Fall crafts, part 1

I have been busy putting fall Pinterest craft and recipe ideas to use and thought I would share a few that were fun and easy. There still dozens of pins on my "fall" board, so I'll have to start doubling up if I want to get through them all before the Christmas crafts take over!  My kids beg to do crafts, so it's really more about me getting my act together and planning them, pulling out supplies and being prepared for the school room destruction.

This hot mess was something I made up as I went along. We collected different shaped leaves at the park, the kids cut out a "tree trunk" and pasted them on. Cute? Not so much. Cheap, easy craft? Absolutely.

Footprint witches...Ryan (far right) didn't want his witch to have 5 feet (his toes from the footprint) so he connected them to look like bent knees on her broom. Clever!  Too bad his witch is riding her broom backward...!

This was supposed to a brown hand/wrist print that was the branches of a tree, then the kids could decorate each tree for each season. But their hands were too big, so there was no trunk, it was all tree. I rarely buy supplies, so we used some gold paint I had instead of brown. And yet I wonder why our crafts never look as nice as the pictures on Pinterest...???

Pile o' Bones snack

Prepping the apples for our homemade apple sauce. (I could not survive without my apple corer/peeler/slicer - it is one of my favorite kitchen gadgets!)

The finished product was a brown pile of goo, so I'm showing you the before picture.  Much prettier!  The recipe was simply 8 apples (peeled and sliced/chopped), 1 cup water, 1/2 tsp cinnamon. Cook on high for 2-3 hours in your crock pot, then turn it to low for 2-3 hours. Pulse in food processor or blender till smooth.  Easy, sugarless and DELISH!

pumpkin pretzels

Homemade caramel popcorn

These were supposed to be castles (using empty toilet paper rolls and paper towel rolls) - you can kind of the see the "top" of Kaylin's pizza box turned castle. The kids made Lego creations with them. 

Hand-held Apple Pie dessert

"Witches Brooms" - obviously just pretzel sticks jammed into upside down, mini Reece's PB cups

candy airplanes (totally unrelated to fall, but we made them for Jason's airplane birthday party this weekend)

Ingredients for the next delicious, easy-assembly project...

...voila - edible acorns!