Candy Kabobs & Glow In The Dark Popcorn

This weekend, we had our neighbor friend, Jake, spend the night. His mommy and daddy are traveling to Australia for a week, so we agreed to help care for him. It seems like our children average having a sleep over about once, every other month.  I do my best to make sleepovers fun and being Jake couldn't even go home if he wanted to, I thought making things extra fun would help distract any sadness about his mom and dad being gone for a week.

I ran out to Target and picked up several packs of my children's favorite candy. Oddly enough, Tyson doesn't care for chocolate, but I was fortunate enough to find some Werther's Original Chewy Caramels, to take the place of the chocolate for his skewer.

To make the candy kabobs, all you need are the following: 

Supplies:

Candy

Wooden Skewers

The selection of candy I chose were: Airheads, Rolos, Reese's Minis, Sour Patch Kids, Cookies & Cream Hershey Kisses, Gummy Worms, Werther's Chewy Caramels, Orange Slices, and Airheads Extremes.

 Directions:

Use the pointed end of the skewer to "string" each piece of candy onto the wooden pick.  I'm not going to lie, this wasn't EASY or FUN because every type of candy I used was stubborn in various ways. The gooey candy "wanted" to stick to the skewer, making assembly very difficult. I had to use all my might to get the candy to the top of the pick. The chocolates were so delicate and fell apart/crumbled VERY easily.  The first skewer I did was definitely the guinea pig. I came up with my own tips and tricks to make things a little easier during the assembly of the other three. Next time, ONE thing I will try to do to make things easier, is to rub vegetable oil onto the wooden stick, before trying to put the candy onto the skewer.

Being my children LOVE sour and gummy type candies AND due to the fact my color combinations included BROWN (from chocolate), I don't think these skewers came out as beautiful as they could have.  I suggest, especially for a birthday party, baby shower, or wedding, to use candy that is color coordinated with your theme.  I considered using JUST Halloween colored candy, but I couldn't find enough variety of candies that could be "strung" through the skewer.  

I had a TON of fun photographing and editing these kabobs, but I had to take over 120 photos, just to capture 3 or 4 good ones! The kids REALLLLLY enjoyed them. I will probably use smaller skewers next time because it was a tad too much candy. While I was tucking Jax into bed he said, "Mom, I didn't really want to eat ALL of that candy! My tummy hurts so bad now!"  Poor thing!

I also made the kids glow in the dark popcorn.  While they watched Monster House and the lights were low, the glow sticks lead their "sweet", little hands to find their popcorn and kept them from being frightened.

All of these yummy treats, plus a new movie, kept these four monsters quiet for a full 2 hours.