White Chocolate Caramel and Marshmallow Popcorn Balls

This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc., and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #SweetenTheSeason #CollectiveBias

Need an easy, last minute Halloween treat for classrooms or parties? Well, I have just the treat for you: White Chocolate Caramel and Marshmallow Popcorn Balls! Why would I create such deliciousness? Well, I needed a sweet treat, that wasn't candy, for my friends and their kids. Some of these kids are a little over cupcakes so I was running out of ideas when I remembered that I used to make popcorn balls. They are so easy to make, can store for days and come on, who doesn't love popcorn!

Like I mentioned before, these are easy peasy to make. You need a few ingredients, a little time and some cute ribbon!

White Chocolate Caramel & Marshmallow Popcorn Balls

Ingredients:

2 bags natural popcorn, popped (no butter)

1 tbsp unsalted butter

1 bar BAKER'S Premium White Chocolate

1 11oz pkg of KRAFT Caramel Bits

1 7oz JET-PUFFED Marshmallow Creme

3 tbsp water

Pop your popcorn and lay out on a cookie tray topped with parchment paper. Turn your oven onto warm, or the lowest setting, and place popcorn tray in oven.

In a small pot, add the 1 tbsp of unsalted butter and the chocolate bar (broken in pieces) over low heat until chocolate is melted. Stir continuously.

Once chocolate is melted, add caramel bits and water. Stir.

Add marshmallow creme and continue stirring.

Raise the heat to medium-low and continue stirring mixture. The caramel bits will slowly melt. If mixture stays too chunky, add a little more water, 1 tbsp at a time.

Pull popcorn out of oven. As soon as the chocolate caramel sauce is nice and smooth, remove from heat and quickly pour all over the popcorn.

Now it's time to use your hands. Rub a little butter or olive oil on your hands and mix all the popcorn and sauce together. Try to cover all the popcorn. Wash your hands with warm water to remove all the sauce. Then grab two hand-sized pieces of wax paper, scoop some of the popcorn up with the wax paper (like gloves) and form into a ball. I make my popcorn balls quite large but you can make them any size you want. 2 bags of popped corn will usually give me 12 large popcorn balls. I say usually because I eat some along the way so I might end up with 11! LOL

These ooey, gooey balls of perfection are the perfect treat for any gathering, but especially sweet during Halloween! 

I mean, look at this!!

All that's left to do is package them in clear bags ad attach a cute ribbon! I usually make popcorn balls 2-3 days before I give them out or serve them at a party. They store well in an air-tight container!

In my opinion, this is a sweet treat that anyone can make, especially busy moms!! Moms can create lots of easy, budget-friendly holiday recipes with KRAFT items all from the Walmart Bake Center!

Tell me: Have you ever made popcorn balls? What yummy deliciousness do you add?

Simple Halloween Bathroom Decorating

Disclosure: This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc., and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #LoveAmericanHome #CollectiveBias

I love decorating for the holidays. I tend to go a little overboard in my decorating actually but my family has gotten used to the crazy. They expect holiday decorations in every room of the home, even the bathrooms. Yup! I even decorate my bathrooms. We have one guest bath downstairs, right when you walk into our apartment, and that's the first one that gets decorated. Here are some simple Halloween bathroom decorating ideas that you can definitely recreate in your homes!

We don't have an actual fall season here in South Florida so I overcompensate by buying lots and lots of fall scented candles. I'm a big Yankee Candle® brand fan so I was super excited when I found these American Home™ by Yankee Candle® brand candles the other day at Walmart. I picked up three different scents in three different sizes so I can place them all around my home!

I knew one of the candles would be perfect for my downstairs guest bath. I haven't really done anything in this bathroom since we moved into this apartment but with the holiday season coming up, I knew it was time to decorate. First up: Halloween! Here are some before pictures of my super boring guest bathroom:

I mean, it was bad. So plain Jane!

After I chose my candles, I went into the home decor section and grabbed orange towels, black towels and a glass canister. Then I went into the Halloween section and grabbed pumpkins, a skull, spider webbing and some other Halloween-themed items! I wanted my bathroom to be fun but not spooky, scary or over the top!

I started with the towel bar. I hung an black towel over an orange towel and then tied a skeleton garland over it. 

A simple folded black towel topped with a pumpkin. Simple and fun!

I filled the glass canister with pumpkins and a glittered skull. Then I topped it with spider webbing and a glitter spider. Gotta keep it fun!

More pumpkins and a eerie rat!

Let's not forget my American Home™ by Yankee Candle® brand Shades of Fall candle!

My guest bathroom is a half-bath so it's very easy to decorate. All you have to do is add a couple pieces to pull together your theme!

I love this skeleton garland!

Oh and that super boring window is now a creepy spider's nest! 

I am obsessed with these glittered spiders. Glitter always adds such a fun touch to holiday decorations!

The American Home™ by Yankee Candle® brand is sold exclusively at Walmart. Check out the full Walmart assortment page for more information on all available fragrances!

Tell me: Do you also decorate your bathrooms for the holidays? I'm already planning my next look!

DIY Halloween Treat Bags

Disclosure: This shop has been compensated by Collective Bias, Inc., and its advertiser. All opinions are mine alone. #TrickOrSweet #CollectiveBias

"Trick or treat! Smell my feet! Give me something good to eat!" I can't wait for it to be Halloween and I get to hand out treats to all the ghouls, goblins and little monsters that will be knocking on my door. I live in a large apartment complex where there are lots of kids and teenagers and Halloween is always a fun night. Last year, I saw how crafty my neighbors were with their treats, so this year I am stepping up my treat bag game. This year I am creating cute Halloween treat bags stuffed full of delicious candy for all my neighbors!!

First things first, I need candy and LOTS of it. Regular sized bags wouldn't cut it this year so I went to Walmart and purchased the BIG bags of Hershey's candy. Have you seen these bags yet? They come with fun Halloween designs on them and they contain between 145-210 pieces of candy. I started with two bags but I have a feeling I might need some more!

There are only a few specifics to these bags. They really are a design as you go type deal. You can go as elaborate or as simple as you want. Basic materials required are:

For one bag

Felt (any color you want)

Ruler

Hot glue gun

scissors

googly eyes, pipe cleaner (anything you want to add)

My bags weren't too big. They measure 3"W x 4" L and 1" W by 4"L for the handles 

I started out making 4 treat bags. These were my test subjects. I wanted to keep them funny and not scary. I don't do scary Halloween! I figured funny face monsters would be loved by all!

Once I cut 2-3" x 4" pieces of felt, I used hot glue to glue three sides together.

Then I added the handles. I just used a dab of hot glue at each end and attached to the open corners of the bags.

Not hard at all.............

Then comes the fun, deciding what your funny face monster will look like. I wanted a Frankenstein looking monster so I cut hair, a unibrow and a mustache out of black felt. Then I hot glued these pieces onto the front of my bag, along with two googly eyes!

Come on, who doesn't love a mustached monster???

Then I just followed the above steps for the other 3 bags. It's Halloween so of course I needed a Jack O'Lantern bag!

A three-eyed monster is always a must!

Oh and let's not forget a girly monster with a skirt and big hairbow! 

Once I finished my four bags (honestly, they took 15 minutes total), I stuffed them full of yummy Hershey's candy. These kids are in luck, they are getting Twizzlers, Kit Kats, Reese's, Jolly Rancher. Halloween doesn't get any sweeter than this!

These Halloween treat bags are so simple to make and would also be a fun family activity. My kids will be making some this weekend. I can't wait until Halloween to see the kids faces when they receive their Funny face monster treat bags!!

Remember, the BIG bags of Hershey's Candy are available at your local Walmart. I found mine right at the entrance!

Tell me: How do you plan on changing up your Halloween treat-giving this year? 

Volunteering In The Classroom

If there is one thing I love is volunteering in Adrian's classroom. It's a great opportunity to show him that being involved is important. Teachers have lots of fun ideas but with limited time and budget, it makes it hard to get those ideas off the ground. In come the classroom moms. I take every lunch break and day off of work that I can to volunteer in the classroom. I've being doing it for the past two years and it's really so fun. Anyway, a couple of weeks ago, another one of the second grade class moms asked if I could come in and help her decorate the classroom doors for Halloween and take fall pictures. I was there the next morning ready to create!

There are 4 second grade classrooms so we decided to have a Mummy Door, a Monster Door, a Frankenstein door and a Dracula door:

 This is Adrian's classroom door:

The kids are thrilled with their doors. This even created a rivalry with the first grade classrooms who later decorated their doors as well!

We also took fall pictures of the kids. We asked for donations of fall items from the teachers and other parents and created an adorable setup:

Here's Adrian's pic so you can see how cute they looked. I am currently putting them in decorated frames so the kids can take the pictures home to their parents next week!

I;m already scheduled to be back in the classroom on Halloween for trick-or-treating, pumpkin carving and a "create goo" science experiment! 

Do you volunteer in your child's classroom? What fun fall stuff do their teachers have planned?