Pumpkins, spiders and lanterns
As it’s halloween, I thought I ought to do some things with the children (even though I don’t really like halloween). But I must admit, you can get lots of fun activities out of halloween.
Spider cakes
First, we made some spider and cat cakes. Nana baked the cakes.
The children then iced them with green butter icing. They did really well, despite it being quite ‘sticky’. Next, they rolled some fondant icing into little balls and squashed them down to be the spiders body. They placed black liquorice laces on the cake for legs.
The cakes looked really good and I must admit, tasted really good too (Mmmmm!). The children always love decorating cakes.
Pumpkin carving
Next came the pumpkin carving. This was a bit dangerous for them with the knives, so they mostly watched me have a try.
Here is my attempt at carving a pumpkin……
Hopefully next year, they will be able to join in a bit more.
Pumpkin oranges
We removed the inside of some oranges. The children stuck sticker faces on them, so they looked like pumpkins and then filled them with mousse.
They really had fun doing this and especially the eating after dinner!
Lanterns
The last thing we did, was to make lanterns. We glued some orange tissue paper to a jam jar, then glued some black cut out shapes of spiders, pumpkins etc to the tissue paper.
We put a battery operated tea light inside each jar which made it glow nicely. The children all thought this was great (and safe without candles). We had dinner with the lights out and just the lanterns and pumpkin glowing, it was great! I would recommend giving this a go. I might have to try this again with christmas lanterns?



















Wow you did so much! The cakes are fabulous but I do love the pumpkin and oranges. You look like you know what you’re doing! It was our first time with pumpkins this year
Love the lanterns. We did something similar using milk cartons, although you need to cut a flap in the back for the tea light. Good idea about the Christmas lanterns too.
Love those spider cakes – they look great and don’t look difficult to make.
Thanks, they were very easy, I recommend them
What beautiful lanterns! I love these crafts! Thanks so much for sharing with the Monday parenting pin it party. I have pinned and shared
Thank you. We liked the lanterns so much I am thinking about some christmas ones now