Fall-o-ween!

Growing up my parents choice to not celebrate Halloween with us kids, and they still do not with Jack and Chloe. It was a struggle growing up being asked "What are you for Halloween?" and having to respond that you do not celebrate Halloween. Or your friends coming to school the next with mounds and mound of candy from Trick-or-Treating while you have none. I'm not going to lie I hated it.


On the contrary now, I'm not a fan of Halloween. Despite that fact that it is fun to dress up as something you could never be on any other day, it's another commercialize, money sucking holiday. And honestly it is not a holiday. What are we honoring/ celebrating here? I'll leave it up to your interpretation, but my thought on the matter is its showcasing the darkness of our world today.  


Are we throwing ourselves into this too much? What are we subjecting ourselves to? And are we wasting our money? According to Get Rich Slowly, "those celebrating are expected to spend an average of $72.31 on decorations, costumes, and candy, up from $66.28 in 2010. Total spending is expected to reach $6.86 billion. "  OUCH. 


In spite of my anti-halloweeness, the season surrounding Halloween is my favorite. Everything about Fall is amazing. Pumpkins, colorful leaves, wearing scarfs, apple picking, caramel apples, corn mazes, candy corn, etc, etc.  Just because I don't dress up as a sexy cop like every other college student on campus doesn't mean I cant enjoy fall. Truthfully, I may even enjoy it more than them considering some of them wont even remember what happened Halloween night the morning after. 


Since the boys I watch celebrate Halloween, (which is totally ok), and I  more or less celebrate the season of fall coming, I felt it the perfect opportunity to partake in fall-o-weenish actvities, like carving pumpkins, jumping in the leaves, making caramel apples and popcorn and roasting pumpkin seeds!

They were out of school yesterday so we started with Pumpkin carving. They had only carved once before and had never cleaned out a pumpkin (which is my favorite part) so it was fun! 

Afterwards we, more like I, made caramel for caramel apples. I tried out a new recipe for a Honey Caramel. While I am not the biggest honey fan, this was one of the best caramels I ever had. It may have been because of the freshness and lack of ingredients that turned me onto it thought. 3 simple ingredients: honey, whipping cream, salt. I will be posting the recipe tomorrow for all you go-getters who are up for trying something new. 

The boys had a fabulous time decorating their apples!

I used the left over caramel and popped some natural slightly salted popcorn  and drizzled the caramel on top. It turned out a-maz-ing. 

At the end of the day, I raked up all the leave in the yard while the boys played football. I asked them if they wanted to jump in the leaves and you would have though I just told them we were going to Disneyland. LOL. 

Ahhhh, now that's what I like to call Fall-o-ween. 

Happy Fall everyone! 

Until Next Time,

Jasmine