 Hi and welcome to our Halloween episode of STEM Chat. I'm Natalie and I'm Deanna and this episode we're talking about Halloween. Natalie and I have always been into Halloween and making costumes even before we had kids. Here's a picture of us from CBS This Morning back in 2007. Yes, we had to make a DIY quick and easy Halloween costumes for kids. So that was one of the first projects we really worked on together. It was really fun. So we thought we would bring you lots of cool, fun project ideas and ways to have fun trick-or-treating safely this year too. Yep, and we're going to start out by talking about the Halloween costumes that we're making this year. And it's really great to make Halloween costumes. This is something that my daughter drew this at work. This is an in progress Halloween costume for this year. And it's really a lot of fun. We plan out the Halloween costumes and make them every year. But as the kids are getting older, I feel like their plans are getting like they're really joining in on the planning process a lot more. So here she kind of like itemized all the different parts of her costume and made a list. And then she drew these sort of detailed sketches. What is her costume? She's going to be a witch. Yeah, she wants to be a witch. So this is the witch dress. And this is the cape. And then this is the necklace. Oh, that's really cool. I love that she's sketching everything out. Yeah, we're talking about like what the different parts are and then what material we're going to make it out of and the easiest way to make it. So like for the boots, we're saying, oh, it's probably going to be difficult to sew the boots. But it's also difficult to buy boots with stars on them already. So we're going to buy some boots that are already made and then put our own star on. And we've been discussing what type of material to make the star out of. That's a good idea. You could use something like felt or it's very easy to just buy boots. And then you can use it for the winter and fall. Oh, yeah, that's true. Yes, you could actually wear them afterward. Throughout the year, but especially during Halloween, my daughter and I love watching all the Harry Potter movies again. And we started doing this again recently, a few weeks ago when we pick sometimes our favorite movies. I mean, she's read all the books. And we watched all the movies multiple times. So it was really fun to like kind of go back and see it. So we thought it would be fun to create a sort of magic potion project in, you know, injecting little chemistry, little science into something, but something more fun. And so we're here to share it with you. My daughter and I really love Luna Lovegood from the Harry Potter books and movies, especially the actress that plays Luna Lovegood. She's actually really crafty. So the character Luna is very quirky and she's crafty. And you can see by her house, she has this dirigible plum tree. And the actress herself actually made the beaded earrings that she wears in the movies. And she wears a lot of like things that she makes in the movies as well. So we thought this was an inspiring character. She's very, she's all about kindness and being good. And she really helps people. And so we thought it was inspiring to create Luna's extraordinary elixir. And so what we did for everyone here is we created a cool potion recipe in a PDF you can download from our newsletter and our website stemchatclub.com. And we have the full recipe here. So we actually found this experiment in an article from Scientific American. And then we adapted the science experiment because it was drinkable to make the potion recipe. And we're going to include a link below because it has a really great explanation of how the chemistry works. Yeah, so for the dirigible plums, we replaced it with lemons and lemons are acidic. So that is the acid. And it reacts with the base, which is actually the baking soda, which is the Cornish pixie dust. So those two together create this whole little fizzy lemonade slash elixir potion. But what's really cool is Diana did these really fun labels that we can put onto bottles, you can put it onto glass jars or anything you have at home and a little what do you call it little place card labels for little bowls of as you do the recipe. So it's kind of a fun added project. My daughter actually spent some time cutting it all out carefully so we could decorate our little bottles. Oh, and I like how you guys came up with the names for the different things. And they're actually things from the Harry Potter movie. Yes, we were as authentic as we could and trying to make it equivalent to actual ingredients. So it's not like and we didn't want something really disgusting. Here are all the ingredients. It's really fun. We have their blueberries, which are actually boom berries, which promote healing. The strawberries are called Banna Berry and they help with teleportation because we know there's a lot of magic in Harry Potter. Hork lump juice is actually pomegranate juice and gives you telepathy. And rosemary is not grass for shape shifting. I like how it's like a little potion station and so people can make the potion and then they can add in the extra powers that they want to get. She's pouring in the digital palm juice. When I read it's important, like when I was reading about the experiment somewhere else, it's important to use fresh squeezed lemons because it's more acidic. Yes, if you just use the lemon juice that you buy at the store, it won't work as well. The phoenix tears are added in. It's water. Obviously. But I yeah, I cut the lemons and I squeezed all the juice out and we took out the seeds. So now we're going to add the Cornish Pixie Dess, aka baking soda. And it's about one teaspoon. And I'm just she's just pouring it out to show you. She's just pouring it out to show the texture of it. Because it's fun for kids to play with the bottles. But then we did measure it out later. Well, it's good. It's authentic potion making. So here it is with the mixture. Oh, my God, we had so much fun seeing it come out over the table. And then you see the magic words, extraordinary plumeous. And then we added in some pomegranate juice, a little like garnish with some, you know, mandrake leaves, aka mint. So just making it pretty and fun. And you can definitely add you can add a teaspoon of sugar or just however much to make it taste a little better, depending on how you like, how sweet you like your your lemonade and your juices. You can probably also add a little alcohol, depending on the age group of your heart. It's really fun for like, you know, Halloween slash or Harry Potter, like even a Harry Potter birthday party theme party. So it's just really fun for kids to make. I think just seeing the the the baking soda and the lemon juice kind of react together is already like, you know, it's just like fun to see. So it's really cool. So we did it. Go ahead. Oh, I was going to ask you how it tasted. It tasted good. I loved it. We did it. We did it a couple of times. So we did the first one with the pomegranate juice and the second one we did, we just kept it as lemonade. So it was good. And I liked it was just so cute with that we put the little toothpicks in with the, you know, blueberries and strawberries and we had a little like lemon, you know, you know, peels and just to make it pretty. So it just looks so pretty. So yeah, this was our fun project on making Luna's extraordinary elixir. We hope you have fun making this as well with your family and the potions fell and the labels will be available as a printable in our newsletter. So you can sign up at stem chat club dot com and you'll receive it for free in the mail. I'm sorry, in the email or you may if it's already come out by the time you watch this video, you can click on it as one of the older issues. So last year, we stayed home on Halloween. We live in an apartment building. And so they actually canceled trick or treating. I'm not sure what we're going to do this year, but it's a great alternative if you're looking to have some trick or treating fun at home. Hi, everybody. I just wanted to share something that we made this year for our pandemic Halloween. We're going trick or treating on a FaceTime. So we have this. It's a bunch of cups in a cardboard box. The cups are going to be glued down and they have some candy inside and a piece of tissue paper taped to the top. So when we call people, they'll tell my kids the color and my kids will punch through the tissue paper and grab the candy from inside the cup. Hope you're all having a great Halloween and staying safe out there. Bye. So here's a look at our process. I had a lot of fun with my younger daughter building the punch out game. It was fun because we actually we we called you or I think you called you called us. You were one of my daughter and I helped you guys pick which one to break open for Halloween. So that was really fun, too. Yeah, that's true, because we never would have been able to go trick or treating at your house, Natalie, from New York City. It was fun to see you guys on Halloween. Yeah. Yes, and this is really nice because we got to see a whole bunch of friends and family on FaceTime and the kids still got to get some candy for Halloween. And now it's time for favorite things. So there are lots of things we're excited about this month. And some of you may not know, I love paper crafting and I'm a planner girl. So there are some really cool notebooks from Erin Condren called the EC Focus Productivity Notebook. And I use it like a sort of maker's notebook. And my daughter loves it because she's able to sort of put in just ideas and brainstorming. I have a full review on our in a YouTube movie. Which I'll link below. But it's just a great function of the book. It's very lightweight, so it's really good for kids to carry. I find it very handy and portable. So it's kind of like a nice like field journal, too, if you want it to be. It can be can be anything. And I obviously have one, too. Yes, I have it in black and she has it in pink. So. So, as you know, last our last episode before we kicked off the summer was our bugs episode. And I happened to catch this segment on CBS this morning on YouTube, which will link below about a four year old girl in Palo Alto, California, who discovered rare stingless bees that have not been seen for over 70 years. And I thought this was really important because sort of what we talked about in our episode was sort of like having kids look outside and be aware of things. And she had, you know, an older family friend who was a biologist that always made gave her a love for bugs. So it's amazing to see that she has discovered these these bees and they don't even have a name for it and they might name it after her. But the scientists and entomologists who studies bees thought it was a joke and he actually was able to go to Palo Alto and see these bees, which were actually brought here for an experiment many years ago with for Stanford professor in Palo Alto. And they thought they all died off for some reason. But they were alive in this one tree in Palo Alto. That's amazing. I can't wait to watch my video with my kids. Yeah, it's very inspiring. I mean, she's so young, she's four and she discovered them. So anything can happen. So I just got this new modular origami book. It just came out in the last week and I'm excited to make this model down here that's inspired by ferns. Oh, that is great. That is really cool. I think my daughter is going to love that one, too. She's looking to do more complicated origami, so it'll be fun. OK, so moving on, there is a I love stickers and there is a shop called Eau Claire's Creations and she has mass stickers. So I got these. This is pumpkin pie. Oh, I love that one. Yeah. And she has like prisms. You can put these in your planner and your notebook. I thought these little prisms with florals were really cute. Graph flowers. And then this is a whole sheet on really pretty like aesthetics of math with abacus and like just cute, very cute mathematics, aesthetic. So I thought that was a fun little find. Those are beautiful. I'll link her store down below, too. So we've started getting into knitting on. This knitting machine, and it's really fun to watch the mechanics of how it works and how it actually that you can see the loops going over the hooks over here. So it's just kind of like an interesting machine for the kids to watch. And we've been using this glow in the dark yarn from Lion Brand yarns to make these knitting machine ghosts. Oh, these are so cute. So cute. So we'll cut to a clip and show them glowing. Yeah. How long did it take you to do one ghost? Oh, I don't know. It's probably it takes about, I don't know, like 20 minutes. Well, that's a little fussy on the machine, because it's not. It's actually not that stretchy. So I put the weights. See, there's like claw weights on it to help it run more smoothly. Very cool. Thanks for watching our episode of STEM chat. We hope you guys have a great Halloween. Yes. And don't forget, you can sign up for our newsletter at STEMChatClub.com and with the newsletter coming up, we will have the printable for Luna's extraordinary elixir so your kids can cut it out and follow along with the recipe on how to make that amazing potion and use a little chemistry to make some magic. Yes. And just so you know, we have all our resources are on our website with the most recent episodes and each newsletter kind of recaps what we've done for the month. So if you can't catch up with an episode, you're able to sign up with the email and get all of the news of what's been going on. And we have some additional links in there, too, to other photos and videos that explore some of the topics more in depth. Thanks for joining us. Happy Halloween. Happy Halloween. You get to say that one.