Kitchen Crafts for Halloween

Have you had enough ghosts yet?  This horde of haunts will make you scream for more!  This Halloween, add a touch of ghostly flair to your home with these Salt Dough Spooks.

Simple items you will need from your home or local ghost-ery store:

• 1 cup flour
• 1 cup salt
• ½ cup water
• 1 mixing bowl
• 1 wooden spoon
• 1 fine tipped black permanent marker

How to make your Halloween decoration:

1. Pour the flour, salt, and water into a mixing bowl and stir with the wooden spoon until smooth. 
   
2. Divide the dough into 6 equal pieces and transform each lump into the shape of a ghost, but make sure to flatten the bottom so that our ghastly companion can stand up.
3. Microwave the ghosts on a plate just one or two at a time in 25 second intervals until the salt dough becomes rather firm.
4. When the dough cools, use your fine tipped market to draw on the eyes and mouth.

Now you have a gaggle of ghosts ready to haunt any location in the house!

Caution: These spooky critters are not meant to be eaten.

For some added fun, build your ghouls a playground!  Some terrifying trees should do the trick!

You will need:

• 1 medium sized paper grocery bag
• 1 pair of scissors
• 1 small plastic bottle
• Pebbles or some other weights

Instructions:

1. Begin by cutting off and tossing away the bottom of the brown grocery bag.  Then slit open one of the sides so that when you unfold it you have a large rectangle.
2. Place the bottle into the center of the rectangle.
3. Gather the paper around the bottle and twist it around the neck. Take you scissors and cut a little down from the top making several strips, which will become tree limbs.
4. Take these and twist them to about 3-4 inches from the ends.
5. Take the untwisted ends and cut them a little down from the top, as you did in step 3, and twist them into even smaller branches.
6. Remove the bottle and use the pebbles to fill the trunk to help weigh it down.
7. Twist the trunk shut.

And voila!  A twisted forest fit for any Halloween creature!