Halloween Archives - Joanna Anastasia

Halloween

10 things to do with kids at home for Halloween

October 26, 2020 / Lifestyle / 0 comment

Halloween is only a couple of days away and we still don’t know how we will celebrate. Will the city call it off? If not should we go trick or treating if we can? Should we hand over the candy or not? So many questions and not one right answer.

But even though it’s such a difficult year for traditions, instead of getting sad about it, my friends at Chocolate Pen have challenged me to make the best Halloween treats we can at home – and that have inspired me to plan a list of things that we will be able to do at home with kids if ever we can’t go trick or treating at all!

List of 10 fun things we can do at home for Halloween:

Organize a Halloween fashion show with all the costumes – we did that a couple of days ago ( we’re a week from Halloween now) and it was really fun to see what they came up with! And when my role in an activity consists of sitting still and sipping on my coffee you can always count me in!
Make a cookie graveyard! Now this could be as simple as in getting a ready to assemble kit like we did, or as complicated as baking xmas style gingerbread cookies but cutting them in to graves and ghosts shapes! (We used a ready to assemble kit but we decorated it with the use of our Chocolate Pen! My girls absolutely loved it! )
Painting faces – how about an afternoon of painting faces and making family photos as ghosts, pirates and fairies?
Decorating inside of your home – did you see that social media trend of bats everywhere? It’s probably so popular because it’s really easy and inexpensive too! Simply cut out bat shapes out of black cardstock and hang them EVERYWHERE!
Make more Halloween snacks like dark chocolate bark with candy eyes, brownie ( cake mix!) ghosts ( simply cut your shapes out with cookie cutters and add candy eyes!) or make a halloween popcorn ( mix popcorn with candy corn and mini pretzels and voila!)
Organize a Halloween movie night – now that you have all the snacks time to get cozy while watching your favourite halloween movies!
Make a candy hunt in the backyard or inside the house – Easter meets Halloween, double the fun!
Give kids Boo Baskets – I made my baskets with dollar store halloween toys and craft supplies and I can’t wait to see my kids faces when they get them on Halloween eve!
Make dark chocolate ghost cookies ( tip- you can use sugar cookie mix, just add a teaspoon of cacao to the mix, bake as usual, use regular icing and try using Chocolate Pen for adding fun features !)
Make Halloween crafts – paint toilet paper rolls black, add googly eyes and paper wings and make bats, paint with fingers, or use my free printable set colouring pages that I made for my kids- and a cute little print for their rooms! ( you can download it here )

I hope my list of activities and these printables can help you to have the best Halloween ever- despite the curve balls 2020 keeps throwing at us!

HAPPY HALLOWEEN!

Disclosure- I received chocolate pen as a gift, all opinions, ideas and enthusiasm remains entirely my own!

No bake pumpkin cheesecake, Halloween style

October 21, 2016 / Desserts / 0 comment

You know I’m all about easy and yummy desserts, and so today I have teamed up with Wayfair to bring you this amazing, no-bake pumpkin cheesecake and free Halloween printable cupcake toppers, that you can use to decorate your own dessert!

Honestly, I love cheesecakes in any form, but this pumpkin cheesecake is something special! It’s so easy to prepare, it’s amazingly creamy and rich and its ready in less than 20 minutes!

And since I love fun and modern Halloween decor, I decided that a set of cute and not too spooky cupcake toppers would be perfect for this no bake pumpkin cheesecake! You can download them at the end of this post!

Also, this recipe is perfect for mason jars, and you can even prepare it overnight! That way you can have it ready in the fridge for all your Halloween gatherings, and have one less thing to worry about! And I think that preparing two different serving options, one for adults, and one for kids, is a great way for making it kid-friendly.

I even made two topping options, one with whipped white chocolate cream, and one with simple whipped cream ( since I know a very special someone who doesn’t like white chocolate).

What you’ll need:

For the crust:

– 1 1/2 cup graham cracker crumbs

– 3 table spoons margarine ( or butter)

– 3 tablespoons brown sugar

– 1 teaspoon vanilla extract

– 1 teaspoon cinnamon

For the pumpkin cheesecake filling:

– 2 packages of cream cheese ( in room temperature)

– 1 cup of pumpkin puree

– 1 teaspoon of pumpkin spice

– 1 cup sugar

For the whipped white chocolate cream:

– 1 cup whipping cream
– 1/2 cup white chocolate chips

Optional, only whipped cream :

– 1 cup whipping cream

– 2 tablespoons sugar

Start by combining all of the ingredients for the crust ( remember that the margarine should be really soft). Mix it well together, and press at the bottom of your jars. Set aside.

Now it’s time for the pumpkin cheesecake filling. First beat the cream cheese until it’s smooth, then add sugar, mix some more, and then add the pumpkin puree and pumpkin spice.
(You could also use pumpkin pie filling, and skip the sugar and spices. Though I prefer to use the pumpkin puree as it lets me be in control of sugar and the amount of pumpkin spice.)

For the whipped white chocolate cream, beat the whipping cream without any sugar, melt white chocolate chips, and in a bowl ( not in a mixer) combine them together slowly with a spoon. Don’t over mix it as it could separate.

Or whip some whipping cream with sugar.

Pour the pumpkin cheesecake filling over the graham crust layer, and top it with the white chocolate whipped cream. Decorate with a Halloween cupcake topper, and enjoy!

And you can get the set of printable cupcake toppers by clicking *** here *** ! Just print them, cut them out, and glue two of your choice together with a toothpick in between!

Disclosure: This is a sponsored post brought to you by Wayfair .

Simple Halloween party ideas

October 26, 2014 / Desserts / 17 Comments

Since I have nothing to do ~~I’m crazy~~ , I decided to organize a simple Halloween party for my daughter. Obviously I got bad influence from spending too much time on Pinterest. Hand carved pumpkin fairies and carrot skeletons.. Well you won’t see any of these at my party. Staying home with kids leaves me with very little energy for carrot carved skeletons 🙂 . If you don’t know what I’m talking about you can go on Pinterest and take a look at all of these amazing, time consuming Halloween ideas :).

Here is what I did : I spent 5 minutes on this simple Halloween wreath. ( I’m a wreath junkie). I had a simple ” naked” wreath, I wrapped it with two 1 dollar garlands, and I added this giant dollar store bow. So simple !

Than I got my daughter to work, and using dollar store stickers we made some cute cupcake toppers.

I made cupcakes from cake mix! Yes, I’m that lazy. I made two sorts though. Vanilla cupcakes that I decorated with my favourite white chocolate & cream cheese frosting that you can find here, and some candy eyes, so they looked like cupcake mummies:).

And the chocolate ones , that I decorated with “slimy” green icing, the cake toppers that we made together, and gummy worms:) . I don’t have to explain to you that they were the kids favourite?

And if you think that the cookie house brownie graveyard was difficult and time consuming, then let me tell you a secret : I bought this pre assembled Wilton cookie house kit, that came in a box with icing and candies! And I decided to add the “graveyard” made of brownie ( again, I was really lazy, so I used a brownie mix) and I decorated it with remaining candies and our cupcake toppers:). It didn’t take more than a half an hour, we had so much fun with Lili, and all of my guests though that I really worked hard ;).