DIY Gourd Place Cards

Who's excited for Thanksgiving this week?! If you're the one hosting, you might be a little more stressed than excited. Making your table Thanksgiving ready can be a little overwhelming. But here's a super easy way to make your table festive and make your guests feel welcome without a lot of work - place cards made from gourds.

What you need:

• gourds
• a knife
• sturdy paper
• a decorative pen

All you need to do is take the knife and cut a slit on the top of the gourd that's about the length of your paper. You'll need to sort of wiggle the knife back and forth to make sure the slit is wide enough. Write your guests' names on the paper and insert them into each gourd and voila! Instant personalized table settings. If you don't necessarily want to make name cards you could even use this same method to specify "adult's table" and "kid's table" or maybe just one general "give thanks" decoration.

Halloween Reminiscing

When our kids were younger, we hosted large Halloween parties every year. As you can see from the photos, even the adults got into the spirit! We played traditional games – bobbing for apples was always a huge, messy hit. We did variations on “Pin the Tail on the Donkey”, such as pin the stem on the jack o’lantern. Every year we would experiment with different, spooky food and drink concoctions. There were great parties and created great memories for all the kids. Sometimes when our extended family gets together, the twenty-somethings that enjoyed these parties so much when they were children look back at these pictures and talk about how much fun they had choosing their costumes and playing those games.

What are some of your favorite Halloween memories?

Halloween Cupcakes: 4 Ways

Halloween is nearly upon us! So if you're planning a party and want to make some festive desserts, there are so many different creative options. We created four different types of cupcakes you could make to liven up that dessert table.

Pumpkin
You'll need:

• a sheet of caramel to cover the cupcake
• half a green Dots candy for the stem
• chocolate chips for the face (and a tiny bit of frosting to make them stick - or you can heat up the caramel in the microwave for a few seconds)

Black Cat
You'll need:

• black or brown sprinkles to cover the cupcake
• colored candies for the eyes and nose
• long white sprinkles for the antlers
• a pretzel twist broken in half for the ears

Skeleton
You'll need:

• White sugar or sprinkles (or just plain white frosting) to cover the cupcake
• Chocolate chips for the eyes and nose
• 3 marshmallows cut in half for the teeth

Frankenstein
You'll need:

• green sprinkles to cover the cupcake
• 2 red M&M's for the eyes
• 2 orange Dots candies for the neck
• carmel sheet for the hair
• black gel frosting to cover the hair, mouth, eyebrows and scar

Almost too cute to eat, right? Do you have any favorite Halloween desserts?