween!

Homemade Crunch Bars

24 ounces (3 cups) of chocolate chips – you can use dark, milk, white, or semi-sweet, up to you

1 ¾ cups of Rice Crispies

Prepare a 9x13 pan by placing a piece of parchment paper inside; it helps with removing the chocolate and it also makes for a quick and easy cleanup.

Melt the chocolate in a large microwavable bowl/measuring cup/container for about 2 minutes. Check every 30 seconds or so to make sure that the chocolate doesn’t burn because that would be bad.

Once the chocolate is melted, pour the Rice Crispies in and stir until they are all mixed in and coated. Spread evenly in your prepared pan. Put in the freeze for 20 minutes and then into the fridge for about 10 minutes. Cut to the size that you would like and enjoy! Yummy!

Drop Everything and Read

When working at a school you are reminded of the many different celebrations and events that kids and teachers “celebrate” throughout the school year. I have never heard of Drop Everything and Read or D.E.A.R. before but I have learned a little about it as we are participating in it at our school in the coming up week.

Drop Everything and Read was written about in Beverly Cleary’s book Ramona Quimby, Age 8 and now on April 12^th (Beverly Cleary’s birthday) people will celebrate and participate in Drop Everything and Read where you do exactly that, drop everything and read. Here is a little more info and background about the program. http://www.dropeverythingandread.com/

Here in B.C schools are participating in D.E.A.R this coming Monday, October 26^th which is also B.C School Library Day, so in honour of the day we have made some bookmarks that we are sharing with you. Make one to use when you participate in Drop Everything and Read, make one for a friend, or make one for yourself for when you find a good book to start reading in the cold winter months ahead.

We have gone through our paper scraps and found pieces that are appropriate sizes for bookmarks and went from there to create one of a kind unique bookmarks. Take a look!

Baking Bonanza

Today is Friday, thank goodness. Tonight Nicole and I had a baking bonanza. I made two kinds of cookies and brownies! We're having a bunch of sweet treats now and playing games. Happy weekend and enjoy the recipes and baked goods pictures. 

Brownies

Ingredients:

1 1/3 cups al-purpose flour

1tsp baking powder

½ tsp salt

1 cup butter

1 cup cocoa powder

2 cups sugar

4 eggs

1 ½ tsp vanilla

Directions:

Preheat oven to 350°F.

Stir together flour, baking powder and salt in a small bowl. Melt butter in a large saucepan. Remove from heat. Stir in cocoa. Blend in sugar, eggs and vanilla. Blend in dry ingredients. Pour batter into greased 13x9 inch rectangular baking pan. Bake for 30 to 35 minutes or until done.

Cool.

Ranger Cookies

Ingredients:

1 cup brown sugar

1 cup granulated sugar

1 cup butter

2 large eggs

1 tsp vanilla

2 cups flour

½ tsp baking powder

1 tsp baking soda

½ tsp salt

2 cups oatmeal

1 cup chocolate chips

2 cups Rice Krispies

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a small bowl combine flour, baking powder baking soda and salt; set aside.

In a large bowl combine butter brown sugar, sugar and vanilla extract; beat until creamy. Beat in the eggs. Gradually add flour mixture; mix well.

Stir in oatmeal, chocolate chips and Rice Krispies; mix well. Roll into small balls and flatten.

Bake on ungreased cookie sheets for 10-12 minutes or till light brown

Snickerdoodles

Topping:

3 Tbsp. sugar

½ tsp cinnamon

Cookie Dough:

3 ½ cups flour

1 Tbsp baking powder

2 tsp baking soda

¼ tsp salt

¼ tsp cinnamon

1 cup butter

2 cups sugar

2 eggs

1 Tbsp light corn syrup

2 ½ tsp vanilla extract

Directions:

Preheat oven to 375°F.

In a small bowl, stir together the sugar and cinnamon and set aside.

To make the cookie dough, stir together the dry ingredients.

In a bowl with a paddle attachment, cream the butter. Add the sugar and continue to mix, then ad the eggs corn syrup and vanilla, and mix thoroughly. Add the dry ingredients and mix until blended. Chill dough 1 hour if its sticky or difficult to handle.

Roll balls of dough about the size of a walnut then roll them in the cinnamon sugar to coat. Place on an un-greased cookie sheet 2 ½ inches apart. Bake for 10-12 minutes until puffed up and the surface is slightly cracked. Let cool on the sheet a few minutes before removing to a wire rack to cool.

Thank You Name Cards

This is the last instalment of our Thanksgiving blog posts for this year. We are making Thank You name cards. We've picked out some nice Fall colours again and are coming up with some ideas to hopefully inspire you. The cards we've done have names on them and initials. They are sweet ways to let someone know where they are sitting at your Thanksgiving table and also to let them know why you are thankful for them.

How to:

We have a few pictures to guide you in your thank you note making. Basically pick out some colours, stamps, and punches and then think up some sweet things to say about your guests. 

DIY Thanksgiving Rings

Happy October! I can’t believe it is October already and almost Thanksgiving (here in Canada, anyways). This is week two of our Thanksgiving prep posts and this week we are going to make some simple napkin rings to decorate your dinner table with.

We are savers here, so instead of throwing away our leftover cardstock scraps from the cards that we make, we keep them and use them in other crafts that we create. Today we are using some of the strips that we have left over from our cards after we trim them. We have a big container full of these strips and we have used them for other decorations (we made a Valentine’s heart chain this past year from them), so we are going to go through and find some Autumn colours and come up with some napkin rings.

 Napkin Rings How To 

Simple Thank You Napkin Ring

This one is very simple. We just used a rusty coloured strip and stamped “Thank You” in black ink on a cream circle and attached it to the strip. Always remember to size your ring to fit your napkin.

Patterned Napkin Ring

For this one we used two strips, green and purple. On the green strip we stamped a continuous pattern in gold and then we attached it on top of the purple layer.

Double Looped Napkin Rings

For these we used two colours of strips. The middle strip is shorter than the outside one. First of all make the centre ring and glue the ends; then circle the larger strip around it. So you have a little ring inside of a big ring. We made a few variations of these. You can stamp them or glue punched out things to them or you can just leave them plain. 

The finished products...