Pair up these Skeleton Cupcakes with Bone Pretzels for a Halloween afternoon treat!
Start with an easy cupcake recipe. Spread homemade chocolate frosting then top with marshmallow skull and white frosting body. A little bit of that homemade chocolate frosting on a chopstick can be used to draw a face on the marshmallow skull.
Pretzels get the Halloween treatment when shaped into bones. Start out with this breadmaker pretzel recipe. Roll out long strips, take each end of the strip and slice into two. Roll the two slices until your pretzel dough looks like a bone.
Happy Halloween!!!
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At two years old, she was Max from her favorite book, Maurice Sendak’s Where The Wild Things Are. I scoured the internet for photos of this costume. I found a pattern for a body suit for toddlers and added the feet, tail and headdress. 
At three years old, she was infatuated with Disney’s Cinderella movie. She loved the Fairy Godmother, so I thought that would make a magical costume for Halloween. I never got a picture of the whole ensemble. The cloak always manages to be whipped off before I can get a photo, but here is the inner gown, a classic bell-sleeve dress, lined of course, for added comfort and warmth.
This pink dress on the right, for instance, I am so embarrassed by. It was the first dress I made that year, sort of a trial run before I attempted to make her Fairy Godmother costume. The stitches are messy, the zipper looks hideous, some seams are not well tucked resulting in frays, and worst of all, I sewed the sleeves on upside down. (See how the sleeves bell out like she belongs in a sci-fi movie? It’s not supposed to be that way.)
Regardless of all that, she wore that dress everyday since I made it. I would hide it under other clothes in her drawer, and she would dig it out. I love her. She is teaching me everyday to love myself too.
The avocado is one of my favorite fruits. Avocado is packed with nutrients such as folate, potassium, vitamin E and lutein. When in season during the summer months, avocados are always on my weekly grocery list.
First Solid Food for Baby
I immerse the flat half of the avocado seed in water, pointed end upwards, and set it on a sunny spot in the kitchen. I’ve made the mistake once of setting it outdoors and the squirrels ate it! Change the water every couple of days, and you may be surprised with some sprouts! When the sprouts are well formed, plant in potting soil with the tip of the seed peeking above the soil surface. Put the plant out on a sunny area, perhaps on a spot the squirrels can’t dig up. Keep the soil fairly moist and with good drainage.
First scrub and wash the inside of the avocado skin until it is clean. Working on a chopping block with the inside of the avocado skin facing you, cut out a couple of eyes, a nose and a mouth. Keep it simple or get creative. Don’t expect it to look like much at first, because the avocado skin needs to dry in the sun for a few days before it shrivels and curls into the gnarly shape of a shrunken head.
