Blessed Samhain, Happy Halloween!

Halloween isn't just a holiday for dressing up and acting silly, for our family it is a sacred day to honor our friends and family (including our furry family members) that have passed on. We celebrate this day with various old traditions.

While I won't bore you with details of all our traditions, I will share one of my favorites, Pumpkin Carving. We spend an entire evening together, making quite the mess, creating various scary creatures such as this pumpkin, Freddy Krueger, whom my 10 year old son Ethan Carved last night
Here are more Pumpkin Ideas

For those that are at a loss for last minute costumes, you can view some here.

You can also learn some quick tips for applying special effects, make your own guts, scabs, boils, scars, broken bones and more: here

Yesterday my youngest announced that he wanted to be JASON for Halloween this year. So I set about creating a quickie Jason Mask. I'm not a fan of purchasing ANY Halloween supplies until AFTER Halloween, (when they're 75-90% off), so instead, I grabbed an old newspaper, a bit of flour and paint and voila, JASON rises again. All in all from start to finish this project takes about an hour and a half, including drying time,

Step by Step Directions

Now that we've got your kids dressed, I know they're probably impatient and ready to get some goodies, but let's get their bellies filled with something super easy AND nutritious that they'll love.

10 Minute Hearty Chicken Veggie Stew

1 pkg mixed Steamer Veggies (remember I told you how to get these for less than .25 a bag in the deal of the week files?? Here's the perfect time to use them).
1 can Diced Tomatoes, UNdrained
1 (14.5 oz) can chicken Broth (or myo)
1 c. cut up leftover cooked chicken chunks OR 1 can chicken breast chunks, drained
1 c. slightly crushed egg noodles.

Toss your steamer veggies into the micro for the length of time specified on the bag (usually 4-5 minutes), in the meantime, combine egg noodles, diced tomatoes and chicken broth in a saucepan on the stove, cook 5-7 minutes, add steamed veggies and chicken, heat through 2-3 minutes. Voila, hearty, healthy dinner in 10 minutes. If you want to get creative you could add 1 tsp Italian seasoning to the stew or just salt and pepper. I tend to add a tsp of minced garlic to almost everything, but depends largely on your own tastes.

If you have additional time to prepare a meal, you could serve this with cornbread. Yum!

Well folks, I hope you have a wonderful SAFE Halloween and watch out for those Friday Night Drinkers this year.



Bright Blessings,

Liss