Halloween ghosts like these can be made from tissues, cotton handkerchiefs, or coffee filters, as you'll see below! They're an easy and fun way for the family to get in the Halloween spirit!

Some of the best craft projects can be made from common household items, and here we’ll learn how to make two fantastic Halloween craft projects from coffee filters and a few other items: Coffee Filter Ghosts and Coffee Filter Bats.  These are both easy projects that children and adults of all ages can enjoy!

It is recommended that adults accompany children with these crafts, as scissors are used – and besides, it’s more fun for everyone that way!

Coffee Filter Ghosts

What you’ll need:

• Basket coffee filters (one per ghost)
• Ribbons in Halloween colors like orange, purple, and black
• Magic Markers
• String (optional)
• Assorted decorations like googly eyes (optional)
• Candy or tissue for stuffing the head
• Scissors

Instructions:

1. Take a coffee filter and place a wadded tissue or some candy in the center.  This will serve as the stuffing for the head.  If you use candy, they make for super Halloween party favors!
2. Tie a Halloween colored ribbon around the neck of the ghost.
3. Use magic markers to draw faces on your ghosts.  You can also use googly eyes and other fun items to get creative with it!
4. If you want to hang your ghosts up as Halloween decorations, you can tie a piece of string around the neck and tuck it under the ribbon.  These are great for hanging in Halloween trees, or just around the house!

Coffee Filter Bats

What you’ll need:

• Basket coffee filters (one per bat)
• Black watercolor paint
• Paintbrush
• Clothespins
• Googly eyes
• Purple and/or orange ribbon
• Scissors
• Craft glue

Instructions:

1. Create an environment suitable for painting
2. Paint the coffee filters with black watercolor and set aside to dry.
3. Once dried, fold the painted coffee filters in half.
4. Fold them in half again, folding it in quarters.
5. Take a clothespin and pinch the new fold with the clothespin.
6. Open the filter and glue to the clothespin as needed to make the wings spread out.
7. Glue googly eyes to the front of the clothespin.
8. Cut semi-circles around the edges to make it more bat-like.
9. Tie with orange or purple ribbons for hanging.

And now you have two cute handmade Halloween decorations to adorn the porch, the windows, and anywhere else around the house!

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Ghost Meringues

I make this recipe every year for my family and for Halloween parties and it is always a big hit!  It’s great because the recipe is easy and the treats come out light and tasty.

It’s also a great Halloween project to do with the kids, because they can get creative with the shapes and decorations.  In our house our favorite Halloween meringue cookie shapes are ghosts and bones, but the possibilities are endless.

Ingredients

• 1 1/2 cups of sugar
• 5 egg whites at room temperature
• 1/2 teaspoon cream of tartar
• A pinch of salt
• 1 to 2 teaspoons of vanilla extract to taste
• Black gel icing

Directions

1. Line two cookie sheets with parchment paper.
2. Preheat oven to 220 degrees fahrenheit.
3. Beat egg whites and cream of tartar with mixer until soft peaks form, this could take from two to five minutes.  I alwys use a Kitchenaid standing mixer but a hand mixer will work as well.
4. Gradually add sugar while also gradually increasing the mixing speed to medium.
5. Add vanilla extract and continue beating until stiff peaks form.
6. Spoon the mixture into a cake or pastry piping bag with a 1/4 – 1/2 inch tip or with a plastic bag and cut off a 1/4 – 1/2 inch tip at the corner of the bag.
7. Pipe a swirl to make a ghost and repeat until the cookie sheets are filled.
8. Bake for one hour. Then, turn off heat and allow the cookies to sit for at least an hour. Do not open oven at any time during the baking process.
9. Use black gel icing to make eyes and mouths on the ghosts.
10. Carefully remove cookies from parchment paper and enjoy them while they are fresh or store in an airtight container.

If you want to make meringue bones, simply pipe a 3-4 inch line and add two balls to the end of each.

Recipe yields 3-4 dozen.

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1. Hosting Halloween Hooplas

Once you’ve chosen a suitable costume, the first part of the process in making masks for Halloween is to download a template from one of the many websites which offer them. This might be a very basic mask that simply covers the eyes and bridge of the nose, or it can be one which covers the entire facial area. Free masks can be found in the following categories:

• Politicians
• Movie stars
• Animals
• Scary monsters
• Cartoon characters
• Starwars characters

Once the decision has been made about which mask to make, the picture should be downloaded and printed on very heavy cardstock. Be sure that the printer being used is set to handle the chosen thickness. At this point, younger children may have fun just coloring their simple masks with crayons or felt tipped markers. Glitter, feathers, sequins, and other decorative items may be glued on if desired. The more complicated masks will print out in solid ink colors and will be ready for further treatment once printed.

To prepare the mask to be worn, the following materials will be needed:

• Scissors
• Heavy cardboard
• Craft knife
• Hole punch
• Clear tape
• Strong rubber or elastic string

Using the scissors, cut around the facial features of the printed copy, eliminating any none-printed portions. Then, hold the mask to the face to determine the positioning of the eye holes and mark them. Some masks templates are printed from the Microsoft Word program and allow adjustments on the positioning of eyeholes before the mask is printed.

Because cutting the eyeholes requires such precision, the mask should be placed on a piece of cardboard, and a craft knife used to create these openings. Parents should always do this job for young children. Next, place a square of clear tape on each side of the mask, about a half inch from the edge. Punch a hole through the tape with the hole punch to form a place to attach the rubber or elastic.

Insert about two feet of rubber or elastic string through the holes on each side of the mask, loop it around and tie it behind. Test the mask for size and adjust as necessary by cutting and retying until it fits properly and feels comfortable.

Many people find making Halloween masks to be such an enjoyable activity that they make it a traditional family craft event each year. It can certainly bring out the smiles and giggles faster than most other craft projects and allows every member of the family time to show their creative side.

You can find more ideas for a Halloween party, from cupcake recipes to party games, at HalloweenPartyIdeas.org.

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Top 10 Halloween Stuff on the Web for 2009

Haunted Gingerbread House at Savvy Halloween

1. Make your own Halloween gingerbread house! Savvy Halloween shows you how to make a Halloween Haunted Gingerbread House, gives a recipe for the gingerbread and icing, and even provides a pattern for users to print off and use.

2. Halloween recipes galore!  Disney’s Family Fun has enough recipes to keep you and your family busy for all of autumn!  Most are easy, fun, and best of all, they come with pictures so you can get a good visual of the treats.

3. Who doesn’t love checking out pets in costumes?  Well the Baltimore Sun has a ton of user-submitted dressed up pets all for the looking.

4. Sometimes commercials can be just as entertaining if not more than the shows themselves, and Smashing Apps has highlighted 19 great Halloween ads for your viewing pleasure in their post, 19 Creative Halloween Advertisements.

5. Play one of our favorite Halloween games, Halloween Pumpkins, right here!

6. Pumpkin carving at Martha Stewart – MarthaStewart.com offers pumpkin templates, pumpkin projects for kids, pumpkin creatures, and more of Martha’s tips and tricks for creating gorgeous jack o’ lanterns of your own.

And the last four are our favorite Halloween videos with instructions on making some fun & spooky Halloween crafts and treats!

7. Halloween Cat Origami for kids and adults:

8. Halloween Marshmallow Ghosts and Ghouls Recipe:

9. Spirited Halloween Cupcakes from Food Network:

10. And finally, catch up on your Halloween history with this video from National Geographic:

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Nutella Spiced Sugar Cookies (recipe below)

Swarms of costumed Harry Potters, Powerpuff Girls, Pokémons, ghosts and witches will take to the streets this Halloween, begging for sweet treats from neighbors and friends. Because many parents worry about their child’s safety while trick-or-treating, do-it-yourself Halloween parties are becoming a popular alternative.

The Halloween Association (THA) indicates that Halloween is the third most-celebrated day of the year, and according to the 2000 American Express retail index, two out of three American households celebrate Halloween. Here are tips for everything from the food to the games for Halloween parties without too much fuss:

Make your own invitations
Let the kids help create invitations for the party. Decorate construction paper with colorful cut-outs, add Halloween-themed stickers or use stamps and ink to create clever invitations. Or, send e-mail invitations or online greeting cards.

Create homemade costumes
Work with your children to invent the family’s Halloween attire. This allows their imagination to reach beyond store-bought costumes and gives them a sense of pride when showing off their handiwork at the party. With a little paint and creativity, a cardboard box can become a die, a spaceship or a favorite book. Old clothing boxed-up in the attic is perfect for a retro look. Plus, you can find princess, wizard and farmer accessories in a second-hand shop.

Prepare easy-to-make Halloween-themed treats
While Halloween means candy overload for many kids and parents, hosts are heading to the kitchen to create homemade treats for partygoers. Serve goodies such as Orange Pumpkin Cupcakes (decorate orange frosting-spread cupcakes with brown and green sprinkles to create a pumpkin), Pumpkin Brains (macaroni and cheese served in a hollowed-out pumpkin with a face) and Nutella Spiced Sugar Cookies (recipe following) to add a ghostly touch. Continue the theme by serving treats on orange and black plastic tableware.

Decorate with style
To get your fright-seeking guests in the Halloween spirit, haunt a room in the house by covering windows with towels and adding cobwebs, jack-o-lanterns, black lights, pictures of witches and goblins and eerie sounds. For younger ones who won’t visit the haunted room, decorate the house with hay bundles, pumpkin lights, streamers and ghosts cut out of construction paper by the kids. Show kid-friendly Halloween-themed movies, such as “It’s the Great Pumpkin Charlie Brown,” “Casper” or “Goosebumps” to add a festive mood to the party.

Play horrifically fun games
Add a Halloween twist to traditional games to keep kids occupied and make your party a hit with adults, too. Do the limbo to “Monster Mash,” conduct Halloween-themed scavenger hunts and have costume contests to add to the hair-raising experience. For even more fun, offer guests rolls of toilet paper and let them transform each other into paper-wrapped mummies or give kids markers, paper and other materials and let them decorate their own pumpkin.

Nutella Spiced Sugar Cookies
2/3 cup shortening
12 tablespoons unsalted butter, softened
3/4 cup granulated sugar
1 large egg
1/4 teaspoon vanilla extract
1/2 teaspoon baking powder
3 1/2 cups all-purpose flour
2 teaspoons ginger
1 teaspoon ground black pepper
2 teaspoons cinnamon
1/2 teaspoon salt
1/2 cup Nutella
2 1/2 tablespoons milk
2 tablespoons confectioner’s sugar, sifted

In a medium bowl, cream the butter, shortening and sugar with a hand mixer on high speed for two minutes. Add the egg and vanilla and beat for one minute. Stir in the remaining dry ingredients on low speed just until combined. Divide the dough in half and press each piece into a disk. Cover tightly with plastic wrap and refrigerate until firm, about one hour.

Preheat the oven to 375 F. Divide the dough in half and roll out each piece on wax paper to 1/8-inch thickness. Cut out desired shapes (bats, pumpkins, headstones) and bake on a cookie sheet for 10 minutes. Cool completely.

Make the Glaze:
Heat Nutella, milk and confectioner’s sugar in a small pot over low heat until combined and slightly warm. Spread each cookie with the glaze and decorate as desired with jimmies, sprinkles, mini chips or Halloween candy. Allow to set on a wire rack. Store in an airtight container. Makes 24 cookies

These cookies can be baked ahead of time and frozen, unglazed, for up to 6 weeks, if stored in an airtight container.

Nutritional Information Per Serving:
Calories: 210
Protein: 2g
Carbohydrates: 22g
Fat: 12g
Cholesterol: 20mg
Sodium: 100mg
About the Author:

For additional easy-to-prepare recipes using Nutella, a chocolaty hazelnut spread from Europe, visit www.nutellausa.com.

Courtesy of ARA Content, www.ARAcontent.com, e-mail: info@ARAcontent.com

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Deck out your home with stylish Halloween decorations and accessories, call some of your favorite grown-up ghosts and goblins and have a frightening, yet grown-up, good time.

This Halloween, why let kids have all the fun? Deck out your home with stylish Halloween decorations and accessories, call some of your favorite grown-up ghosts and goblins and have a frightening, yet grown-up, good time.

If you’re going for sophistication, chances are this won’t be a your average costume party. Just make sure all your guests know they don’t have to dress like superheroes. Likewise, your decorations should reflect the holiday without sacrificing style. So out with the plastic pumpkins and cardboard skeletons.

In with the sophisticated — yet scary — accessories.

“Halloween has become the second most popular holiday in terms of decorating,” said Chris Tennyson, director of visual merchandising for Bombay. “But most of the Halloween décor is geared toward kids — it’s cartoony and silly.”

Tennyson has some advice on how to incorporate Halloween accents into your overall decorating scheme to set the scene for your party.

Make A Grand Entrance

Set the tone for the evening by greeting your guests with painted yard stakes and a Halloween wreath. Display the stakes lining the sidewalk up to the front door. Once at the door, the wreath, crafted of natural corn husks and sprinkled with orange glitter will ensure an enthusiastic entrance.

Fill your foyer with Halloween atmosphere with a collection of silver jack-o’-lanterns glowing with the light of votive candles.

“These jack-o’-lanterns are an instant show-stopper when displayed in multiples in a dark room,” Tennyson said.

Greet your guests with a glass of champagne or sparkling apple cider. Pour the bubbly from a beaker to simulate something from a mad man’s experiment.

Set A Boo-tiful Buffet

Serving buffet style makes for easy entertaining. Guests can help themselves and you can spend more time mingling and less time in the kitchen. Your food can be as simple as chips with dip, a vegetable platter and an assortment of cheeses, all from the local grocery store. Remember, presentation is everything, so display your food artfully on spider web platters or embellish the area with decorative spider webs from your local craft store. If you’d like to offer guests something more substantial, consider a soup or stew served in hollowed out miniature pumpkins instead of bowls.

A spooky spider web tablecloth is the perfect backdrop for its pumpkin punch bowl. Crafted of silver-plated brass, the punch bowl comes with a serving ladle and includes four silver pumpkin-shaped cups with handles. Add a block of dry ice to your punch bowl to easily create an eerie fog effect.

Don’t Forget The Rest Of The House

You can add a touch of Halloween to every room in the house. In the powder room, swap your everyday towels for something with a holiday theme. Light a pumpkin spice scented candle to invoke the smells of the season.

Candlelight always helps set the mood for a party, and is especially appropriate at Halloween. When the candles are lit, they cast a subtle purple glow across the room.

Courtesy of ARA Content

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Have a frighteningly good time when your hungry little “monsters” help you make some special Halloween treats using Mrs. Smith’s Pumpkin Pie. With a few simple tricks and some added treats, you can use Mrs. Smith’s Pumpkin pies to create jack-o’-lantern faces, ghosts and goblins for the whole family. “OOH IT’S SO GOOD!!(R)”

“Kids love helping you in the kitchen and it doesn’t have to be a scary experience. With just a few ingredients and no fussing, you and your kiddies can make a ready-to-bake pumpkin pie into your family’s own creepy creation,” said Mr. Food, the popular TV chef who appears in cooking segments nationwide.

Mrs. Smith’s Pumpkin pies come in three varieties: Special Recipe Homemade Pumpkin, Hearty Pumpkin or Pumpkin Custard. These “to die for” treats will surely be a favorite for the young or the young at heart.

Halloween is a really big party time, so Mrs. Smith’s has come up with some fun ideas for turning a pumpkin pie into favorites that your gang will be “goblin” up in no time — and each starts simply with a Mrs. Smith’s Pumpkin Pie (any variety) baked according to the package directions and cooled.

Jack-O’-Lantern Pumpkin Pie:

With a paring knife, carve out a jack-o’-lantern face from the pie, removing the cutouts (these are a great bonus for the carvers). Mix whipped topping with a drop or two of yellow food color and spoon into a plastic storage bag with a corner snipped off. Squeeze the mixture into the cut-out areas so that, with its yellow glow, your edible jack-o’-lantern looks illuminated from inside! Place a miniature candy bar at the top to create the look of a stem for a realistic finishing touch.

Goblin’s Delights:

Grab your Halloween cookie cutters and cut ghost and goblin shapes out of the pie, pushing firmly to cut through the crust. Cover the shapes completely with hardshell ice cream topping, such as Magic Shell. Decorate with candy corn, black licorice, and your favorite candies, using prepared chocolate frosting as the “glue.”

Pumpkin Ghosts:

Cut pie into eight wedges and frost all the way around and the top of each wedge with whipped topping. With the top as the point of the ghosts’ heads, use M&M’s and candy corn to make fun ghostly faces.

By ARA Content

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