School Picture Day

On school picture day, it doesn't matter how nicely dressed your children are...

...if they don't know how to smile.

It also doesn't matter how much time you spent doing their hair...

...because they can undo it in a fraction of the time.   I should have given her The Deb.  Now I know why the photo companies want their money upfront.  I've never purchased school photos before, but these might be too horrible to not buy.

Submit Your Photo:

Send me a picture of your child's funny (or creepy) looking school picture and I'll post them right here.

Thanks Emily!

Thanks Nate, though I don't think that's your kid.

Batty For Hand Prints

Since the girl has Pre-K in the afternoon, I have to figure out some way to entertain her in the mornings.  Thankfully, there are plenty of easy Halloween crafts that are sure to keep a girl busy.  Especially when that girl loves getting her hands painted and playing with glitter.  Here's what we did this morning.

It amazes me how much this girl loves to get paint on her hands.  If it was up to her, she'd just leave handprints all over the paper, squeeze a bottle of glue over it, and dump glitter everywhere.   Whatever it takes to keep the kids busy, go with it.

Paint your kid's hands and slap 'em down on some paper.  Cut out a body/head for the bat and place it near the ends of the thumbs.  We finally remembered to pick up some Googly Eyes at Wal-Mart, but, if you don't have them you can use cotton balls, or pom-poms, or my daughter's favorite mixture of glue and glitter.

Use the glue/glitter mix for the smile and teeth.  Spread out some glue in the shape of a smile and drown it in glitter.  Let it dry and shake off the excess glitter before adding the teeth.  Make sure you spread a thin line of glue, otherwise your bat will look kinda whorish (see below).

You dirty, dirty bat.

Once you knock off the extra glitter, your bat should look less clown like.  Now add two v-shaped glue teeth and bedazzle it with glitter.  You could also cut some teeth out with construction paper and glue it on there, but let's be honest, glitter is way cooler.

Glue...

...and glitter.

Let the glue dry and shake off the extra.  Decorate with some Halloween stickers or, if you have a little artist on your hands, let them color a nice background.  If you've seen the other crafts we've done, you know there are no artists in our family, so stickers it is.

I thought we were done at this point, my daughter thought otherwise...

The great thing about this project is that, not only is it an easy Halloween craft, but it also doubles as a Seek 'n' Find.  Simply leave your 3-year old in the room with the project and stickers and go change your baby's diaper.  If you don't own a baby, you can borrow mine.  When you return, your toddler will have sorted through your entire stash of stickers and applied them liberally to your artwork.  Have fun!

Can you find:

A Pizza Box
R.I.P. Grave Marker
A Bo Staff
4 Puppy Dogs
Frankenstein
A Skull w/an Eyepatch
5 Pumpkins
4 Ninja Turtles
2 Spiders
A Bottle of Poison
Minnie Mouse
7 Bats
A Coffin
April O'Neil
A Sparkly Vampire

Have fun and Happy Halloween!



Update (10/26/12):  I thought it'd be fun to post pictures of other parents doing some crafts with their children.  Send a photo of your kid's artwork and I'll post it here or on the Facebook page.

Thanks Sarah for sending a photo of your daughter's bat!

Love those monkey vampires!

I've Been Goosed!!!

I've been working hard this morning posting on the blog and organizing pages.  I think my daughter was feeling a little ignored.  In the middle of typing away I felt a tiny little hand on my shoulder and heard "GOOSE!!!"  Hilarity ensued.


One doesn't simply sit there and take being called a goose lightly.  No.  One must defend his honor.

Tasty Zombies

It's time to turn the tables on the zombies.  No longer shall we live in fear of being eaten by a zombie, yes, let's rise up and beat them at their own game.  It's time we started to eat them.  And, when they're primarily made of sugar, it's easy to do.  Add some life (or in this case death) to your cupcakes by making some edible zombie parts.

You need:

Fondant
Green Paste Coloring
Toothpicks
Knife
Vegetable Shortening (maybe)
Baby Bottle Cap



Break off some fondant and place two or three drops of green coloring in the middle.  Work the coloring throughout the fondant until it's a nice shade of green.  If it gets too sticky, you can rub a small amount of vegetable shortening over it.

Once you've worked the color through the fondant, flatten it out with a rolling pin and cut out twelve small circles.  I had luck using a baby bottle cap.  It's also a great time to let your kids have some fun cutting out shapes and rolling them into balls.

Now the fun begins.  Press your thumb into one end of a ball to flatten it out.  Don't press too hard, you want to leave enough material to work with.  This will be the template for your hand.  Lengthen out the other end into an arm.

Use your knife to cut a section of the fondant for the thumb.  Pull the thumb section away from the rest of the "hand" and make three more cuts for the other fingers.

Separate the fingers and stretch them out to a tip.  From there you can start shaping them into fingers and bend them up into a claw-like shape.  Use a toothpick to create knuckle joints and lines on the palms.

You may find that it helps to let the hands sit out over night to toughen up a little.  When you're done, set a toothpick through the arm and then mount them to your cupcakes.

Those cupcakes are delicious by the way.  Learn how to make your own Graveyard Halloween Cupcakes here.

Freshly Dug Gravecakes

Easy Halloween recipes are all over the internet, but I'm not interested in easy.  I'm interested in disgusting, gross, and eye-popping treats.  Last week I made some Bloody Eye Halloween Cupcakes that were fairly easy to make (except for the eyebrows), but they didn't taste all that great.  This weekend, I made some graveyard cupcakes (thanks to Zombie Cupcakes by Zilly Rosen) that are probably the tastiest thing I ever pulled out of the oven (next to bacon).

<------------That's supposed to be a zombie hand coming up through a grave.  After my sixth or seventh attempt at fashioning edible zombie parts, I finally settled on this hand and decided 'to hell' with the remaining eleven zombies.  So, in the earth they remain.

While the zombie hands weren't all that easy to make, the cupcakes were simple enough.  And, like I said, the cupcakes alone make this recipe a keeper.  Here's what you need.

Oreo Cookies (10-15)
1 big-ass bag of semisweet chocolate chips
1 cup flour
1/4 tsp. baking soda
1/4 tsp. salt
5 tbsp. butter
3/4 cup sugar
2 large eggs
1/2 tsp. vanilla extract
2 tbsp. sour cream
2 tbsp. water
2 cups heavy cream

Pre-heat oven to 350 degrees.  Line a 12-hole muffin pan with cupcake liners.  Crush Oreos into 1/4 inch pieces.  Place 1 tbsp. into each liner.

Sift the flour, baking soda, and salt in one bowl.  Place butter and sugar in a large bowl and mix together (with an electric mixer) until it's fluffy.  Melt 1 3/4 oz. of the chocolate chips and blend it in with the butter and sugar.  Mix in the eggs, vanilla extract, and sour cream.  Add about half of the flour mixture to your wet ingredients and blend.  Add the water and remaining flour mixture.

Using half of the batter mix, divide it up among the twelve cupcakes, covering the Oreo cookies.  Cover the batter with 1 tsp. of chocolate chips.

Now cover the chips with the remaining batter and any cookie pieces you may have left over.  I opted to add the batter and just eat the remaining cookie pieces.  Your call.

Stick it in the oven for about 25 minutes and turn once halfway through.

While that's cooking, it's time to make some mud for your grave.  Remember that big-ass bag of chocolate chips?  If you haven't eaten them all yet, stick 2 3/4 cups of chips into a heatproof bowl.  Bring 2 cups of heavy cream to a boil in a saucepan.  As soon as it starts boiling, pour it into the bowl with the chocolate chips.  Whisk it together until it's smooth.  Add the butter and whisk again.  At this point you have two options.  The recipe I followed said to stick the mixture in the fridge and let it cool.  I opted to just leave it out and spread it on right away.

Once your cupcakes cool off, spread on the mud.  After realizing how time consuming it is to spread the mud on, just dip the cupcake upside down into your bowl of mud.  Crush up some more Oreo cookies into a bowl.  Dip the freshly mudded cupcakes into the cookies to give the appearance of dirt.

If you took the time to make a dozen fondant hands, congratulations, you're a better parent than I.  Shove a toothpick in the hand and mount the cupcakes.  Learn how to make some zombie hands.

Spread a small amount of piping gel on various areas of the hand and sprinkle with cookie crumbs for effect.

Mud comes in many different colors, so do cookies. Try crumbling chocolate chip cookies for dirt too.

There's A Hand On Your Spider!!!

It seems that there is no end to all of the hand-painting halloween crafts for kids.  I've seen bats, cats, ghosts, spiders, and more.  This works out well for my daughter because she absolutely loves getting her hands painted.  Here's how we made a spider a couple of nights ago.

 You'll need:

Construction Paper
Scissors
Paint
Paintbrush
Glitter
Glue
Pompoms/Eyes



Have your child pick out what color they want the spider's legs to be.  Black seems to be the obvious choice right? Obviously, you've never met my daughter.  Purple legs it is.  Spread the paint on thick making sure to get the the fingers and thumb covered.

When the hands are painted, place them on a white sheet of construction paper.  I've seen various ways of placing the fingers.  I used the way that seemed easiest for my 3-year old.   In other words, she already slammed her hands down on the paper before I had a chance to place them "fingers out".  You do what you can with what you got.

I can work with this.

Now you need to pick out a color for the body of the spider.  Thanks to recent encounters with huge brown spiders in our basement, my daughter picked brown construction paper instead pink.  Still not sure where the purple legs came from though.  Cut a circle out of the paper and lay it over the hands to create the body.  Trim it to size.  If you manage to have your kid's hands placed "fingers out" you want to cover most of the palm with the body of your spider.  If your child did the "Walk of Fame" pose like mine, then just do what you can.  Glue on some eyes and a nose.

To create the smile, have your child spread a thin line of glue.  Pour some glitter over the glue smile and let it dry.

Once the glue dries, you're done.  Enjoy your spider.  Or whatever animal it is you end up with.

 A spider with biceps?
Octopus?

Let's try this again.  This time, we're not going to paint the thumb.

Her favorite part.

And, we're not doing the Hollywood Handprints position either.  Let's try placing the palms on top of each other and then adding some eyes.  That's better...

It still looks like an octopus.

Cub Scouts Imprisoned!

In a scandal that is sure to rock the Cub Scouts of America organization, a Tiger Cub Pack from Grafton, IL was recently handcuffed, fingerprinted, and placed behind bars.

Things started out smooth enough at Monday night's "Go and See It" event which Tiger scouts are required to do as part of fulfilling the requirements for their badge.  The kids were asking the sheriff great questions like, "How many people have you killed?" and "Do you have a bazooka?".

Scouts learned about the history of the department and even got to see the "Sheriff Hall of Fame" which showed all the past sheriffs.  By far, the toughest looking sheriff in the Hall of Fame is Sheriff Wedding who reigned in power, with his glorious beard beside him, from 1856-1858.

It should be a requirement for police to have terrifying beards like Sheriff Wedding. This includes women as well. Clean shaven just doesn't instill fear.

But then, the sheriff started asking his own questions about the scouts' involvement with raising funds through selling boy scouts popcorn.   After the children admitted to peddling popcorn on the streets, the sheriff demanded to see a permit for selling.  He then called in his deputies, began shouting about child labor laws, and started processing the entire scout pack.

There was confusion at first as the children thought it was just "a game" that the officers were playing.  The police offered to let the children "try on" the handcuffs and, at first, the kids were excited.

Look at me! I'm under fake arrest. hahaha

Then each cub scout was told he was under arrest.

Just kidding, it's a "for real" arrest. Not so funny now is it?

I must applaud the police for their craftiness in getting the children to comply with fingerprinting.  Apparently, the boys thought the officers were going to let them finger-paint.

He still thinks he's going to finger-paint.

It's like finger-painting except instead of your art work going into the trash, it goes into a permanent file.

Once all the children were cuffed and printed, it was time to lock 'em up.  Normally, cells have room for one or two (sometimes three) inmates.  But, when the criminals are all under 5 feet, you can really cram them in there.

I'd hate to have to clean that cell. Who's really being punished here Mr. Janitor?

Bail was set at a paltry $20, but I hadn't slept well in a few nights and Monday Night Football was on.  An over-nighter in a cold cell might do the boy some good anyway.

Sideways hat---a sure sign he's a trouble-maker.

Babies Love (to eat) Books.

Despite my love for the written word, sometimes you just have to sacrifice a book for the greater good.  If it means being able to fold laundry, do dishes, and never having to read Dora Goes To The Doctor again, I'm all for destroying books.

Besides, the fiber is good for her and the more she eats, the less I have to cook.

Today's parenting tip...buy board books.  Unless, of course, you want to actually get something done, then it's paper all the way.

Sleddin' Hill

We haven't even celebrated Halloween yet, but I am already getting the family into the Christmas spirit this morning.  I always complain about how early the stores put out Christmas trees and decorations;  I saw a few companies setting out snow globes and ornaments during their Labor Day sales.  But, this year is different and it's all because of August Burns Red's Christmas Album "Sleddin' Hill".

I like to start my Monday mornings off right by waking up and then logging on.  Am I right Tom?

There usually isn't a lot happening on Monday mornings.  I browse through a News Feed full of people complaining about going to work and doing laundry, when...

     "what to my wandering eyes should appear,

     but an e-mail from Best Buy, announcing my cd is here"

Like any good father would do, I left my children strapped into their high chairs, eating their Honey Nut Scooters, as I trekked out to get the mail.  The slim cardboard package confirmed my hopes and I floated on a cloud of heavy metal happiness back to the house.

Inside, a large task waited for me.  Two days had passed since I last did any housework; even Stay At Home Dads need a break.  There were dirty clothes everywhere (check your news feed Facebook friends), trash, dishes, and remnants of some experiments with Halloween Cupcakes.  I figured it would be a long day of cleaning.

So I popped in Sleddin' Hill and began cleaning.   Thirty minutes later the house is clean.  Witness the power of heavy metal.

Stinky Ghost

I've looked over a lot of different Halloween craft ideas this month.  Partly because they can be fun, but mostly because these shameful presidential debates are taking over my DVR's regularly scheduled programs.  I'd rather do something meaningful and productive like glue pieces of cotton to construction paper and lather it with glitter than watch these two candidates dance around questions.  Enough about politics, I want to talk about what we made last night...a Stinky Ghost.

 You'll need:

Construction Paper (Black)
Scissors
Paint/Glue
Paintbrush
Glitter
Pompoms/Googly Eyes
A child's foot (preferably still attached to child)



First you need to get your child into a position where they will not be able to squirrel around too much. So have them sit in a chair and wiggle their toes.  Now would be a good time to sniff your child's foot to make sure it stinks.  Scent is a crucial component of a stinky ghost.

Yep, it stinks.

Now that the smell is there, it's time to work on the ghost.  Squeeze some paint or glue onto the smelly foot.  We used glue because my daughter loves glitter and glitter sticks to glue.  Use your paintbrush to spread the paint/glue around the foot.  Be sure to get the toes covered too.  If your child is ticklish (mine are) this can get really messy, but it also makes it more fun.

When you're done slathering on the paint, place the foot on some construction paper.  If you're using white paint/glue, it's best to use black paper.  Have your child press his/her foot down hard and then lift it up.  You now have the beginnings of a proper Stinky Ghost.

If you laid the glue on thick enough you could stop here.  Most glues dry clear, but if you have a thick layer, it will dry white like a ghost.  Let your paint (or thick glue) dry and then you're ready to decorate.  If you have a thin layer of glue that is going to dry clear, get to decorating.  Don't let that baby dry out.

My daughter decided that instead of a white ghost, she wanted a red glittery one, a ghost with style.  Instead of letting the glue dry, we proceeded to pour the entire contents of a tube of glitter onto the ghost.  Next you want to add some eyes.  Have your kid glue some pompoms or googly eyes to the ghost's head.  Then have them squeeze some black paint onto the ghost for a mouth.

Now, if only we had pink, blue, and orange glitter we could make Pinky, Inky, and Clyde too.