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These Halloween recipes for kids are a great addition to your holiday fare. This time of year is all about ghosts and goblins, witches and wizards, bats and vampires and even monsters and more. Making fun treats to eat at your party will set the tone for a spooky and scary good time. These ideas will need some adult supervision as there is some heating and cooking involved with these recipes. Don’t forget some food coloring to make these ideas even extra special for the upcoming day. You can make creepy ice cream spiders, witches brew punch or even scrumptious munchable scarecrows.

Kids Halloween Recipe #1 – Ice Cream Spider Cups

Everyone loves ice cream and for your festive party they will love the looks of these spiders made from ice cream and other tasty ingredients.

Ingredients

8 individual graham cracker tart shells 1/2 gallon vanilla ice cream 16 Oreo Cookies (crumbled) 16 red M&M candy pieces 16 pieces of black shoestring licorice

Directions

Lay out the shells on a baking sheet. Add 1 scoop of vanilla ice cream to each shell. In a bowl, crumble the Oreo cookies. Sprinkle the crumbles on each scoop of ice cream to create a black furry looking spider body. Put the filled shells in the freezer for 30 minutes or until ice cream is hardened. Remove from the freezer and press 2 red M&M’s into the front of each scoop for the spider’s eyes. Cut the licorice strips into fourths. Press 8 strips of licorice into each ice cream scoop to form the spider’s legs. Return to the freezer until ready to serve.

Makes 8 servings

These simple little spiders are so easy make and the kids will love them. You can use any flavor of ice cream you want and different colors of M&M’s for the eyes. Mix it up and give each guest a slightly different looking spider or flavor.

Kids Halloween Recipe #2 – Red Witches Brew Fruit Punch

This blood red punch will sure to quench the thirst of all the vampires attending your party.

Ingredients

3 (48 ounce) cans pineapple juice 1 (2 liter) lemon lime soda 1 large package strawberry or cherry flavored drink mix 1 can frozen strawberries 12 – 24 gummy worms

Directions

Place a gummy worm in an ice cube tray (1 in each tray). Fill with water and freeze. Mix all other ingredients together and chill. Once the ice cubes (with the gummy worms) are frozen, place in the punch and serve.

Makes about 1 to 1 1/2 gallons

You can make your witches brew even scarier looking by adding raisins and/or other frozen fruits.

Kids Halloween Recipe #3 – Coconut Munchable Scarecrows

These yummy scarecrows will brighten up your party with their bright clothes and tasty hat. Kids will have a blast frosting these little guys.

Ingredients

1 (18 ounce) package refrigerated sugar cookie dough 1 cup flaked coconut Yellow, orange, red and blue food coloring 18 gum drop fruit slices 1 can vanilla frosting 1 package mini chocolate chips

Directions

Roll out the cookie dough on a flat surface. You can flour the surface to prevent sticking. Use gingerbread men cutters and cut out 18 shapes. Place the cutouts onto a baking sheet and bake according the directions on the package. Remove the cookies and cool to room temperature on a wire rack. Using a small bowl, mix the coconut and yellow food coloring to achieve a straw like color. To make the scarecrow hats place the gum drops on a lightly sugared surface and press and roll them flat. Using a butter knife, cut hat shapes for each flattened gum drop. Place the vanilla frosting evenly into 3 separate bowls. Add drops of orange, red and blue food coloring into each of the bowls (one color per bowl). After the cookies have cooled, frost each cookie with the blue and red frosting making the shirts and pants. Make some shirts blue and pants red and with some shirts red and pants blue. Next frost the head, feet and hands with the orange frosting. Press your colored coconut into the hands and feet to form the straw. Place the hat onto the scarecrows head by placing a little orange frosting on the back of the hat and pressing it onto the scarecrow. Place 2 to 3 of mini chocolate chips down the front of the scarecrows shirt for buttons. Place chips on the head for the eyes, nose and mouth.

Makes 18 cookies.

These scarecrows will look so yummy that your guests will eat them quickly.

Now that the leaves on the trees are starting to change color and that familiar chill in the air can be felt, it’s time to start thinking about that scariest of holidays; Halloween. Ghosts and goblins, ghouls and witches and all that candy! I don’t think there is any time of year more exciting for kids than Halloween.

Halloween is celebrated on October 31st and “trick or treating” has become a tradition, but it’s not the only one. Costume parties, haunted houses, hayrides and creepy movie festivals are all part of the weeks leading up to the big day. Here are some of my Halloween ideas, perhaps you’ll use some of them this year.

Halloween decorating does not need to be expensive, but if you want you can spend a fortune. People do everything from the most simple decoration (a pumpkin) to extravagant light shows and my favourite personal haunted houses and yards. You need to find something which matches your budget and commitment. Dollar stores have a lot of inexpensive Halloween decorations, my favourite from the dollar stores are the glow in the dark spiders and skeletons. I hang the skeletons on tree branches and they light up at night giving a spooky chill to the yard.

I like to do a couple of pumpkins on Halloween, one for each of the kids, a family effort and of course my personal masterpiece (which I usually do on the 30th after the kids have gone to bed). You can find nice pumpkin templates all around the Internet, but be sure to use a sharp knife and if the kids are young, you do the carving, but let them tell you what to cut.

Fog is another Halloween essential for me. I use two fog machines, one in the house (I hope that stuff isn’t dangerous) with some windows open for ventilation and one outside to highlight whatever creepy item I feel needs it. Usually the creepy item is a 6 foot tall ghost we like to call “scary big man”. I purchased him at a garden centre and probably paid too much, but he’s going on his 3rd year now and I stand by my purchase. He’s totally cool!

Hay bales and corn stalks are great yard accent pieces and nothing brings out fall’s creepiness better than those two items. If you live on a farm, you could even build a maze out of the bales and make the kids go through it to get to the front door.

Last but definitely not least is Halloween music. I’ve been building my collection for years, but for starters you can get a simple halloween sounds CD and put it on repeat. Chains, howling, screams make the young ones shake in their boots. The old ones (including parents) find it amusing but neat. I like to throw in a mix of halloween songs like monster mash and of course what Halloween would be complete without a little Danny Elfman. If you’re not familiar with Mr Elfman’s work, he has done soundtracks for some of the scariest movies out there. Google him and see what comes back.

So, get started early. Get the decorations up and maybe have a Halloween party too. Christmas shopping is just around the corner, so enjoy Halloween while you can. It’s the chance for every grown up to act like a kid again.

COMMUNITY INFORMATION

Bonita is situated in the southern region of San Diego County within the state of California. There are approximately 18,396 residents in this Zip code (91902) and 5,986 households. The median age of residents is 40.45 years.

TEMPERATURE

The temperature in Bonita is relatively moderate. The warmest time of year occurs in July during which temperatures reach an average high of 70°F. The coldest time of year occurs in January with average temperatures falling to 57° F.

HOME AND REAL ESTATE PRICES

The housing options in Bonita include single-family homes and properties, condominiums, townhouses, and apartments. The price of housing is as follows:

·One bedroom townhouse/condominium start in the mid $200,000s.

·Two bedroom townhouse/condominium start in the low $300,000s.

·Three bedroom townhouse/condominium start in the low $400,000s.

·Two bedroom single-family homes start in the high $400,000s.

·Three bedroom single-family homes start in the mid $500,000s.

·Four bedroom single-family homes start in the low $600,000s.

REAL ESTATE MARKET TRENDS

As with most products and services in the United States, price shifts in the real estate industry are subject to the forces of supply and demand. Whether it’s a buyers market or a seller’s market, it is useful to evaluate home sales data for the most recent month available (June 2006), compared against the same period in the previous year (June 2005).

The median price of single-family homes dropped from $849,990 in June 2005 to $782,500 in June 2006, which represents a 7.9% decline. However, more homes sold in June 2006 (20 homes) than in June 2005 (7 homes). The average time to sell a home increased slightly from 68 days in June 2005 to 69 days in June 2006. The ratio between the asking price to the sales price increased over the past 12 months. On average, sellers obtained 93.6% of their asking price in June 2005, and 94.5% of their asking price in June 2006.

Homebuyers and home sellers should keep in mind that the data above is simply a snapshot in time. Therefore, the data must be evaluated over a longer duration to understand enduring market trends.