Oatmeal for my Pumpkins

On holidays, I try to think of fun ways to serve food to my kids. Usually, it's the same old thing with a different presentation. So, this morning, I decided to decorate our bowls of oatmeal up (by adding orange food coloring and chocolate chips) and make them into pumpkins. The kids loved the look, but it was funny because since they aren't used to chocolate chips in their oatmeal, they didn't like it as much as I thought they would. Humph.

Cheesecloth Ghosts

My mom made these with us when I was a child. We used to get them out each Halloween and they were a family favorite. I decided to make them with my kids this year and they loved it! Here are the directions:
Collect desired bottles or containers for the body forms. You are going to make the shape of a ghost, and then drape cheesecloth over it to make the ghost.

Scrunch up newspaper for the heads. Cover the newspaper with plastic wrap, so the newspaper print doesn't rub off onto your white ghosts. Or, you could try using foil instead.

Tape plastic spoons or the like to the sides to shape arms.

Cut out desired sheets of cheesecloth to drape over the figures. Two or three layers of cheesecloth makes the ghost look really good. (You can find cheesecloth at hardware and craft stores.)

Put Elmer's glue in a dish and add some water until it is thin. I probably used 1 bottle of Elmer's glue and about 1/3 cup water. (Martha Stewart uses liquid starch, and I read you can also use heavy sugar water. But Elmer's glue works great too and it's what we had on hand.)

After you dip the cheesecloth in the glue, squeeze off all of the excess and drape it over the form, one layer at a time, until you like what you see. (If I could do it over, I would have put foil or waxed paper down on the table instead of newspaper, because- hello, newspaper STICKS to elmer's glue and it was a pain to peel them off.) They need about one and a half days to dry thoroughly. Enjoy!