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When we were on vacation, I got the news that my friend’s mother had sadly lost her battle with cancer. Since I wasn’t home to attend any of the services, I wanted to do something for my friend and her family. I stumbled on this idea on Pinterest the other night and knew I had to make my very own Box Full of Sunshine! You can find the original post here.

This thing was so much fun to put together! I had to stop myself from buying because I was outgrowing my box! It’s amazing what you will find at the store when you are strictly looking for one color packaging. Grace helped me pick all of this stuff out. Everything was purchased at Target. The white box is actually from Baby GAP and was the perfect size. If this didn’t work, I was going to stop at AC Moore for a basket. I think that would look really cute too.

My friend Kate has two young children so I wanted to put in lots of fun stuff for them. You can’t see everything because I had to layer some stuff (and hid the sketch books because gasp – they weren’t yellow. But every kid needs a new sketchbook with a fresh box of crayons!)

Included in the box:

box of crayons
Curious George book
ducky bubbles
Easter chick hand towels
golden Oreo cakesters
lemon hand soap
lemon soy candle
M&M tin
pairs of yellow sunglasses for each kid
Pictionary card game
Pop Rocks in a yellow Easter egg
Robin Egg gumballs
sketchbook for each kid
Subway card
two pack of card games: Go Fish and Slapjack
Wonka Easter-colored Nerds
yellow cupcake liners
yellow Funfetti cake mix
yellow Peeps

…plus curling ribbon, paper sun and little sign.

Yummy candle.

Hand towels and hand soap for Mom.

Thank you Subway for making your gift cards the perfect shade of yellow. :)

Paper sun I designed in Photoshop, printed and cut out.

Have a sunny day!

Last week I crocheted these two monster hats.

A day later, I had this set-up ready for a newborn.

And then, the finished product:

Cutest little monster I ever did see!

And I do so *love* seeing my vision come together. :)

I Pinned a really cute birth announcement today that used assorted typefaces to tell a catchy little story. I knew I had to make three of these for my own babies. I am still not sure if I’ll frame and hang them in their rooms or under their 8×8 framed photos in the hall. My girls share a bedroom which is why I used the same color scheme but reversed for theirs. Didn’t they turn out cute? I decided to go with a different font for each name because with Emily’s name being so short, I had to really enlarge the font to make it stretch to my borders and it wasn’t looking great. And about the mohawk, my kids always laugh when I tell that story so I had to include it.

“And then the nurse came over to tell me what you looked like and she said “You have a beautiful little daughter… and she has a mohawk!” (true story)

Fonts used, from top to bottom, left to right on any one sign, are:

Century Gothic, Sweetheart Script, Georgia, Adobe Caslon Pro (large date), Century Gothic, DejaVu Sans Extra Light (weight), Chopin Script (miracle), Georgia, Antipasto, Century Gothic, LD Little Piggy and Century Gothic. Emily’s name is typed in Big Caslon. Andrew’s name is typed in Antipasto (love this one!) Grace’s name is typed in Chaparral Pro.

Thanks for keeping me feeling awesome and creative or just creatively awesome Pinterest!

You know those soft, crumbly cake-like cookies with the thick smear of frosting on top? We typically buy them on an end-cap in Target but the groceries carry them too. That’s what I mad yesterday. I am not a huge fan of rolling or cutting cookies which is why I don’t make my sugar cookies often. But this dough was pressed into a pan and cut into cookie bars and really, it doesn’t get much easier than that!

Lofthouse Sugar Cookie Bars
cookie recipe from: Cookies & Cups frosting recipe from: Chef In Training

dough
1 1/2 cups sugar
1 cup of butter, room temp
1 (8 ounce) brick of cream cheese, room temp
1 egg
2 teaspoons vanilla
2 1/2 cups flour
1/2 teaspoon baking soda
1 teaspoon baking powder

frosting (it’s sweet!)
1/2 cup unsalted butter
16 ounces (or 2 cups) of powdered sugar
1/4 cup milk
smidge of vanilla extract
pinch of salt
food coloring to tint your frosting
sprinkles, optional but recommended!

1) Preheat oven to 350. Line a jelly roll pan (15x10x1) with foil and spray (we used Crisco).

2) With electric mixer, cream sugar, butter and cream cheese together. Add in egg and vanilla.

3) In a small bowl, combine flour, baking soda and baking powder.

4) Slowly add flour mixture into butter mixture. It is very sticky! You may want to finish off with a spoon because I had to take a spatula and scrape down my beaters.

5) Press sticky dough into prepared pan. TIP: Pile dough into pan and lay waxed paper over the top. Use a rolling pin and roll dough over waxed paper. It will stick minimally but it’s so much easier than spreading this by hand.

6) Bake until edges are tuning brown, just about 20 minutes. Cool completely before frosting.

7) Using an electric mixer, mix all frosting ingredients until desired consistency (add milk last in case your frosting is already on the thin side). Frost cookie sheet, sprinkle and use a pizza wheel to easily cut into bars.

sticky dough rolled out under waxed paper

I’ve been pinning and testing out new recipes all week! I started a board to keep track of stuff I’ve created and liked and you can see that HERE. If you still need an invite to Pinterest, leave your e-mail below!

Hope you’re having a pleasant weekend. : )

I Pinned a recipe for a near perfect clone to Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls last week and knew I had to try them ASAP. I made them once last week and again yesterday. I couldn’t believe the reaction these got. Vin was drooling, the kids were trying to talk and smile between sticky, giant bites…. everyone loved them! Bonus: they are even tasty heated for about 20-25 seconds the next morning. Not a bad way to start your school day. ;)

Here is where we got the recipe from. I did not use a bread machine and I’ll post my own variation in a minute.

I had to scrap these photos from our very first batch because Grace was pretty excited about this project. This kid is going to make someone very happy one day with all of her cooking and baking skills. If she sees me in the kitchen, she immediately pulls up a stool and asks to help. She’s pretty good too! She knows how to make meatballs, meatloaf, Mommy’s sauce, chicken cutlets, frost the cupcake cakes we make for Cake Smashes and now, she makes a mean cinnamon roll.

Before you attempt to make these rolls, make sure you give yourself a good chunk of time. Like 2-3 hours. They aren’t hard but you are working with a yeast-based dough, so you need to leave ample time for rising (in two places).

First we mixed up our dough. We let it sit in a covered bowl in a warm spot for about 90 minutes until it doubled in size. Then it was time to roll.

We worked on our dining room table. I told Grace to just start spreading flour out and she couldn’t believe the mess I was letting her make!

After our dough was rolled into a rectangle shape, we spread butter on it and sprinkled it with our cinnamon / brown sugar mixture.

Then it looked delicious and cinnamony, like this:

I am a big fan of keeping things neat so when it came time to roll this dough up, I made sure we tucked in our edges first.

FYI- You are supposed to roll your dough into an approximate 16×21 inch rectangle. When rolling it up, you are rolling it on the longer side.

I found that lightly scoring the roll with my knife allowed me to make sure I had 12 even slices before cutting. You don’t want to make them thinner and try to get more slices out of your roll because they won’t fit in the pan.

Grace then took all of our sliced pieces and placed them in a greased 9×13″ baking dish. After they are all in there, you cover them up again (we just used a kitchen towel) and let them rise a bit more ~ for about 30 minutes. A few of your ends will look like they don’t want to stick. Pay no attention to these misbehaving pieces. They won’t have a chance to unravel once they start baking.

Pop them in the oven for baking.

In the meantime, whip-up some of the yummy icing! The first batch I made I doubled the icing and we had too much left over. When I made them yesterday, I used very generous helpings of the ingredients for one batch and it was perfect. Those are the measurements I have included in the recipe below.

Oh man, they are soooo good! Especially with a cup of coffee!  I might, however, recommend milk for the kids. ;)

Here’s my layout I did using these pictures.

Cinnamon Rolls

Credits are HERE.

Cinnabon Cinnamon Rolls

ROLLS
1 cup warm milk
1 packet of yeast (1/4 ounce)
2 eggs, room temp
1/3 cup of butter, melted
1/2 cup white sugar
1 teaspoon salt
4 1/2 cups bread flour

FILLING
1 cup brown sugar, packed
2 1/2 TBSP cinnamon
1/3 cup butter, softened

ICING
4 ounces cream cheese, softened
5 TBSP butter, softened
1 1/2 generous cups of confectioner’s sugar
1/2 teaspoon vanilla
pinch of salt

1. Dissolve the yeast into your warm milk. Set aside as you mix the other roll ingredients. Add yeast/milk mixture last and start to stir by hand. You will end up using your hands and kneading the dough into a ball. It will be fairly sticky so you might want to add in a bit more bread flour. I maybe added another 1/4 cup during the kneading process. Cover your bowl with a dish cloth and set aside for an hour to an hour & a half. Leave it in a warm place and watch for the dough to double in size.

2. Mix the brown sugar and cinnamon together for your filing. Get your softened butter out.

3. Place dough on a well floured surface. Roll it out until it’s approximately 16×20″.

4. Spread butter onto dough. Sprinkle cinnamon sugar mixture.

5. Tuck in ends and roll dough up from the 21″ side. Lightly score 12 pieces with a knife.

6. Cut evenly spaced pieces and lay flat into a greased 9×13″ pan. Cover with a cloth and let rise for another 30 minutes. Oven should be heating to 400 degrees.

7. Bake rolls until golden brown ~ about 15 minutes.

8. While rolls are baking, beat all frosting ingredients until they come together and are smooth.

9. I let the rolls cool for maybe 5 minutes before using a spatula to cut them out and place them on a dish. Spoon frosting on top. Serve warm.

Since right-clicking is turned off on my Blog, I created a simple front and back 4×6 recipe card so that you can easily download and print off this recipe. CLICK HERE. Enjoy!

I could get used to the way I spent the last few days around here: sleeping-in, hanging in sweatpants, reading at my leisure and working on art projects!

I saw this cute idea and pinned it twice on Pinterest. I knew I had to find a small chunk of time for this one. It was really easy to put together and a great way to save our photo cards that we received this year.

All you need are some binder rings (please make no mention of the fact that mine are a very un-Christmasy purple), a hole punch, a thin Sharpie, some supplies to design a quick cover and of course, your stack of cards!

First I rounded the corners of allllll of our photo cards because like I’ve said before, I’m obsessed. Then I designed a cover. I didn’t measure it out and figured some of the larger cards would peek out here and there but what do you know, I designed a cover that ended up being perfectly sized and even the largest card fit inside. (I also added a plain black cardstock back cover just to give the book a little protection).

Two patterned papers, Thickers, glue dots ~ done! The only thing I need to do is go back an add the year. I didn’t have any numeric stickers I liked enough. The sparkly gold ones I bought just for this project didn’t pop enough on my patterned paper cover.

After my cover was done, I randomly punched two holes on the left edge. Then I laid all of the photo cards underneath, one by one, and used a thin Sharpie to mark off where I would need to punch.

I put the largest cards in the back and then added the rest at random. Some small mixed between some tall, and others wider. Very mish-mashed and quirky!

And just a few more shots of the inside. I really like that we can see the back of the cards now, something we couldn’t when they were hanging in our living room. My husband went through the book last night and commented on a few new 2nd-side pictures he hadn’t seen before.

I started the mini album with our very own family’s card which you’ll notice blurred in the background below. I have each year saved and never do anything with them. Into the book it goes!

Family & friends, thank you for sending along your beautiful greetings this year! For once, I can assure you that they are being appreciated after the holiday season has passed us by.

I meant to share this recipe over the Summer when I made it for a few barbecues but never did. I am planning on making it on Christmas Eve (plus I still had my handy dandy white grape and peach stock images saved) so it’s about time you made this delicious Sangria too! It originally came from All Recipes, plus some minor adjustments.

WHITE PEACH SANGRIA

1 (750 milliliter) bottle dry white wine
3/4 cup peach Schnapps
6 TBSPs frozen lemonade concentrate, thawed
1/4 cup white sugar
1 pound white peaches, pitted and sliced (you can use thawed frozen slices)
3/4 cup seedless red grapes, halved
3/4 cup seedless green grapes, halved
one bottle of 7-Up or other lemon-lime flavored soda*

1. Warm the lemonade concentrate in the microwave and stir in sugar until dissolved.

2. In a large pitcher, combine dry white wine, peach Schnapps & lemonade/sugar mixture. Add sliced peaches, red and green grapes.

3. Refrigerate Sangria until well chilled: at least two hours to blend flavors. Serve over ice and use a slotted spoon to include fruit with each serving.

*This Sangria goes down very quickly and is very strong, even though it doesn’t taste like it. To stretch this recipe out (believe me, it goes fast!) and lessen its potency, mix a 1:1 ratio of Sangria + 7-Up. The bubbles add a little something special to the drink and you won’t lose flavor at all. Trust me. It’s delicious! I have never gotten a bad review on this recipe or people who don’t want a 2nd and 3rd glass. :)

Drink up!

DECORATING GINGERBREAD

We split our usual gingerbread decorating fun into two days this year. We made the cookies two weeks ago after crafts and this past weekend we decorated one large house, four mini houses and three sleighs.

The kids transformed these…

…into these:

And this…

…into this:

Lots of candies were used.

No really. Lots of candies were used. Gumdrops were also being snuck when they thought I wasn’t watching.

Something we do while decorating gingerbread houses is to create windows and doors on individual graham crackers. The kids get to work in their own little space on their own individual piece and we don’t have to worry about stuff falling off of the house as it dries. The above graham cracker is Grace’s design and it made me laugh because she just piled candies on top of one another with no icing to adhere them down. You knew when you lifted this one that those little candy balls were rolling everywhere.

I have swept countless amounts of sprinkles and small candy bits from my dining room this past week.

Love Grace’s face here. She was explaining to the other kids why she chose to decorate one corner of the house in all purple lights (see the 5 purple candies in a line?)

Of course, this gingerbread largely remains unedible because it’s so hard but we have fun during the process and we use the pieces are decoration on our Christmas Eve table. Win-Win.

CAKE POPS

I also did a little baking recently. The kids keep asking who I am making all of these cake pops for and I said “I have no idea”. I am not sure if I am actually assembling them onto cookie trays or not, but it seems that even without an end goal in mind, I can’t help making them for the past two days! I finally bought myself a candy melter which was a total last-minute purchase as I stood at the register at AC Moore the other day. Best $30 I ever spent!

Chocolate that stays warm and gooey for the dipping process. Perfect!

Cake pops are soooo easy to make! All you need is a boxed cake mix and frosting!  I made them years ago and hated the dipping process. I despise dipping. I make delicious Oreo Truffles for Christmas and I won’t even dip those. However, armed with some tips, I decided to give the pops one more try this year. This is what worked for me.

Bake your cake according to package directions. You can use any flavor you like. Cool the cake (I’ve actually been leaving mine overnight). Crumble the entire cake. Yes, just shred the whole thing apart. Spoon in about half a can of frosting. ONLY half the can! In the past, I’ve used the full can and it makes the cake balls way too moist. This leads to them falling apart during the dipping which usually leads to me throwing something across my kitchen in a fit of baking rage. So do yourself a favor and for the love of cake balls, only use half the can.

Mix it in with a fork to start. Then you can finish mixing with your hand. It will resemble cookie dough at this point. It looks raw but as you know since you did the prep work, it’s really cooked.

Using my Pampered Chef cookie scoop, I scooped out even amounts of batter. My cake balls were about 1 1/2″ big after rolling. Roll & line them up on baking sheets lined with waxed paper.

Take out your pot of melted chocolate. If you didn’t do that yet, go melt some. I’ll wait.

Ok I am done waiting.

Now the most important trick of all: dip your lollipop stick into the melted chocolate just a bit. And stick it in the cake ball. They will look someting like this arranged on your baking sheet.

I am showing the ones using red chocolate from the day before because the cake balls that paired with the green chocolate were strawberry and while they tasted phenomenal, they looked like raw meatballs on the tray and really, what’s appetizing about that?!

Now pop the whole tray in the fridge so they can firm-up a bit. Give it a good 30 minutes if not a little longer. I had two fall off the stick today but none yesterday. You want them as “glued” to that stick as possible.

Take them out of the fridge and dip! I sprinkled mine with Christmas sprinkles after. The pops covered in red candy melts are vanilla inside. The green covered ones are strawberry. Had I known I was going to decide on a strawberry cake last night for today’s pop-making, I would have covered them in red because strawberry seems to make sense with a red coating. But like I said, it was a last minute decision so these are ass backward cake pops. What can I say.

Emily tried one and said  “Mom, I am not going to tell Starbucks this but, yours are better”.

Next-up I am going to make either chocolate or brownie ones. I am thinking brownie so they can sort of taste like the Starbucks ones (by the way, my yellow cake – red coating pops totally taste like Birthday Cake pops from Starbucks!)

Here’s a cake pop funny: a few days ago I was going through the Starbucks drive-thru and ordered “Two candy cane cake pops please”. The barista said “Oh, you mean the Mint Brownie ones?” and I did a double take at the menu board and was shocked to find that they aren’t called Candy Cane Cake Pops at all. Which is kind of cool because I always thought that was a bit like a tongue twister but seriously, I’ve been ordering Candy Cane Cake Pops for the past 2 or 3 weeks. I love how I just decided on my own name for them and went with it.

Ok back to my cake pops.

So even though I have my handy dandy new melter, melting chocolate and dipping stuff in it is still not my most favorite baking activity. I like for things to be simple yet tasty and even better if they are easy to package. I decided to take a few of my strawberry cake balls, roll them in powdered sugar and place each one in a mini cupcake liner. Then I put them in the fridge. Pop one of those babies in your mouth. Unreal.

These are my Strawberry Cake Ball Truffles. I can feel my sugar count spiking as I type this.

Happy gingerbread-decorating, cake-pop-making to you!

I am going to be bold and subtitle this part one. I am hoping there will actually be a part two.  I have so many ideas (thanks brain that never shuts off and Pinterest) that there’s no way I’ll be able to sit around and not try a few more of these. After all, it’s only December 5th! There’s plenty of crafting time left. :)

This weekend marked our 2nd Annual Christmas Craft Day! Mind you, I’ve been doing crafts with my kids since they are babies. There was the time that Emily made everyone cute little foam figures for the holidays and she was a whole 4 months old. =P  Last year I decided to invite my cousin’s son over to join my kids and now it’s our new tradition to have him over each Christmas and leave with a box full of homemade decorations.

I love craft day for many reasons. One especially nice side effect is due to the fact that I have three kids creating the same craft. We don’t need three of everything in this house so we always choose one to keep and two to give away. So after all of our Christmas crafts are done, we have quite the assortment of gifts to give to people during the holiday season.

When formulating my Plan-Of-Crafting-Attack, I always choose a project or two that will {hopefully} WOW and mix in a few easy, fool-proof ideas. I know my audience. I am working with a 3, 4, 7 & 8 year old. Two are boys. Younger kids plus boys tend to fade faster. So we keep it light, breezy with plenty of time to watch a Christmas movie and have a snack in between.

Pine cone Christmas Trees are nothing new. A nice, simple craft that kills some time and results in a cute decoration. I wasn’t even planning to make these but one of my Aunts bought the kids a bag full of pinecones. Plus, I can’t resist glittering them. So much glitter sticks to these things. Yes, glitter excites me.

Here’s how you would make a super-simple pine cone Christmas tree:

1) Paint your pine cone green. The kids found that small brushes worked much better than the foam ones we usually like to use.

2) While the paint is still wet, sprinkle a generous amount of green glitter (ooooh, ahhh) onto the “leaves”. For the love of everything, please do this over a garbage can.

3) Put little glue spots on various parts of the tree. Older kids can decide this themselves. I placed the glue for the younger kids.

4) Glue down little colorful pom poms as ornaments. Use a larger yellow one for the star. Done!

Next-up we worked on some Christmas masks. This was one of those simple $1 crafts I bought to kill a bit of time. It ended up resulting in the cutest after picture. So glad we bought these!

There’s really nothing complicated here.

1) Paint masks. You’re like, 85% done at this point.

2) Take a funny picture wearing them!

Emily and Andrew did awesome jobs on theirs. Grace and Anthony tried their hardest and just globbed on the paint. Grace was actually doing a pretty good job but when I turned my back for like 3 nanoseconds to grab something, she smeared alllll of her colors together which resulted in a muddy looking reindeer who may be tinged with nausea. Nothing a little red nose and a yarn smile couldn’t fix.

This next idea was something that I saw on Pinterest. I used that for my initial idea and then changed it up a bit. You could add a ribbon hanger or a jingle bell inside the clay pot if you wanted. It did take me a few tries to shape the antlers in the way I wanted them.

Here’s how we made them:

1) We painted small clay pots brown. Let them dry.

2) Fashion a set of antlers out of a brown pipe cleaner. At first I clipped the pipe cleaner in two and made two separate antlers. Then I realized I was making more work for myself so I ended up folding the pipe cleaner in half but leaving it as once piece.

3) Glue on eyes and a nose.

4) Tie a red ribbon around your reindeer’s antlers. Done.

This next ornament is my favorite from the day!  It’s a great keepsake.

I saw a kit at Oriental Trading for something like this. I figured I dind’t need to purchase it though. It was easy enough to put together on my own. Here’s how we made them:

1) Paint a small wooden spool. I figured red would pop more on a green tree but you could make these any color you want.

2) Make a template in Photoshop so you know what your parameters on when filling out your Christmas list. I don’t remember the exact size of these spools but they weren’t that big. My paper inside was about 0.6″ wide and approximately 2″ long. I printed a test strip first just to make sure. Also make note that when you fill in your list, you’ll want to leave the first half of the paper bare, because you are going to roll this around the spool.

3) After your list is printed, laminate it. I made one that wasn’t laminated and while just as cute, I feared it wouldn’t last after many years in and out of wrapping as you pack your ornaments up.

4) Glue your laminated list to your spool. Feed some twine, ribbon or yarn through the holes for hanging.

Note #1: this is an adorable ornament and one of my new favorites, but it’s not a great project for very young kids. Aside from giving me their wish lists, assembly on this one was really all me.

Note #2: We had two extra spools so we made these for each set of grandparents too. You don’t have to write out a wish list. We listed their names (along with the family dog) and put two check marks near each name. “Merry Christmas! Love, Emily, Andrew & Grace | 2011″. Bam ~ done!

This next ornament came out cute but of course, I have already figured out a way to make it cuter. There I go, revamping my crafts.

I love crafts and knick knacks that are tiny-sized. So I will tell you how we made the above ornament and then how I think you could make it cute on a smaller scale.

1) Glue a plain ornament into a foil cupcake liner. Tilt it a bit to the side so it will hang a little ‘crooked’ on your tree.

2) Drizzle white paint on the top. We used a shimmery white which was sort of runny (by Folk Art). Worked nicely. Don’t pour a ton! I sort of gooped some one (like my word? Gooped?), watched it drip and then if I felt we needed more drippage (what about that one? Drippage. I’m on a roll!), I added a bit more.

3) While the paint is still wet, sprinkle on some seed beads to resemble sprinkles. This part made everyone laugh. I put a few beads in Anthony’s hand and told him to sprinkle them on. Well you know how little kids try to do what they are told but sometimes their coordination just isn’t there? So he turned his palm over and basically threw seed beads all over my dining room table. LOL! I said “Orrrr just throw them around the dining room!” Roaring laughter ensued.

4) Glue on a red pom pom for the cherry.

5) Add a ribbon for hanging. Done.

Now, my “lets revamp these” plan:

Use a smaller foil liner, a white pearly colored ornament (again, the smaller size. I saw them at Michaels), drizzle brown paint for chocolate sauce, sprinkles and a cherry. I really think I will make these trying this idea because the colors seem better to me. We made the above ornaments in green, pink, red and blue and while cute, when have you ever seen an aqua blue cupcake?

If you have in fact, seen an aqua blue cupcake, no need to comment here today.

Yes. I am totally over-thinking these. It’s what I do best.

After all of our crafts were made and the dining room table and floor were cleared from the majority of paint splatters, glitter and beads, we moved into the living room to decorate gingerbread men! I usually make a whole day out of decorating gingerbread with my kids but I thought this would be something fun for Anthony to do with us. The kids loved it! Right after I took the 8-count cookie picture, they all devoured one sweet, sugary cookie each.

L-R: Emily, Andrew, Anthony and Grace’s cookies

(Click the bold text above the gingerbread pictures for last year’s entry and links to our favorite gingerbread-decorating products!)

psst: If you missed last year’s Blogged projects, make sure to check both THIS entry as well as THIS one for even more kid-friendly Christmas crafts!

Lastly, I made myself a checklist last week listing all of the holiday pictures I would love to take. I never did made a final decision as far as a daily photo project goes. So I think I am just going to attempt to capture as many of my list items as I can and then maybe post them in a couple of Blog entries. I already have a few marked off my list. Perhaps this will help inspire you.

Have a great day!

You may remember my post on Halloween BOOing last year. Of course, we continued with one of our very favorite non-spooky traditions. 5th year and counting… This is something we look forward to each October!

I picked up some orange and black gift bags from Target this year. In fact, all of our BOO supplies came from Target, aside from my digital kit. I was originally going to try something different and bake this year but baking for 6 recipients just wasn’t happening so it was purchase goodies or nothing. We opted for purchasing and getting our bags delivered the week before Halloween this year. If you want to get in on the action, there is still time! Once we had our supplies purchased, it took maybe 20 minutes to assemble our bags, and that included printing off poems and BOO signs. You can do this later today, tomorrow or even on Halloween!

Here’s what you need:

gift bags
goodies to fill your bags
my BOOing kit, of course!
printer with colored ink
cute kids to deliver the bags!

I let each kid pick two friends. Each bag contained Halloween-themed Fruit By The Foot, bags of chips / cookies, mini granola bars (all in the Halloween aisles of Target), a few pieces of candy, a squishy spider and a glow-in-the-dark bat. If there were 3 kids in the house, they got three bags of chips, three granola bars, etc. We included a BOO sign for the recipient to hang on their front window and stapled a cute poem to the front of each bag. Handy tip: I put a small initial on the back of each poem so we would know which bag went to what house as we were driving around.

Then it’s time to pile into the car and drive around for some fun! Time to teach your kids the fine art of ringing and running.  Every year we have a funny story about getting caught. This year, Emily and Andrew both got away with two successful drops each. Grace is at the age where we all need to get out of the car and help her to the house. We got caught but it made for a fun story (even if we did appear to be a bunch of creepers hiding in the neighbor’s bushes…)

I always love seeing the sheer determination on the kids’ faces as they drop a bag, knock on the door and BOLT back to the waiting car. Good times.

Want to play along?

I am giving away a small coupon in case you want to pick up my printable You’ve Been BOOed! kit. <–click for the shop!

Add the kit to your cart, make sure you are logged-in and enter the following code as a discount coupon:

halloweenfun

The code will take 25% off your order. Offer expires at 11:59pm EST on Halloween night.

Have a fun, festive weekend!

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