Halloween Fun

As many of my long term readers know I love Halloween (or as I & many others call it, Samhain). I dont take my kids out trick or treating as I'd rather not take them out in the dark to knock on strangers doors for sweets, it holds all sorts of morally dodgy arguements but I sha'nt go into those. So instead, while Zack was at school I took Kai to his friends house that we'd been invited to & had a lovely day there. Kai dressed up as Mario...

...& I dressed up, minimalistically, as a witch. By minimalistically I dont mean I was half naked, that would have been a Halloween Horror, I mean I wore one of my long black skirts, blouse, green eyeshadow & black shoes. What made it more witch like was my purple & black striped tights, & my little witches hat I'd made...

.....which I slipped onto a head band...

We got home & I put the finishing touches to one of the main events of the evening.... my photobooth & halloween props! I shall show you these in a little while on another post as its rather picture heavy.

I then helped the kids make chocolate apples...

I stuck lollipop sticks into the apples before covering them with melted chocolate....

...before placing them onto baking parchment & allowing the kids to decorate with raisins, hundreds & thousands, and sprinkles.

These set in the fridge while we ate our tea of worms & eyeballs (spaghetti & meatballs)

While everyone settled down quietly I carved the pumpkin

One of my favourite movie characters "you're jokin', you're jokin', I cant believe my eyes"

**wanders off humming**

Halloween treats.

Its felt like I've been busy all day and am now looking forward to the kiddies bedtime so I can relax .... well, sort of, I've still got to make a pressie for tomorrow.
Today I have ..

Made skeleton cakes, similar to those featured on .hand.made.heart.felted...

Carved a pumpkin and also rubbed cinnamon, ginger and cloves into the lid

(also as featured on .hand.made.heart.felted)

It smelt GORGEOUS, a lovely warm, seasonal scent that filled the house.

Helped the kiddies make and decorate gingerbread pumpkins, ghosts and houses.

Oh, and of course we all got dressed up

White Pumpkins

As Halloween is fast approaching I thought I'd share with you something I've been playing with

White & black pumpkins seem to have become fashionable in America last year, they look fabulous so I thought I'd try my own. There were no pumpkins in the shops when I wanted to have a try and being a rather impatient person once I've got an idea I opted for Squash instead.

I spray painted them in white and then used a combination of peel offs I had made and black marker pen to create the designs.

Though I love the finished design I did learn a few things ... squash skin needs to breath, because of this it will blow bubbles in the spray paint coating. Peel offs are quite difficult to apply to uneven, rounded surfaces and if not careful will lift the spray paint.

Once halloween is over I shall be keeping my eyes on the shops for reduced ceramic/ornamental pumpkins to do this again in a more permanent context for next year as I think they are sooooo pretty.