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Last weekend we hosted some of our closest friends and their little ones from out of town. When planning out our evening and trying to figure out something that was both and adult and kid friendly I had the idea of creating a DIY s’mores station. I mean I already had a ton of candy for Halloween, and who doesn’t love a S’more?! And while S’mores have been billed a summer treat, I feel there’s no better time to enjoy a S’more than by the fire on a chilly fall evening.
Building your own DIY S’Mores tray is extremely simple, and a great way to get the kids involved. Using a large galvanized tin tray that has been my go-to for BBQ’s and patio drinks for years now and just happens to be on sale, I added three different kinds of graham crackers; chocolate, regular, and cinnamon. And then kept it classic with jumbo marshmallows, Hershey Bars, and Reeses Peanut Butter Cups.
You can go “gourmet” with your S’Mores tray and add all sorts of different high-end chocolates, but I argue against it. I’ve tried fancy S’Mores at numerous places, but nothing beats the melt and classic taste of a Hershey Bar. To finish the tray off simply add plates or napkins, and get your roasting sticks ready. I had the hubs grab sticks from the neighborhood for roasting, but if you’re looking for a more permanent solution I love these marshmallow roasting sticks.
After the tray was built all that was left to do was cozy up the space with plenty of blankets and pillows and build a fire. We have an extremely small backyard, but that doesn’t prevent us from utilizing every square inch of the space we do have. Which of course includes a fire pit. We used to have a larger fire pit, but found that took up too much of the coveted small space. So this year I opted for a smaller and very inexpensive version. After one full season of use, I’m extremely happy with the results. It’s easy to move and store out of the way when we’re not using it but gets the job done when we’re ready to cozy up with an evening fire.
So next time you have friends over for dinner, or want to get the kids outside, throw a few logs on the fire and build this super simple S’mores tray for the perfect way to end any evening. Truly, MKR
When I was thinking about what I wanted to make to celebrate the haunting season I thought why not make a homemade Halloween Chocolate Candy Bark with all of the Halloween candy I have sitting around tempting me on a daily basis. I love Homemade Chocolate Barks for a multitude of reasons. The main one being that chocolate barks look way more difficult to make than they actually are. I also love that the possibilities of bark combinations are endless. Plus candy barks make the cutest homemade food gifts! So for all those reasons and more, I’m thrilled to share my Homemade Halloween Chocolate Candy Bark with ya’ll today!
As stated above, candy barks are incredibly easy to make. All you need to create this homemade Halloween Chocolate Candy Bark for yourself is baking chocolate, candies of your choosing (I used Mini Kit-Kats, Peanut Butter Cups, M&Ms, Rolos, Sprinkles, and Candy Eyeballs), parchment paper and a sheet pan.
When it comes to the actual creating, the trick to creating a perfect homemade Halloween Chocolate Candy Bark every time relays on 3 different things.
First, have your candy prepared and ready to place because you’ll need to work fast so the candies don’t melt into the bark. The easiest way to do this is plan out in advance what candies you want to use, color themes you want to stick with, and most importantly have everything unwrapped and ready to go.
Second, when spreading the chocolate out to create the bark base make sure to go thin. You’ll want the chocolate to completely cover the parchment paper, but just barely. This was my mistake the first time in trying this recipe. I made the bark way too thick which makes the chocolate bark taste too sweet, difficult to cut into pieces and incredibly hard to eat.
Lastly, you need to let the chocolate cool for just a few minutes. If you begin placing the candies the second you have your bark spread out they’ll begin to melt. Wait 2-3 minutes and start with the non-chocolate candies that won’t melt like the candy eyeballs in this case. Candy Corn is also one of those great non-melting candies to try.
After letting the bark cool in the fridge for at least 10 hours (I prefer overnight), you’re ready to cut it into pieces. There’s no particular rhyme or reason to this, but I found the easiest way is to lay the bark out on a completely flat surface and with a very sharp knife start with the edges. Your edges won’t have a finished look to them, and sometimes that works out to look great, but sometimes you’ll need to trim them. Next, cut the bark in half. It doesn’t necessarily have to be directly cut in half across, but by dividing the bark into two larger pieces it will make it easier to slice. Then try to either cut around the larger pieces or make it so you cut the larger pieces in half.
And as best you can avoid touching the chocolate too much with your fingers. Because the chocolate bark is thin your body heat will naturally begin to melt and smudge it if you touch it too much.
Once you’ve cut all the pieces, put the Halloween Bark back in the fridge for an hour to completely let the chocolate set and re-harden from any softening that may have happened while cutting.
And voila, the cutest, most festive homemade Halloween Chocolate Candy Bark you’ve ever seen! I love whipping up a couple batches of this to gift to my neighbors and take into work. And how cute would this bark be served on this itsy bitsy spider plate!
See the recipe below, and if you’re reading this via Bloglovin’ you’ll need to click into the post to get the complete recipe. Happy Halloween friends! Truly, MKR
P.S. If baking isn’t your thing at all Williams Sonoma has some Mummy Halloween Bark that is almost as cute!
Baking Chocolate of your choosing, you'll need about about 25-30 oz for one bark
Candy of your choosing
1 tablespoon canola oil
parchment paper
sheet pan
Instructions
Prepare all of the candies, removing all the wrappings, and set them aside where you plan to create your bark.
Cut out parchment paper to the size of your sheet pan, and place inside your sheet pan. Set aside.
In a large pot over medium to low heat melt your chocolate and stir with a spatula or whisk. You'll want to stir the entire time the chocolate is melting, otherwise you'll run the risk of burning your chocolate.
When the chocolate has completely melted, turn of the heat and add canola oil. The oil helps the chocolate shine.
Pour the chocolate out onto your parchment paper and spread with a spatula to create a thin layer. Once spread out, lift the pan just slightly and carefully hit down onto your surface. This will remove any air bubbles and help even it out.
Let chocolate cool for 2-3 minutes then begin placing your candies. Once your candies are placed put the sheet pan into the fridge and let cool a minimum of 8 hours. I prefer to let it cool overnight.
By Mandy Kellogg Rye, Waiting On Martha
Welcome by Waiting on Martha https://waitingonmartha.com/
The minute October, more like September, hits I’m ready to decorate my porch in all of the festive-goodness the season brings. However, when I first bought my home four years ago, I found that I was spending a ton of money decorating for each season: fall, Halloween, Thanksgiving, Christmas. So over the years, I’ve made it my mission to figure out how to make my outdoor decor able to transition through the seasons with only minimal changes. And after a few rounds of trial and error, I think I’ve finally gotten it down well enough to share.
Before I dive into the details, I thought it important to share that this is not my home. This is one of my Waiting On Martha Home Retail Manager’s gorgeous home. I think it’s important to state that because you may be looking at this and feel, “my porch is not near this large so this look just won’t work for my home.” Well trust me, my porch is tiny (like tiny-tiny), and this same formula works, I just use less of it. So whether you have a giant farmhouse with a sprawling yard, a row home stoop, or even an apartment balcony you want to make feel more festive, this will work. I promise. Now let’s get down to the nitty gritty shall we?
When building the “bones” or base of the outside design I first start with the idea of fall. For me, fall means corn stalks, mums, and plenty of pumpkins. The great thing about starting here is it’s obviously the first season, but all of the fall decorations will also work for Thanksgiving. If you have any pillars to work with, corn stalks are a great way to decorate those. All you have to do is tie the stalks around the pillars using two ropes and then peel back the corn husks to reveal the corn. Corn stalks are pretty inexpensive and will last from fall to Thanksgiving. Corn stalks also look great flanking each side of a garage, or any driveway gates or fences posts as well. For this particular look, I used two bunches of stalks per pillar, so four total, with each bunch costing $10 each. If you know a local farmer, he or she may even give you a few bunches for free!
Next up, pumpkin stacks and mums. Mums are the quintessential flower of fall. I love them because they come in a variety of colors and as long as you water them they can easily withstand the Georgia heat. Typically I pick them up at Costco or Home Depot and then place them in my large apple barrel baskets which I get at Hobby Lobby. The apple barrel baskets will be a one-time investment that you’ll have for years to come. I personally love to mix up the sizes and colors of the mums to accentuate all of the colorful pumpkins.
Which brings me to my favorite part, pumpkin stacks. Warning, this is the most expensive part of the look, but for me going to my pumpkin patch and supporting my local farmers is something I look forward to each and every year so I just bite the bullet and know that pumpkins are always going to cost me a bit of dough. They’re costly mainly because I love the specialty pumpkins; the whites, greys, greens, and princess pink pumpkins which are harder to find. These specialty pumpkins are also the easiest to stack because of their shape. I do make sure to work in the less expensive standard orange pumpkins, and also talk to the owner of the pumpkin patch about pumpkin rot which I suggest you do too Because of the Georgia heat and also the bees, sometimes pumpkins rot before the season ends. My guy makes me a promise that if that happens to any of my pumpkins I can just come by and pick out another at no cost. That way I feel like my investment is worth it because I’m assured my decorations will last the entirety of the season. Another option is to go faux. Faux will save you money year over year, and time. Plus faux pumpkin stacks like these have gotten very close to looking like the real deal. Completely up to you.
To finalize our fall (which remember will also be our Thanksgiving) design I completed the look with a great wreath and doormat. I chose to go with a green pumpkin wreath rather than your traditional orange because I knew with the mums and pumpkins I’d have a lot of oranges already present. Totally your call though on color, just buy a good wreath. Wreaths can be a bit of an investment, but I believe they’re the one thing you should actually invest in. Out of everything you’ll see in this post I’ve had the wreath the longest, 4 years now. And it’s still in perfect condition. I’ve purchased less expensive wreaths in the past and what I’ve found is they simply fall apart. So if you’re able to, listen to Miles Redd and “buy the best and you’ll only cry once.” That and store it in a great wreath box like this!
Lastly, adding a festive doormat is the perfect way to cap off any design. Because I typically find that all the fun, festive doormats, to be too small for the actual space I love layering the doormat on a larger rug such as this. It adds depth to your design and allows you to switch out doormats easily. I’ve got a pumpkin doormat shown here, but just after our shoot, my new one came in that’s a bit more on the fun side.
I’ve scoured the internet and the closest I can get to mine (the one in the picture) is this one from Frontgate. Typically my store has these exact ones, but we sold out within the first week of putting them up. I promise next year I’ll buy more for y’all. But there are some gorgeous harvest colored ones I’m loving like this one from Williams Sonoma that would look just as good.
And with that, we’ve completed the perfect outdoor design for fall and Thanksgiving. Now, without disrupting the overall scheme, it’s time to add a bit of Halloween into the mix.
To take my porch from fall to Halloween all I did was switch out the wreath and doormat, plus added a few crows and witches brooms.
Because the crow wreaths were smaller, I decided to hang two vertically with fishing wire to really make a statement. The doormat, witch-themed, to match my overall theme. Crows from Amazon I placed in the mums and on the pumpkin stacks. And lastly two crooked, old witch brooms from my shop. I mean how easy is that? Changes that took me less than 10 minutes to complete, with items I’m able to use for more than one season.
*Sorry the brooms are too tall to ship, but if you’re local stop in we’ve got plenty left*
All in all, I couldn’t be happier with the way this look turns out each and every season and I know you’ll love it too and let it transition you from September thru November. Happy fall-Halloween-Thanksgiving friends! Truly, MKR
