Halloween 2019

If there was one phrase that sums up who I am it would be "family traditions". Family is everything to me and I cherish every opportunity to create precious memories doing our family's treasured traditions. Halloween day is another one of those wonderful opportunities to create awesome memories with special traditions.

Food is typically one of the major highlights of our fun family traditions. On Halloween day we kick off the celebration with monster donuts and yogurt. Since our family is ever growing, this year I also added in some donut holes.

Lydia could hardly wait to dig into her donuts, so much so she was nibbling off other folks plates. Good thing she's the current baby and spoiled rotten, lol.

On last years Halloween clearance sales I acquired a cute Halloween bingo game, so we broke it out this year and played a few rounds during our homeschool table time.

For lunch we had jack-o-lantern cheese crisps.

Here's the trick-or-treating crew this year! The two older boys have since outgrown the dress-up phase and no longer join in on the dress-up fun. But, this year our second oldest was kind enough to drive the truck and trailer through the neighborhood.

It was really hard to get everyone dressed and ready this year. It had rained most of the day and was bitterly cold. We just aren't used to that at Halloween time. Since it was so muddy I didn't get very many pictures and the sun was actually setting before we were all ready anyways ~ 

which did not leave much time for picture taking. 

Lydia was absolutely hilarious about having her face 'painted'!!! She wouldn't even move her mouth to speak when I was done. Her eyes were big as silver dollars, in shock, thinking that I had done something terrible to her. But, once she saw Tabitha and me with our faces painted she was ok. 😂

Most of this year's costumes were hand-me-downs. We had a major Halloween catastrophe about 30 minutes before we were supposed to head out. Upon trying to put the children's costumes on we discovered one of our littles boys costume did NOT fit. Thankfully we had extra costumes in the hand-me-down box and we found a suitable replacement. 

Absolutely NEVER a dull moment with this family!

 Every year we hook up a trailer, load it up with hay, and go on a hay ride trick-or-treating through a nearby subdivision. As I mentioned earlier, it was bitterly cold and we had a house full of sick children. Most of them were coming out of their sickness, but still had terrible coughs. About half way through our Halloween night adventures, most of our kiddos were miserable, freezing cold, and ready to go home. We made a parental command decisions to take the little ones home and daddy took the rest of the children to finish up trick-or-treating. As you can see we still ended up with a ton of candy and everyone had a blast. 

Another Halloween under wraps and as is our custom, another epic story to go along with it. 

At this point we just own it ~ pure organized chaos folks, lol.

 But hey this event came with perks....

A 'boat-load' of candy which helps tremendously when it comes to balancing out all the crazy 

that makes our life ~ our life! 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer 

Pumpkin Carving Party

(The above pumpkin was the one carved by the big boys and daddy ~ 

I love a classically carved pumpkin!)

Y'all this post that I'm sharing today is all about one of my all-time favorite family traditions ~ our annual Pumpkin Carving Party. I suppose it isn't exactly a party since it's just our immediate family, but there is eleven of us, so I guess that's enough people to constitute a party, lol! 

 Our pumpkin carving party includes fun festive food like jack-o-lantern chicken pot pie, pumpkin patch dirt cake, and orange ice cream floats. We also read the Pumpkin Patch Parable. While we carve our pumpkins we play fun Halloween music. 

Even when we weren't 'celebrating' halloween we always did our pumpkin carving party. I mean what is so bad about reading a sweet bible-based story, eating cute food, and carving a pumpkin?!

I've been on the hunt for the 'perfect' dirt cake for many years, and I think I finally found it with this one. I'm not so sure if it was the actually recipe or the fact that I left some of the Oreo cookies kind of thicker instead of pulverizing the whole bag in my high powered blender. Talk about yummy! 

Yes, y'all I did splurge and ate a few bites!!

My little dinner helper that night. I can remember the days when we couldn't even eat one chicken pot pie and now were throwing down two of them, lol.

Obviously the traditional pumpkin carving party group photo was not going to happen this night. In their defense, over half of them were pretty sick~ sigh, I hate when my babies are sick!

This year we carved two pumpkins. Daddy and I carved one with the little children while the bigger boys tried their hands at doing one all by themselves.

The fellas learned real quick that carving pumpkins isn't as easy as it looks. 

There's nothing quite like a little hands-on learning. 

There's just something fascinating about carving a pumpkin. 

All that goop, strings, and seeds.
**note**
Make sure you put news paper down under the pumpkins before you start to carve,
it makes clean-up so much easier; and that's speaking from years of experience!

Everyone took a turn digging out the pulp and getting all yucky. 

FUN! FUN! A perfect activity for little boys who love to get dirty.

Even though Lydia was puny, she thoroughly enjoyed her turn at scraping out the pumpkin. She was so serious about the task, taking every opportunity to explore the pumpkin and it's contents.

Nothing fancy for our family's pumpkin carving. As a matter of fact the one dear ol' mom carved barely resembled the cat I intended it to be!! But, my children, forever the optimists, didn't judge and even said the pumpkin looked like a cat, lol. I suppose it really isn't that the pumpkins are carved into some intricate design, but the simple fact that we spent precious time together making memories. 

Creating family traditions really is super easy and takes little effort from mom and dad, mostly only in the planning phase, anyways. This particular family tradition we've been doing for 19 years ~ ever since we had our first son. Over the years it has been adapted, but for the past couple of years I've set in stone the menu and activities. This way everyone knows what's coming for our yearly Pumpkin Carving Party. Having a plan also makes my job super easy and insures we actual DO our annual Pumpkin Carving Party! Let's face it, life get's super busy and it can become super easy to simply say "next year", but remember we can't get this day back ~ the years fly by, make every day count! 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Halloween Fun Schooling

Since our schedule was so crazy for the month of October, and I am very pregnant we divided our Halloween fun schooling activities into two weeks. This post includes more of what I did with the littles, but there are still a few things for the big kids too. This post shares more of what I did with the big kiddos for our Halloween Funschooling.

No Holiday is complete without an appropriate sensory box. For this year's Halloween sensory box we had dyed purple white beans, plastic bugs, a pail, and pinchers.

It took me many years to figure out how to best incorporate art into our homeschool schedule. A few years ago I found something called directed drawing. With directed drawings I draw with the children guiding them through each step of whatever we are drawing. 

It's so fun to see how everyone interprets the drawing assignment and creates their own personalized picture. Since we've been doing the directed drawings for several years now, it's really awesome to watch the children's drawing abilities improve.

We did a few specific tot school halloween activities. This project was to paint paper plate pumpkins with homemade puffy paint made with shaving cream. 

This particular project made a giant mess and the pumpkin paintings never dried (which meant they went in the trash ~ sigh. I prefer to keep the children's projects at least for the school year.) Despite the mess, the children really enjoyed the activity and were even disappointed when I took the paint away. 

 Next the younger crew made torn paper pumpkin collages. I free-handed a pumpkin on card stock and cut it out for the children to glue torn construction paper on them.

For some reason all of my children really seem to enjoy glueing, lol.

Yes, we love all the holidays around here and I try to collect movies and books that help us celebrate them accordingly. We have this cute collection of Peanuts Holiday movies. We watched the Halloween one as part of our Halloween festivities. 

Last we made Halloween Muddy Buddies. I shared this recipe here for those who are interested, and as an added bonus, it can easily be adapted for any holiday ~ yeah!

I won't lie, homeschooling is tough. Doing extra-curricular projects seldom plays out like I have it in my mind. There's ALWAYS fussing and complaining and usually some cross words. But, Lord willing my children will remember the 'highlight reel'. Nothing worth doing is typically easy to do and I have to remind myself of that fact quite often ~ especially when most of my days are spent in the trenches of child training. 

Our fun schooling weeks are my personal attempt to break up the homeschool monotony, lighten our academic load, and create treasured memories as a family. Even when the 'fun' weeks usually present their own difficulties and aren't as fun as I had hoped ~ I still keep trying. Because maybe just one day, our crazy, wild crew will get it together and it really will be the fun I had envisioned, lol.

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Halloween Craftivities

I know Halloween has come and gone, but I still wanted to go ahead and share how we celebrated the fun holiday this year. We aren't partakers in all the dark and evil aspects of the day, we just try to keep it light, fun, and full of make-believe.

As with every holiday we ALWAYS make cut out sugar cookies. I have buckets of cookie cutters and I truly cherish making the cookies with my children. For many years it was me pretty much doing everything and the kiddos just lending a hand hear and there when it came to baking cut-out sugar cookies. But, as they're getting older, my big kids are heading up our cookie baking fun these days. Whoop Whoop, now this mama can just sit back and take pictures and enjoy the festivities.

For the most part my boys are not all into the cookie baking, but I do make them take at least one turn to get a picture and make mama happy, lol. Thankfully my girlies really enjoy making the cookies, so I don't push the boys too much. 

Lydia continues to amaze me! She isn't even two yet and she had no problem icing her cookies. As a matter of fact she got quite upset when we took the cookies and icing away from her.

The children did an amazing job decorating the cookies this year. On a side note, I try to buy seasonal sprinkles after the holiday ~ trust me they don't go bad!

Next we made white chocolate covered pretzels and then sprinkled them with halloween colored sprinkles ~ because you know life is just way better with sprinkles!

One of our favorite halloween projects is to make Gak. This year everyone was mesmerized by the process and even took turns contributing to the making of our halloween Gak.

I gave the children an assortment of bugs to play with their gak.

The Gak kept my children entertained for HOURS!!!

Here's another fun food craftivity. DIY cookie spiders. Ok not exactly Pinterest worthy, but these were made by the hands of children not adults with too much free time, lol. My littles thought they were awesome and they thoroughly enjoyed eating them.

Our last halloween extra-curricular activity was a minute-to-win it game. In case you can't see, they're blowing plastic spiders across the floor with a straw, lol. Most years we do a snacktivity, craft, and a minute-to-win-it game daily for our Halloween fun schooling week; but this year it just wasn't happening. So I picked some of the easiest things we could do to still celebrate and not push this very pregnant mama over the edge of exhaustion. Which ended up being one activity per day as opposed to three activities.  

I ended up splitting our halloween fun week and our halloween tot school week into two weeks this year. It just worked better for me this year not to do them on the same week. Plus the little ones did get to do some of the bigger kids activities, even if they couldn't fully participate. 

While this wasn't our normal over-load of Halloween fun schooling, we still had a blast making memories and celebrating a fun holiday. 

(Without the gory, scary stuff that often overshadows the day!)

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Chocolate Chip Skillet Cake

I absolutely love cooking and baking as well as creating my own recipes. I don't have time for complicated, labor-intensive, loaded with ingredients recipes ~ which usually means I have to tweak recipes to fit my needs. 

Most of my recipes, that I have created, have come straight from necessity. You know, those situations where there's nothing in the cabinet or fridge but a few ingredients and I've got to put food on the table in 30 minutes! Am I the only one who finds themselves in this situation? I do meal plan and have a master shopping list, but it never fails life doesn't go as planned and I have to pivot to meet the needs of the family. Well, one of those lovely ~ hurry up and find something for breakfast moments ~ is what led to my Chocolate Chip Skillet Cake recipe.

Cooking with cast iron is one of my favorite things to do in the kitchen, so when I can come up with a recipe the utilizes one of my treasured cast iron cookware pieces I'm super thrilled. Now, I'm confident you could make this recipe in a glass baking dish, but I've never tried because it always comes out so perfect in my cast iron pan.

Chocolate Chip Skillet Cake
Ingredients 

• 2 cups all-purpose flour
• 1/2 cup sugar
• 1 tsp salt
• 1 tsp baking powder
• 4 tbsp butter melted, plus 2 tbsp butter (not melted)
• 2 eggs
• 1 cup milk
• 1 tsp vanilla
• 1/2 cup mini chocolate chips

Directions

Heat oven to 350*. Place 2 tbsp in the bottom of a 10-inch cast iron skillet and place it in the oven. Combine dry ingredients in a bowl, except chocolate chips. Add wet ingredients to dry ingredients and stir. Fold in chocolate chips. Carefully remove skillet from the over (the butter should be melted) and pour batter into skillet. Return skillet to oven and bake 25-30 minutes. Once cooked turn out onto  a plate to cool.

I've always served this recipe for Chocolate Chip Skillet Cake as a 'breakfast cake' with no icing. It was a quick recipe I whipped up so as not to make muffins one day when we had to get out the door as quickly as possible. But, if you had an inclination, I'm sure you could add a 'cinnamon roll type icing' to it, and it would taste fabulous. This skillet cake could easily make a perfect brunch dish or even a dessert. It really is a versatile recipe that can be used in multiple different situations. 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Ten Easy Steps For Clothing Kids on A Budget

Having a large family and a strict budget can often times lead to major financial hurdles. We have been a one-income family for the majority of our marriage and have had no other choice but to learn to effectively manage money. We've never borrowed money from family and have always made a point to pay any and all debts off as quickly as possible (making great financial sacrifices at times!)

To adequately and within budget, keep our children in clothes and shoes; we have created a system which has worked for nearly 19 years. It isn't exactly an easy system to maintain, but then again there isn't much in this life that is easy anyways. Our system takes year-round attention and the entire family pitching in to make it happen ~ I'm truly blessed to have a family that's willing to do their part in keeping up with our clothing system.

Our system for clothing our children has evolved and changed over the years, and I'm sure it will continue to be tweaked as our family dynamics change. The following list details our current large family, small budget system for clothing our kiddos.

Ten Easy Steps for Clothing Kids on a Budget

1. Remove the desire/want for name brand expensive clothing & shoes.
2. Limit the number of clothing articles necessary for each person within the family. This will look different for each family and each child. (Specifically in regards to age, gender, and extra curricular activities.)
3. Let friends and family know you are graciously open to receiving hand-me-downs.
4. Designate a space in your home to store hand-me-downs.
5. Teach your children to value clothing as a necessity not a want of the latest trends/fashion. They should simply be grateful for clothes to wear. (Lead by example mamas!)
6. Shop for clothing during the off-season. This requires actually going into a store folks. (Not exactly ideal for those who are hooked to on-line shopping and placing 'pick-up' orders at local stores, but this is a MAJOR facet of how I find great deals on clothing!!) 
7. Shop local thrift stores and consignment shops. 
8. Keep up with the washing and the taking care of clothes. Teach your children to keep up with their clothes, especially coats and other winter gear. If clothing is well taken care of, it can more easily be passed down to the next child.
9. Commit to sorting through clothes at least twice a year. I typically do this in October and April, but this would usually be when the seasons are changing.
10. Keep a designated box to place clothes you see your children outgrowing before your regular schedule clothes switch-out.

We affectionately call our seasonal clothes switch-a-roo the "Bucket Brigade".

As you can see we have acquired a lot of hand-me-downs over the years! A true blessing indeed!! Believe it or not, I actually do a seasonal purge of our hand-me-downs, lol. This year we had seven gigantic trash bags that we sent to the thrift store and we freed up three buckets. It's a never ending process that is for sure.

While this isn't exactly an easy system, it has consistently worked for our family. Making every dollar stretch to meet the needs of our large family takes all of us jumping through some hoops that I realize most folks wouldn't even consider doing. But, we haven't ever known anything different, so we just keep plugging away with what has proven to work.

Even though this system takes a lot of effort, I believe the life lessons of frugality and teaching my children the true value of a dollar is well worth the extra energy it requires. (Not to mention the money we save!) Our children are watching and learning from everything we do, even with something as trivial as how we clothe them. 

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer

Holiday Muddy Buddies

Happy Halloween

I have to start off with apologizing for my absence! You know how it goes, everyone has that one month or season where you're just insanely busy and it's a major struggle to get everything you want, done. Sadly, my blogging has taken a back seat lately because October is our busiest month of the year! I seriously have at least a dozen posts headed your way; I just have to find the time to get them posted! 

Since I am so behind with my posts and today is Halloween, I thought I'd share a fun seasonal/holiday recipe, and then I'll go back and start posting, in order, all the other posts I have planned, lol.

To me the holidays are never complete without loads of fun food, especially recipes that are easy for kids to make. On Halloween we eat a plethora of festive foods, but this year we added in Halloween Muddy Buddies. This is a super easy snack mix to make, so much so that even your little ones can lend a hand. This recipe is easily adapted for any holiday with the appropriate colored chocolate M&M's. Since it is Halloween, we used Halloween colored M&M's.

Holiday Muddy Buddies

Ingredients 

1 cup chocolate chips

1/2 cup peanut butter

1/4 cup butter

9 cups Chex cereal (I used a whole box of Aldi brand corn Chex cereal)

1 cup confectioners sugar

1 bag holiday colored chocolate M&M's

Directions 

Line two large jelly roll pans with parchment paper. Pour cereal into a large bowl. Melt chocolate chips, peanut butter, and butter in a glass bowl in the microwave. Pour melted chocolate mixture over cereal and toss with spoon until evenly coated. Pour cereal onto cookie sheets, dividing evenly. Cool in fridge for 30 minutes. Pour cereal back into large bowl and toss with sugar. Add M&M's. Ready to eat immediately or store in air tight container.

I realize a lot of conservative Christians do not celebrate Halloween, and I 100% support that decision. (We went many years without celebrating the day!) But, now we've adapted the holiday to fit our lifestyle and simply use it as an opportunity to create fun family memories. We are intentional to keep it light, fun, and void of the dark scary stuff that often overshadows a fun day to dress up and use your imagination. 

Making festive food is just another wonderful addition to our family's Halloween celebrations. It didn't take more than an hour (and not all at one time) to make this fun treat. My kiddo thought it was a great festive snack. There was nothing spooky or 'bad' about this snack mix ~ only a special holiday memory of baking with mom on Halloween. Life is what WE make it to be, even a holiday like Halloween!

So to all our fellow Halloween celebrating friends ~ be safe, make those treasured memories, and enjoy your evening!

With Love & Hope,

Jennifer