This weekend, my friend J and I saw these on the cover of Woman’s Day Magazine:

And we just had to make them. All we did was cover a Styrofoam wreath form in black duct tape, and then we hot-glued candy corn to it in alternating rows, starting on the outer edge. They turned out exactly like the picture from the magazine. If you want to try this project, and need more direction, go to the Woman’s Day website. They have all the instructions there, I checked. A word of warning—do not try to shortcut this by using glue dots. We tried, and all the candy corn fell off the next day. We had to redo the entire thing! Talk about a big Doh. Upon this realization, I used words that are not fit for public consumption. However, we forged on, and learned that following directions is sometimes for the best.

During the past month of Halloween crafting madness, I have purchased several Halloween books, and I wanted to pass along my two favorites.

The first is this one from Gooseberry Patch:

This book has been my favorite purchase this year. It has lots of cute ideas and recipes that do not require as much expense or expertise as say, Martha Stewart. Don’t get me wrong, I love Martha (I even have some big projects of hers in the works), but not everyone has the money, technical know-how or Yankee taste buds to pull some of her stuff off. This Gooseberry Patch book has things that are a little more manageable for creatively challenged people like me.

My other current favorite Halloween book is this gem:

My husband picked this one up for me, and it is loaded with cute, creative recipes that are not ridiculously difficult. The author is a mom herself, so the recipes are more practical for cooking in a busy family, and for a crowd. Also, unlike some Halloween recipes, most of the ones in this book are of food people will actually eat, instead of just the clever-looking, but not really appetizing food I’ve seen elsewhere. I can’t wait to try the Vanilla Pumpkin Spice fudge, but alas, there seems to be a canned pumpkin shortage in my town, so I am out of luck right now.

In completely unrelated news, my kid gave me his cold, so I am going to take some Day-Quil and hide under my desk for a while.