Friday, October 23, 2009

Fall Fun

Our fall break has been jam-packed with fun things to do. We spent a day at Cheekwood seeing the scarecrows. We had lunch with J one day, then visited the library and played on the playground. Yesterday, B & K went to the zoo with a neighbor while A and I walked to a neighborhood restaurant for lunch.

Today, the plan was to build an edible Halloween Castle and then eat it. It didn't exactly turn out looking like a castle, but the girls and some friends still had a blast building it and loading up on sugar.

We started with mini-cupcakes (rainbow colors) and cupcakes (greenish-gray for spooky castle walls) that we baked yesterday:











Then we assembled the ingredients a few minutes before our friends arrived. Each girl got a graham cracker to decorate with icing, gummy worms, oreos, and candy corn:


And then they created what I thought would be castle walls or a gate. Instead, we found when we tried to attach everything that nothing stood up very well. So, in the end, our creation looked like this:


Not exactly the gorgeous creation we had all envisioned, but it was fun to make and fun to eat. I'm a big fan of edible crafts because they kill two birds with one stone - fun and food. I also found the prep for this particular craft great. A and I spent a few hours yesterday mixing up a cake and then stirring food coloring into mini-muffin tins with food coloring. It was good bonding time and made us feel more invested in the end product today.

We'll be doing something similar to this in the spring when we make bunny cakes with friends and we have a cookie decorating party every Christmas. I enjoy cooking and this is a great way to share it with my daughters!