Crockpot Wednesday: A Spooky Meal

I thought I would share with your our family's traditional Halloween meal today. I figured if I shared it with you today, you could make it if you want on Monday for Halloween! We eat this meal every year, and it is alot of fun! It is also very simple which is great for such a busy day! So here it is The Burns Family Spooky Meal:

Ghostly Shepards Pie

Here's what you will need :

1 pound lean ground beef, Worcheshire sauce, milk, frozen veggies, 1 can cream of mushroom soup, cheddar cheese and 7-8 potatoes

1. Put on a large pot of water to boil for your potatoes. Wash and peel your potatoes, cut up into quarters add to water. Cook until you can pierce easily with a fork.
2. Preheat your oven 350. On your stove over medium high heat cook your ground beef. While cooking your ground beef warm half a bag of frozen veggies in the microwave.
3. Drain your meat and then put back in pan. Add your can of cream of mushroom, 1/4 cup of milk, a dash of Worcheshire sauce and if you would like you can season with salt and pepper.
4. Drain your veggies (at this time take out 6 peas from the mix and set aside) and then add to your meat mixture. Take off heat.
5. Your potatoes should be done now, drain and then mash. I usually add about 1/4-1/2 cup of milk, a half a block of cream cheese and a half a stick of butter and usually a few dollups of sour cream and salt and pepper to taste. Usually I add a little of each ingredient at a time, its never really the same.
6. Set aside 1- 1 1/2 cups of mashed potatoes.
7. Pour your meat mixture into a 9x13 pan. Top with the remaining mashed potatoes and spread evenly over the meat mixture. Put into oven and bake for 10 minutes.
8. Grate 1-2 cups of Cheddar Cheese.
9. After 10 minutes take Shepards Pie out of  the oven and sprinkle with cheese. Put back into oven until cheese has melted about 5 minutes.
10. Once your "Pie" is done take your remaining mashed potatoes and divide into two mounds on top of your casserole. These are your ghosts. Take your reserved peas and add three to each mound, two eyes and once mouth.

Bony Bone Breadsticks

You will need:

Yep thats it. A can of  garlic breadsticks.
All you need to do to turn these into "bones" is to tie knots at the end of each breadstick. Then bake according to the can.

Orange-O-Lanterns

You will need:

1 orange for each person eating, kiwis, strawberries and whole cloves.

1. Cut the top off of oranges. With a spoon scoop out all of the orange "pulp" until you have a nice hollow little bowl.
2. With your cloves make a face on your jack-o-lantern.
3. Dice up your strawberries and kiwis and leftover orange and mix together for your fruit salad.
4. Spoon into your jack-o-lanterns.
These are great because you can make them in the morning and they are all ready for dinner!

So there you have it, one super easy, yet fun spooky meal!
Happy Haunting Friends!

7 months

Little Miss turned 7 months yesterday! Can't believe it! She is too big....

Here she is in her strawberry costume for Halloween. I am taking her picture every month in something strawberry because she is going to have a strawberry themed first birthday and I am going to make a garland out of the pictures. So she had to be a strawberry for Halloween!

Little Miss at 7 months you:

-sit up like a champ, its the only way you like to be and will sit and play for hours

-still wont crawl, you do this weird scoot thing where in the sitting position you put your hands in front of you and pull forward and then you also get up on your feet like a frog and move

-the reason why you dont crawl is because you have no reason too! Your big brother is wrapped around your little finger and he always makes sure you have toys or whatever you need. You have him whipped.

-You love to eat, we've gone through all the veggies and now were starting on fruits. So far your favorite has been okra and green pepper mixed.

-You are such an easy baby, always happy and smiling. You are super easygoing and are pretty much content with whatever.

-You are my sleeper girl, you sleep through the night and still take three naps a day!

-Love to be outside, you love grass and wind and dirt

-Your favorite toys are your brothers toy cars and all of your little dolls. You also love duplos and footballs. Probably because that is your brothers choice of toy for you.

Little Miss you are so sweet and beautiful and it is exciting to watch you grow. Sad but exciting. I love seeing your little personality come out even at 7 months. I love you.

Mama

Pumpkin Life Cycle craft and My Top 5 Pumpkin Recipes

Happy Monday! Glad its the start of the new week. It will be a crazy week in our house; I have parent teacher conferences, board meetings and Parents Night Out this week at work. Ha-and I only work part time. :)
Because of our crazy week I am going to combine Miss Crafty Pants Monday and Crockpot Wednesday together.
Last Monday was rainy so the kids and I painted. Even Little Miss got to join in on the fun! Here's what you will need for the Pumpkin Life cycle craft:

One brown bag, green yarn, green, yellow and orange paint, one cup or plate for paint, paintbrushes

I had all of these materials laying around the house, use what you have. I always make sure I have brown bags at the house just for crafts. They are free- most paper is not! :)

First I read the kiddos the book Pumpkin Circle.

This book is great, and has alot of really fun pictures! Obviously it is over a six month old and two year old's head but they liked the pictures.
I cut out three sizes of pumpkins for each kid and then they got to paint.
Smallest pumpkin=green
Middle Pumpkin= yellow
Biggest Pumpkin= orange
We let them dry and then I taped little stems to the top out of the paper bag. I then punched holes in the top and strung my green yarn through the holes, to make a pumpkin garland! And here they are:
Arent they cute? Mister was proud, it was the first thing he showed Hubs when he got home from work. I used to do this craft when I taught Kindergarten and then the kids would write a fact down on their pumpkin for that part of the cycle. There are many variations you can take on this!
Ok, now on to the really good stuff, eating! I always tell my students that eating is my hobby that I am really good at! :)
I am going to share with you my Five Favorite Pumpkin Recipes. We eat alot of Pumpkin baked good around here during the fall! I love pumpkin, its just so happy!
5. Pumpkin Pie Oatmeal
I am not really a huge fan of oatmeal, in fact I can't really eat it at all. But Mister and Hubs love it, so this recipe is a great variation on your everyday oatmeal. You will find the recipe here.
4. Chocolate Chip Pumpkin Muffins
  Ok, we may or may not have these on constant supply at our house from September to December. Once in awhile I may shake things up and make a loaf of Chocolate Chip Pumpkin bread, but usually we eat these. I LOVE them! Recipe here.
3. Pumpkin Fluff Dip
This is a really fun dessert, and it's super easy! Mister LOVES "dip", so this is the perfect dessert for him. If you can open a can and know how to stir this is the recipe for you! Pumpkin Fluff!!!
2. Pumpkin Pancakes
Every Halloween we eat the same meals for Breakfast and Dinner. Its just tradition to eat these pancakes on Halloween morning. There are alot of ingredients, but these are just plain good! I serve ours with Honey Butter and syrup. Recipe here.
1. Pumpkin Brownies
These are too good to be true! So yummy, so easy, so perfect! These are just great! We could probably eat a whole pan in one sitting, but we dont, I promise...... Recipe here
So there you have it, our family favorites! Most of them are sweet, because I like sweets and we do eat alot of other veggies, were just not big Gourd people. :)
What are some of your favorite Pumpkin Recipes?

Family Rules and Crockpot Apple Cider

Its a miracle! Mister woke up at his usual 5:45 time, but was promptly returned for a time out and fell back asleep! So here I sit with my coffee and pumpkin muffin enjoying the quiet. Perfect, cause were headed to the Pumpkin Farm for the 5th time, (its just too close to resist, and it doesnt have to cost anything at all) and so now we wont be grumpy.
I found on Pinterest this last week the cutest sign of Family Rules. I loved the rules, they are exactly what Michael and I want for ourselves and what we want to teach to our children. I knew I wanted to display these rules somehow. Heres what I came up with:

I took an old frame, took out the glass and then covered the back in some old fabric. (It was actually just an old shirt that tore). I then scrapbooked the Family Rules part, and strung three strands of twine across. I wrote the rules on scrapbook tags and tied them to the strands of twine and then returned the whole thing to the frame. Thats it. It probably took 15 minutes, the perfect naptime craft. But most important here are Our Family Rules:
1. Pray often (always)
2.Consider it pure joy...when you face trials." James 1:2
3. Find your identity in Christ
4. Show the same grace to others that God has shown to you.
5. Encourage others. Love others.
6. Laugh and laugh hard.
7. Be kind. Listen. No yelling.
8. Be the first to say I'm sorry.
9. "Act justly, love mercy, walk humbly with your God." Micah 6:8
10. Be thankful.
11. Hug one another (daily)
12. Always be looking for ways to serve others.
Not too hard of concepts, but sometimes in the daily life hard to live out. I love that we now have a reminder in our hallway to encourage us to "make good choices" (as I always say to Mister)

On to Apple Cider. This is my moms recipe, I have to give credit where credit is due. I dont have pictures, sorry, but its not that hard of a concept. :) Heres what you need:
1-2 bottles of Apple Juice, cinnamon, 1 orange, whole cloves
Into your crockpot pour your apple juice and add about 11/2 teaspoons of cinnamon. If you want you can add 1-2 cinnamon sticks instead.
Then take your orange and you are going to stick the whole cloves into the orange, all over. You can make cute lines, or just dot it, whatever suits your fancy.
Place the orange in the juice, put your lid on and turn to Low for about 3 hrs. It doesnt take that long to warm up.
This recipe is so good and it makes your house smell so good!!!
Happy Wednesday!

Miss Crafty Pants Monday: Closet organizing and reusing a crib

Dont you love lazy weekends? I do, and we had just that this weekend. It was full of:



family football games

gummy smiles

air turbulance

dressing ourselves

arranging pumpkins

and cute clean babies in fall pajamas.

This week for my craft I decided to show you what I made with my old crib. When Mister was born my mom gave me the crib that I slept in when I was a baby and that she slept in as well. Unfortunetly this makes the crib kind of old (only kind of old  mom) and was not in baby sleeping condition. I didnt want it to go to waste so I decided to use the parts in different ways. So I took the sides of the cribs and hung them on a section of our backyard fence. I then wired cute little pots and a mason jar to the sides, and got this:

Cute right?!?!  I love looking out my side window now when I do dishes. I put a bench under it and hung some other little signs and it turned out perfect! I'm looking forward to decorating  them for different holidays. I knew that I wanted to use some part of the crib to display something about my babies. It was a crib afterall. So I turned the spring base into a bulletin board. I hung the babies birth announcements on it and some of my favorite pictures of me and the babies.


I love it! I hung it right next to the rocking chair that my dad bought my mom when she was pregnant with me, that I now have in my room to rock my babies in.
Ok, now for the Five Day Organization I told you about last week. I had some grand ideas but when in came down to it, I wanted to do something with the resources I already had. I cleaned out my entire hall closet and it was completley empty. So I hung up 10 hangers along the backside of the closet. Next to each hanger I put a letter sticker, representing the day of the week the hanger was for. That's it! So easy.


Now obviously not everyone has an empty closet but this could easily be done just by hanging the clothes on the pole and adding a doorhanger to the hanger for the day of the week it was for. I just had the space, and I love the way it looks. I also realized that I need to start buying Mister another color besides blue to wear.

Thats it this week! Nothing too exciting, but fun all the same. :) Happy Monday!

Miss Crafty Pants Monday: Crafts for kids and for mama's!

Happy Monday Friends! Arent you loving this fall weather? I've got all the windows and front door open, and just made two loaves of yummy chocolate chip pumpkin bread. This last week my sister and law and I got together to finally finish up some projects we started a month ago. Its funny how long projects take now that we both work and have babies. But we made it happen on Tuesday and they turned out so cute.  First we made these cute signs:

I made mine to say Thanks and she made hers to say LOVE. Hubcap cut out some old pieces of wood and we spray painted them. Then we used her Cricut and cut our letters using scrapbook paper. A little bit of modge podge and it was done. I love it! I hung mine on my pantry door with a little chalkboard under it and it makes me very happy while I cook. Its also a fun reminder to be thankful! We had originally started our crafts to be Fall/Thanksgiving projects but I say its important to be thankful always. The piece of wood Hubs cut for me was to small so he had to cut another one so I had an extra piece! I turned it into this:


I LOVE Post its and I LOVE lists and so this little board is just the greatest thing. Now I can write what  my major projects of the day on little post its and tear them off as I get done. Crumpling up a piece of paper is just as rewarding as crossing something off a list in my opinion.
I painted these pots last week too.

I cant wait to put pumpkins on them. Cute little candy corn pumpkin pedestals. Mister loves them!
Mister and I made this cute little fish project. I saw it on Pintrest and knew we had to do it.

I just cut blue paper into a fish bowl shape and he got to handprint his hand in orange. Then we just added eyes. You could get really elaborate if you wanted, add little rocks or plants or even put plastic wrap over the top to make it look like a real bowl.

Well those are all my crafts for the week. I cleared out an entire closet last week so look for a fun organizing project next week... :)