The weather is changing and with it my thoughts have turned to the first of the season’s festivals, Hallowe’en! I love making decorations, any excuse to put bunting up and add a little colour to dreary days; as soon as I get all of the materials out, I get a buzz of excitement that lifts me. I’ve kept my decorations simple, so that children could help, and they are small enough to use on the table.
We made mini bunting: 10 x small triangles of orange felt 10 x small triangles of black felt 1 x length of narrow black ribbon or ric-rac - I used ribbon that had black sequins on for extra sparkle! A hot glue gun.
Simply put a small line of glue on to the top of the triangles, one at a time, and stick alternate colours on to the ribbon, done!
I also glued sparkly mini Pom-poms and glittery stars onto wooden cocktail sticks. A really effective way to jazz up the food.
Our table top treats included lots of fruit and veggies. Hallowe’en is synonymous with sweets and candy. By making the table look really exciting and playing around with the food a bit, it is really easy to make a healthy spread look like a real treat. I did use a few sweeties to add to the effect, gummy worms and chocolate eyeballs and there were homemade brownies on the table, but the fresh fruit and veg options were definitely the stars of the show!
I bought some icing sugar googly eye decorations, (Sainsbury’s) and stuck them with a little peanut butter onto halved peeled bananas to make Boo Nanas. I peeled kiwi fruit leaving the top end of skin on (for hair), and stuck googly eyes on to make mini Frankenstein heads. We stuck eyes onto whole strawberries and large blackberries. Basically anything with eyes stuck onto it is funny!
We made alien mouths out of two slices of apple, peanut butter in between, flaked almond teeth and a sliver of strawberry for a tongue. I poked blueberries onto cocktail sticks for eyes on stalks.
Hannah made lychee eyeballs by putting a dried cranberry into a grape that fitted perfectly into a de-stoned lychee (from a tin). The eyeballs floated in a pool of passion fruit and mango coulis - completely gross!
One of the best things we made were the mini pumpkin tangerines. Simply peel the tangerine, keep it whole and put a green stem on it - We used the green top from the strawberries. Really easy and effective and a great way to get very young children involved.
Guacamole and humous are great dips to use for a healthy, Hallowe’en spread. Give them names like squashed frog dip; be as creative as you dare! We served ours with cucumber batons poking out of a carved orange pepper, cherry tomatoes and tortilla chips.
Avocado halves make great monster heads, we used sliced olives for eyes, tomatoes for noses and carrot slices for tongues
For a nut free feast, stick the eyes onto the fruit with set honey or chocolate spread. You could use regular or dairy free cream cheese instead of nut butter for the alien mouths and sunflower seeds for teeth.
 Fruity, spooky treats!  Dressing a table and adding a few sweets, disguises the predominantly healthy offerings.  We had so much fun making the decorations and food for these pictures. Everything was really easy to make and a great thing to do with the children.