Pumpkin Pie

One of my favorite images from last night...

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It's The Great Pumkin Charlie Brown

It's The Great Pumpkin, Charlie Brown airs tonight and again tomorrow night.  We will DVR it and watch it about 11 times between now and Halloween, it's one of the highlights of the season for me.  I love the music and the atmosphere, and the low key sweet vibe of it all.  We have ambitions to bake up some organic vegan pumpkin chocolate chip cookies and make an event of it.  Happy Halloween everybody!

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Vunce Upon A Time...

Story time is extra fun around the holidays, I think.  VUNCE UPON A TIME, by Seibold and Vivian, is an amusing tale about Dagmar, a little vegetarian vampire who ventures out on Halloween.  What's not to Love about a Vegetarian Vampire?!  He even keeps a vegetable garden--this is a character after my heart.   It's hard to grow vegetables by the light of the moon, however, so Dagmar keeps a candy stash.  When the candy runs out, he learns about Halloween and decides to participate for the first time.  This leads to an adventure and a sweet conclusion.

Vivian's illustrations are vibrant and often on a black backdrop, making them pop out at you.  There is one two page spread depicting Halloween night and trick or treating that is especially delightful and has tons of little details that kids love to look at for long periods of time.


OVER IN THE HOLLOW is a numbers and rhyming book with a Halloween theme.  The reader will count skeletons, pumpkins, mummies and owls while looking at not too scary illustrations and enjoying the rhythm.

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Boo-opoly for Halloween: Stay at Home Fun

Need some festive entertainment for Halloween?  If you like Monopoly, you will probably like this Halloween themed version of the classic.  Boo-opoly is perfect for Halloween parties or for fun after trick or treating. Instead of the shoe, the dog, the car, etc, lead free pewter game pieces include a ghost, pumpkin, and scary cat.

The houses are haunted, full moons take the place of hotels, and property names are transformed into apt titles, for instance Park Place in Boo-opoly is Dark Place.  The artwork on the board is great, featuring spooky trees, a full moon and dark clouds, the dice are black and orange, the properties are marked with tombstones--visually it's wonderful.  It's for players age 8 and up, but I played it with my five year old and we did great, he loved the imagery and got the concept.

For younger players, 5-8, Late for The Sky, the company who makes Boo-opoly, makes a more age appropriate game, Monster-opoly, which is a less complicated version of monopoly.  Players collect monsters instead of property and each monster has a funny bio with its own monster characteristics.  They're not scary, but funny, like the Giggle Monster and my favorite, the Broccoli Monster.  The die is large for little hands and the graphics on the board are silly and fun.  It's a cute game.

Late for The Sky games are made in the US and are printed on recycled paper using soy based inks.  I think these games and a big bowl of popcorn and festive treats would make for a great night in.

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Face Painting for Halloween

Here's a cool book for Halloween.  Klutz Face Painting.  It is full of face painting ideas and comes with non-toxic water based face paint.  The colors are your basic primary colors, but you can mix them to make other colors.  It comes with a brush and foam applicator.

 The book has detailed instructions to show you how to make  all sorts of fun faces, like a tiger, vampire, Frankenstein, leopard, and many more.  It includes little designs and tattoos so you can be as elaborate or simple as you like.  This would make any event more festive but I think it would be perfect for a Halloween party.  Find it HERE.

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Charlie and Lola Halloween Sticker Book

Lola is having a hard time deciding what to be for Halloween. She's not alone! My son changes his costume idea pretty much daily. We've run the gamut from ghost, alligator, astronaut to wizard to name a few. It's actually kind of fun to watch kids change their minds and become enchanted with new ideas, however fleeting.

In the pages of My Halloween Sticker Stories, Lola contemplates costume ideas, grows a pumpkin from seed, and deals with a big disappointment in a positive way. The book comes with a couple of pages of stickers which is always exciting for my four year old. You can't go wrong with Charlie and Lola and they are extra fun on holidays.

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