Download a helpful brochure from Petnet.com.au promoting responsible dog ownership and dog bite prevention.

Petnet also has a neat little online app called Selectapet for helping you to select the right dog or cat for your family based on the amount of exercise you expect to be able to give your pet, the size of your home and the age of your family members.

AJ is having a Halloween birthday party this year and I have been online getting ideas for Halloween themed party foods - nothing too dark and spooky or gross as there are little kids attending so we are going for a Halloween-Lite kind of feel.

Cupcakes are an obvious addition to the party spread and I have found some great decorating ideas. The ones I am most taken with because they are incredibly cute and look comparatively simple are the ghost cupcakes over at Martha Stewart.

In fact, I love these little ghosties so much I might go the distance and try a ghost birthday cake.

The black cat is also mighty cute.

Other cupcake delights for Halloween are Not Martha’s sugar ghosts and chocolate spiders, Familyfun.com has Vampire Faces which look like something you might do if you have a spare five hours or so and Nick Jnr. has some funny mummy cupcakes which seem far more straight forward but require a steady piping hand. Martha Stewart Kids also has a fun line-up, the big-eyed alien is my favourite.

This is an activity for older kids or for little kids with a great deal of help from an adult with a bit of sewing machine experience. Perhaps you are looking for something homemade to give your child for a gift. Making a sock monkey is a really easy first step into the world of soft-toy making.

You will need:
A pair of medium length socks in any colour or pattern
Thread
Black or brown felt
Red or pink felt
A sewing machine
Print out of sock monkey instructions

While the pattern looks complicated it is actually a very quick way of making a simple stuffed toy.

Follow the instructions for deconstructing the pair of socks into the bits for the monkey and then sew together and stuff according to the directions.

Cut out round circles for eyes from the brown or black felt and a wide red mouth.

Little kids can help by stuffing the monkey and by gluing on the eyes and the mouth.

This will make a toy which is not suitable for children under three due to the potential choking hazard of the glued on features. If you want to give this toy to a really little child, sew the eyes on or embroider them instead.

Have a look at this sock monkey gallery on Flickr for oodles of inspiration.

Thank you to those who uploaded photos for our first Kiddley Photo Theme!…

Pictured above is Annabel’s hulahoop photo which sparkles - nice colours, lines and composition.

You may notice that contributions were a little thin on the ground for our first week, but that never stopped us before! So without further ado, our theme for this week is “Dirt ‘n’ Mud”

Encourage your kids to take photos with the theme in mind and then upload them to the Kiddley Flickr group.

Check out Phil’s Introducing your kids to digital photography for some tips and ideas.

Here are a couple of Halloween safety links:

The National Safety Council (US) has some safety tips for parents, kids and motorists for Halloween trick-or-treating.

The Halloween Safety Guide has lots of good ideas for keeping everyone safe and happy on Halloween including tips for those having parties, decorating your yard and keeping pets safe.

The debut CD from Wee Hairy Beasties is a rousing collection of 15 back porch blues, ragtime, and folk inspired tunes. Featuring two members of the seminal punk-rock band The Mekons, Wee Hairy Beasties music is good old fashioned toe-tapping fun.

Animal Crackers features songs about squirrels, worms, flies, ducks, and turtles, accompanied by some marvelous steel guitar, harmonica, and clarinet. I especially like the 16 second song called ‘A Newt Called Tiny’:

I’ve got a newt called Tiny,
I call him Tiny because he’s my newt.
I haven’t had him long, I found him by the pond,
breathing through exterior fronds.

‘Animal Crackers’ will be released on October 24th. It’s available for pre-order at Amazon, and the Bloodshot Records site has the full version of the first track, called ‘Wee Hairy Beasties’, available for download. Bloodshot Records artists are featured on eMusic, so there’s a good chance that the album will be available there as well when it’s released.

Here are a couple of tracks that we love:

05 Housefly Blues:

10 Glow Worm:

Speaking of teddy bears, if you have a child who has an old soft toy which has been loved literally to pieces, I recommend reading this post over at Rainbowcake about patching an old bear. Sage advice and a very touching post.

For another idea on how to patch a soft toy have a look at how Sarah from Material Obsession saved some very loved rabbits.

The above image reproduced with the kind permission of Christina Gordon whose one-off prints rock my socks.

During the school holidays AJ and I decided to hold a birthday party for her teddy bear. The intention was to make invitations for the other stuffed toys, make a cake and some fairy bread and set the table with her tea set. In the end, we never actually got around to having the party as AJ spent the entire day making strange and imaginative party decorations involving masses of drinking straws from the $2 store and a lot of sticky tape but even just the preparations took care of one of those empty days when we were all too coldy and coughy to go out and do anything else.

Over at Spatulatta they are having a teddy bear tea party - with lots of tea party recipes and ideas. (Eventually it will disappear from the “What’s New” page, after which time you should be able to find it here).

I also notice that they have added a new recipe box page listing all the vegetarian and vegan dishes they have made for easy finding.

If you have kids who love to colour there are an abundance of printable colouring pages to be found on the web. I just came across this nifty little Halloween themed colouring page creator on FamilyFun.com. Your kids can pick a character, a background, type in a message and then print it off ready to attack with their crayons. You will need a Flash Player to use the creator.

Kiddley reader Stacey suggested a fun halloween activity which I remember doing as a kid - Shrunken apple heads, which are incredibly simple and fun to do. The photo above is of some apples I carved this morning. It will take a couple of weeks before they dry out and shrink and reach their seriously spooky potential when they will be the perfect halloween decoration.

You will need:
A large apple
Lemon juice
Salt
2 cloves
Other decorative bits such as cotton wool or yarn for hair or a few grains of rice for teeth.
Apple peeler
Small knife

Mix a teaspoon or two of salt into half a cup of lemon juice. Peel the apple and wipe or brush on a layer of the lemon juice and salt mixture which will stop the apple from going brown.

Carve a face into the apple using the small knife. Carve out big features such as the eyes, a nose, a mouth, ears and so on. Push the cloves into the eye sockets, and place some rice grains in the mouth as teeth.

Leave the head to dry in a place where it’s warm and dry for a week or two. You can mould the heads a little by pushing them around as they dry.

Once they are dry you might want to glue on some cotton wool or yarn as hair. I think I might try to turn mine into a pirate with an eye patch, bandana around it’s head and a gold earring.

When you have your finished shrunken apple head it will look fabulously spooky displayed on a halloween party table, or perhaps you could display a group of them along a mantel amongst candles and other spooky paraphernalia.

I will post photos of my shrunken heads in a week or two. I’m not sure if I put enough salt in my solution. Let’s hope they don’t go mouldy in the meantime!