{10 Days of Halloween} Witches Brew

One of the reasons I love Halloween is that there are so many fun things you can do! I love hot stew with the cool autumn weather. But I wanted to make dinner even more fun by having different kinds of "witches brew."

First, I made a little invite and delivered to each of my family members in the morning. Here's what the invite said:

 
 {click here to print your own Witches Brew dinner invite}

For dinner I made some crock pot "brew" (just regular stew with veggies and stew meat). Then I also made a "caldron" (or big bowl) of homemade root beer with dry ice. The fog from the dry ice made the dinner seem more spooky and mysterious.  Finally, as a yummy treat after dinner, we made our own witches brew.

Here's what we did. I used a muffin tin with liners and filled them with different ingredients for our witches brew. If you were hosting a Halloween party, you could set out the ingredients in cups or mason jars with labels. But for my family, I wanted to keep it fairly simple. I chose six ingredients we had on hand. But if you want more ideas, check out this list of awesome witches brew ingredients (thanks to family crafts):

Earthworm Knots (Miniature Pretzel Twists)
Bloated Ants (Raisins)
Candied Spider Eggs (Dots or Gum Drops)
Ghost Guts (Mini Marshmallow)
Shredded Lizard Gizzards (Coconut)
Witches' Warts (Chocolate Chips)
Baked Skelton Bones (Pretzel Sticks)
Bat Brains (Popcorn)
Boiled Lady Bugs (Red Jelly Beans)
Braised Beetles (Milk Duds)
Cheesy Owl Eyes (Puffed Cheese Balls)
Chocolate-Dipped Houseflies (Chocolate-Covered Raisins)
Compressed Cobwebs (Chex Brand or Similar Cereal)
Crumbled Bat Wings (Blue Corn Chips)
Deep Fried Fingernails (Bugles Brand Snacks)
Dehydrated Dragon's Wings (Doritos)
Dirty Shoelaces (Black Shoestring Licorice)
Dried Seaweed (Chow Mein Noodles)
Flattened Slugs (Corn Chips)
Freeze Dried Drops of Blood (Red Hot Candies)
Goblin's Belly Button Lint Balls (M & Ms, Any Style))
Plops of Pigeon Poop (Yogurt Covered Raisins)
Rat Claws (Shelled Sunflower Seeds)
Roasted Snack Eyes (Peanuts)
Splintered Turkey Bones (Shoestrings Potato Chips)
Toasted Cat's Eyes (Blanched Almonds)
Vulture Toenails (candy Corn)

To make the witches brew, I wrote all the ingredients on slips of paper and placed them in one of our Halloween trick-or-treat buckets to draw from.  (You could also make the labels with pictures for younger children.)

Then each person drew three ingredients from the bucket and that determined their witches brew.  Everyone had fun gathering their ingredients and mixing their brew--there was a lot of cackling and witchcraft going on at the dinner table!

{witches brew of earthworm knots, ghost guts, and candied spider eggs}

-------------------------------------------------------

Day five of