Mummy Pops and Royal Icing Eyeballs

One last, last minute super easy Halloween treat for the year!

I’m sure you’ve seen these fun little mummy pops around the web.  I think they originally stared at How Does She?  This is my own take on it! 

Supplies:
White Almond Bark
1 Package Oreos
Sucker sticks
Ziplock baggies
Royal Icing Eyeballs (see recipe below)

I made my own eyes out of royal icing and since I made the whole batch of royal icing for just a few eyeballs I had a ton of icing and made some little spiders (I know, spiders have eight legs, not six, but it looked better this way . . . )

I used Almond Bark from Walmart, it had kind of a off white tint to it, I wondered if you used chocolate melts if it would have been a truer white.  Does anyone know?  I used one pack of Oreos and one package of bark, but could used a little more bark, I had about five Oreos left over. 

Twist/wedge apart Oreo cookie.  I used a small knife to get it started. 

Dip top of sucker stick in melted white chocolate.  I love my little fondue pot!  It makes projects like this so easy.  No burned chocolate or having to reheat. 

Place dipped part of stick on one side of the cookie. 

Gently smoosh cookie back together. 

Let chocolate harden, to speed up this process place in the fridge for a few minutes. 

    Dip cookie pop in melted white chocolate.

   Coat well, tap off extra. 

Add eyeballs before chocolate hardens.  Let chocolate set up, again place in fridge to speed up the process.

Fill ziplock baggie with melted chocolate, snip off the end.  Pipe on melted chocolate to look like mummy wrapping.   

Add royal icing spiders, let chocolate set up well. 

Place a piece of styrofoam in  bucket stick sticks into.  Pretend like styrofoam got covered up with little accoardian paper filler things and there there it is wrapped in cellophane, tied with a cute bow and a tag with a cute little mummy that says, “Some MUMMY loves you!”

 

Royal Icing Eyballs
Gourmet Mom on the Go

Ingredients:
Royal Icing (recipes below)
Black Food Coloring (or cocoa powder)
Wax Paper
Circular cake decorating frosting tip or Ziploc Freezer Bag

Directions: Tape wax paper to counter or table. Using black food coloring, tint 1/4 of your icing black (if you don't have black food coloring, you can use cocoa powder to make a dark brown--add a little water if your icing gets too thick). Using a cake decorating bag with a circular tip (or simply use a freezer ziploc bag and cut off a tiny bit of one corner if you don't have cake decorating supplies). Using white first, squeeze out a counter full of dots:

Add a small amount of black for the pupil (you can still do this while the white is wet):

Let dry overnight, peel off (the kids love this part!) and store in an airtight container, they will last for months. Pull a few out anytime you want to jazz up your food!

ROYAL ICING (Egg White Recipe)
Ingredients:
3 egg whites, room temperature
1 lb. powdered sugar
1/2 tsp. cream of tartar
Combine ingredients, beat at high speed for 7-10 minutes.

ROYAL ICING (Meringue Powder recipe)
Ingredients:
3 tbsp. meringue powder (you can get this in the wedding/cake supplies at Wal-Mart)
1 lb. confectioners' sugar
6 tbsp. warm water (in humidity use less water)
Beat all ingredients until icing forms peaks at low speed. Yield approximately 3 cups.
Notes: Please keep icing covered with a damp cloth or paper towel while not in use, otherwise it will harden. To attach eyeballs to food, moisten the back of the eyeball with a little water and it will stick to most anything. (Gourmet Mom on the Go)

 

This is my counter full of eyeballs.  I had a lot so I thought it would be fun to make some spiders for the mummies too.  I did a small circle for the head a larger one for the body and little lines for the legs.  I now have enough eyeballs to last us a lifetime!

Pumpkin Reverse Appliqué T-Shirt

{Supplies}

Coordinating thread
Small SHARP scissors
Fabric (orange and green)
T-shirt (I actually found mine at the Dollar Store)
Pins
Pattern/Picture
Ribbon
Embroidery thread (green)
Sewing machine

 

{How To}

Cut a square out of the orange fabric, big enough for you chose pattern and then some.  Pin orange fabric on the INSIDE of your shirt, wherever you want your pumpkin to be.  We choose the top center, on the chest. 

Pin your pumpkin picture onto the FRONT of the shirt, printed mine of the internet.  I actually did a Google search for “pumpkin appliqué” and got a lot of great results. 

Sew around the outside of your pattern, VERY CAREFULLY!  This pumpkin had a bit too many small curves for me, so instead of unpicking my horrible sewing and trying again, I sewed around my pumpkin five or six times, trying to sew close to what I’d already sewed but not right on top of the stitching.  In the end, I liked the look this gave. 

 

Be careful not to sew the back of your shirt to the front, or the front to the back.  I did not once, but twice!  Only sew the front of the shirt, otherwise you won’t be able to fit a little person in there!!

  Here is what my shirt looked like, remember the orange fabric you pinned the back, obviously you want to be able to see that so here’s what you’re going to do next:

 

  Using your small sharp scissors, carefully cut on around the inside of your stitches.  Getting as close as possible to them, with out cutting them.  

Now you have your pumpkin, but it needs a stem.  I wanted my stem to go behind my pumpkin, so this is what I came up with:

Cut a little slit at the top of the pumpkin, but not through the stitches, just above them.   To make my stem I used a piece of brown ribbon, cut, folded in half, sewed together the open edge.  This will go on the inside of the shirt, so you won’t see it.  So I didn’t worry about hiding seams, or as you can see changing my thread color.   Insert sewed end of ribbon through the slit so that the sewed end is inside the shirt Pin and sew on top of the ribbon, I tried to blend this in with the stitches I already  sewed. 

Pumpkin, check.  Stem, check.  Now for the leaf and vines.  Cut out two leaf shapes, place wrong sides together, sew around the edges, turn right side out.   Put some of the leaf in that slit you made to make it look like it’s coming from the pumpkin and the stem.   To sew my leaf onto the shirt, I used coordinating embroidery thread, sewed up the middle and around the edges.  As you can see I did not to a great sewing job with the machine, but I thought it helped the leaf to match a little better so I left it.  As a finishing touch I used the same green embroidery thread and stitched on a few swirly vines.  

   Pretty happy with my finished product, and it even survived the wash.  I had fears it would completely come apart, but it made it!  My pumpkin was a little bumpy, which added character to a pumpkin, but wouldn’t look so great if it was an initial or something.  So my tip would be, chose something with a simple shape that will be easy to sew around.  And make sure when you are pinning you get everything nice and flat and tight.  Oh, and it was super fast, it took me about an hour from start to finish. 

 

 

I’m excited to make some different versions using this technique, Wal-Mart has a ton of plain long sleeved shirts for $3 right now!

 

For more help and tips you can visit:
Crafting in the Closet and Sugar Bee Craft Addition

Read With Me Wednesday: A Year Down Yonder

I have been thinking all week, “What book should I feature on Wednesday?” and was truly stumped.  I’ve read a lot of good books over the last few weeks, but they all have been books from series’ that I’ve already featured.  And then it came to me.  I could not believe it, I had never featured my all time favorite – read it a thousand times, still makes me laugh out loud – book of all time! 

So on this lovely (but stormy, but perfect for ready) Wednesday I would like to invite you to pick up and read A Year Down Yonder.  I promise with all my heart you will love it.  Grandma Dowdle is unforgettable.  I will be shopping at the grocery store or sitting in church and I will do something or someone else will do something, and it will totally make me think of dear old Grandma Dowdle. 

Now if I am being completely honest here I must share that A Year Down Yonder, is actually a sequel book to A Long Way From Chicago, which is really a great book too.  But A Year Down Yonder, is my favorite, and you don’t have to read the first book for the second book to make sense.  They don’t necessarily build on each other, at least not as dramatically as Harry Potter or The Hunger Games. 

I sincerely hope you enjoy this quaint fun little book as much as I do! 

A Year Down Yonder
by Richard Peck
130 pages

 

In this hilarious and poignant sequel to A Long Way to Chicago, Peck once again shows that country life is anything but boring. Chicago-bred Mary Alice (who has previously weathered annual week-long visits with Grandma Dowdel) has been sentenced to a year-long stay in rural Illinois with her irrepressible, rough and gruff grandmother, while Joey heads west with the Civilian Conservation Corps, and her parents struggle to get back on their feet during the 1937 recession. Each season brings new adventures to 15-year-old Mary Alice as she becomes Grandma's partner in crime, helping to carry out madcap schemes to benefit friends and avenge enemies. Around Halloween, for example, the woman, armed with wire, a railroad spike and a bucket of glue, outsmarts a gang of pranksters bent on upturning her privy. Later on, she proves just as apt at squeezing change out of the pockets of skinflints, putting prim and proper DAR ladies in their place and arranging an unlikely match between a schoolmarm and a WPA artist of nude models. Between antic capers, Peck reveals a marshmallow heart inside Grandma's rock-hard exterior and adroitly exposes the mutual, unspoken affection she shares with her granddaughter. Like Mary Alice, audience members will breathe a sigh of regret when the eventful year "down yonder" draws to a close. Ages 10-up.  (Publisher Weekly)

 

Sorry if you got this post on Sunday night, I forgot to “Set Publish Date”! 

Candy Pumpkin Bracelet

{You Will Need}

soft candy corn-sigh pumpkin candies
ribbon and ric-rac
scissors
floss
needle

 

{To Make}

Thread needle with floss.

Tie of end in a pretty good sized knot.

Push needle and floss through a pumpkin.  I found it was easiet to use a hard surface and push the pumpkins down onto the needle, as shown:

Continue threading on pumpkin candies until you have enough to fit around your wrist. 

Once you feel like it’s big enough tie ribbon and ric-rac around the floss in-between pumpkins. 

 

Wear and enjoy!

{Idea Found:  Brown Paper Packages via eighteen25}