Hooray for Halloween…

 I freaking love Halloween.

It is by far my favourite holiday of the year.
Blame an early obsession with Count Duckula and The Trap Door
if you like but some of my favourite childhood memories
involve me and my cousins, dressed as little
vampires, ghosts and witches, going guising,
that’s what ‘trick or treating’ is called in Scotland,
with our Nana or one of my Aunts.

(Oh yes and it’s sort of my birthday too.
Regulars here might remember we renamed it
last year to be Birthoween!)

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Anyway, in an airport, I recently picked the Halloween magazine
by Martha Stewart. Not my normal plane reading material
but the baking and DIY suggestions were too good to leave behind.

As there’s less than two weeks to Halloween,
I thought I’d share my favourites from the mag
for those of you who fancy trying them too.

I definitely want to make the chocolate
cheesecake with the snake on it.
I bet it’s terrifyingly good!

Loving this… marshmallow skulls using chocolate
sprinkles for eyes. They’re perched on double chocolate
mini madeleines but I’m sure a dot of melted chocolate
and an Oreo cookie would work just as well!

The how-to here is for Boston ‘Scream’ Pie
but I mainly adore that bat mobile. So simple and cute.
Spooky, I mean spooky, not cute of course!

I sort of gasped when I saw these…
not sure my carving skills are up to this
but apparently you use a template for the image,
draw it on to your pumpkin, get carving
then paint the image black.
Um, easy.

Ok, this one is easy… love how simple this is.
Oh yeah and the smell of marker pens isn’t so bad!

Ok, these owls are just darn brilliant.
I love how fecked off they look.
If you know how to make a fan circle,
they’re easy to make too.

And some scared kitty cake toppers too.

I have no idea why there are witches hanging off these toffee apples
but it did remind me how that I’ve never tried making them.
Must do better!

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How about you all?
Are there are any more Halloween
obsessives out there?

P.S. I even have a spooky board over at Pinterest.
I so want to make the ghost meringues too I’ve pinned.
Might need to learn to make meringues first of course!

Just a quiet birthday night in…

For this year’s birthday, the OH had planned (at my insistence) a quiet night in for me… just a few friends coming round, some cupcakes and a glass of fizz.

No big Halloween bash, just a chilled, casual evening – but old habits die hard.

Especially when your OH has bought you an official bottle of Tru Blood to drink!

And has made you some ceramic fangs to wear…

… which look rather dapper with your fake moustaches…

… and then a friend brings you a pumpkin piñata (the video footage of us all trying to ‘bash’ the piñata makes me cry with laughter!)

… and then you decide that Tru Blood tastes better with a little vodka (in the cup your OH has made you especially)!

So all in all, the quiet night in turned out into a mini Halloween giggle-fest… .

… complete with very yummy blood red velvets that the OH baked too…

… and his rather superb owly and dapper dude pumpkins…

Thank you everyone… the girl who didn’t want to party happily admits a party was just what she needed. For once, I’ll forgive you all for not listening to me!

Halloween + Birthday = Birthoweenday

What do you get when you cross a birthday with Halloween?

(Other than a lifetime obsession with all things spooky and scary!)

You get a ‘birthoweenday’!

(A huge thanks to Lisa-Marie for coming up with my new favourite word!)

So to celebrate my birthoween weekend – yeah, we’re spreading out the fun for as long as we can – I thought I’d share with you some Halloween treats.

First up, I’ve just discovered Sweet Paul and I absolutely adore his Halloween styling…

I mean how pretty do these painted pumpkins and ghostly bunting look?

Ok, the cozy knitted skull isn’t as cute but it’s pretty cool…

And I’m loving the witch’s ingredients bottles…

But most of all I’m head over heels for his pumpkin styling (has anyone said those two words together before??).

A Louis Vuitton pumpkin… amazing!

And a diorama pumpkin… well, sir I salute you!

But he’s not the only with an exceedingly cool pumpkin on the go…

How adorable is domestikated‘s little house pumpkin?

It makes me feel all aglow just looking at it!

And of course you can’t have a birthday, I mean birthoweenday, without cake!

And how cool is this ‘bat cake’ (spotted via A Cup of Jo)? It looks like a Halloween version of a black bottom cupcake… yum!

Have a wonderfully wicked Halloween weekend everyone xx

First pic via weheartit.com

Weddingnesday… and the hallowedding

One of the first things a lot of friends said when we first got engaged was: “Oooh you could have a Halloween wedding!”

Now this might sound a little odd – but if you know me outside of the blogworld, then you’ll know I’m crazy about Halloween.

Well, crazy might not be the right word… maybe fanatical… hmmm, that doesn’t sound much better.

Basically Halloween makes me happy.

There’s pumpkins to carve, costumes to create, Michael Jackson’s Thriller to dance to, spooky sweeties to gorge on… oh yes and my birthday.

But a hallowedding? I drew the line at that.

(Plus I would have my wedding anniversary and birthday rolled into one!)

Then I caught sight of this gorgeous wedding on (who else?) Rock n Roll Bride…

And I must admit I’m a little jealous – it looks like such a great fun day/night!

I absolutely adore their location too… I think my OH would be ecstatic to have a wedding that involved dinosaurs!

What do you think? Would you have a Halloween wedding?

A belated happy Halloween

Before it completely turns into Christmas (I went birthday-money-aspending today and the way the shops were blaring out Xmas songs you would think it was mid-December already), I thought I’d do a rather belated Halloween post.

We had a great one – having a family Halloween party during the day and a 80s Halloween party at night. Strangely enough though we woke up on Sunday and have sworn off partying for a bit!

Anyway, I thought I’d share a few pics from the day…

At the top of this post are some of my lovely cupcakes my other half and my friend who lives in Germany got me from Cupcakes and Ribbons. They were divine – I so recommend them if you ever need cupcakes in Scotland!

And here’s our selection of 80s trash food… also rather yummy but so so wrong!

During the day I looked this…

I was calling this look Count Zuckula! (Yes I am that sad!) And no those are most definitely not my own teeth… a subject of much speculation by my 6 year old cousins! 😉

And then in the evening I transformed into Jem from the 80s cartoon Jem and the Holograms. She looked like this (for those who don’t remember or are too young!)…

And this was me…

If you’re wondering what’s on the walls… one of my best friends sneaked into the flat (more secret stuff organised by the other half!) and put up tons of pics of me! Very funny but very disconcerting to see so many of yourself all at once!

I also have to give a big shout out to D Jenn who made my belt… it truly was outrageous!

I also have to share the ‘chestbusting alien’ the other half made for his costume…

…he made it from scratch using clay, latex and paint. As you can tell he’s much craftier than I am!

Anyway, how was your Halloween? What did you do? Did you dress up? Do know let me know – I’m so not ready for it be to all over so soon 😉

P.S. Thanks for all the birthday greetings – you are all very sweet indeed!

Friday I’m in love… with Halloween

I’m still sick so this Friday I have postponed what I was going to post on so I can post on Halloween. Now that may seem a bit weird but I love Halloween so this is an attempt to cheer myself up.

Actually love isn’t a strong enough word for how I feel about Halloween. I have more boxes of Halloween decorations than I do Christmas ones (and I actually prefer Halloween to Christmas… there I said it!) Why? Well, a couple of reasons. The most obvious is that my birthday is around then so almost every year we have a Halloween party. I can honestly say that opening our front door to see what our friends have chosen to come as is one of my favourite things – everyone always makes a real effort (even those who say they don’t like dressing up) and it makes me love them all the more!

In previous years, I’ve been a dead doll (in the New York Halloween parade… amazing! These were the best vids I could find online… sound is pretty ropey but you get the idea!)…

…I’ve also been Elphaba from Wicked (in retrospect I should have painted myself green properly as you can’t see in the pics that I’m covered in green sparkles)…

…and the Kate Beckinsale character from Underworld (you’ll not be surprised to learn that was the other half’s suggestion!) And yes, I don’t remember the bit in the movie where she was pissing herself laughing either!

(Yes that is Wonder Woman behind me with a machine gun… it was a good vs evil theme that year and all the ‘good’ people ended up stealing all the guns, swords etc!)

This year, we’re having an 80s themed Halloween party… think Ghostbusters, Count Duckula, Lost Boys etc… so it’ll be a little bit less Halloweeny than previous years.

I’m currently trying to compile a big list of 80s food and looking for decoration ideas so if you have any suggestions they’ll be most welcome. (On the list so far… creamola foam (if only it was still around), pop tarts, pot noodles, marshmallow top hats, half orange with cheese and pineapple sticks, soda stream, slush puppy, findus crispy pancakes, and my little pony fairy cakes you make from a box! God, the 80s were unhealthy!!)

Anyway, that’s enough of my babble, here’s the Halloweeny things I found to share…

And I had to include these from Cut Out + Keep… A Halloween eye ball made from a swiss ball and milk carton ghosts!

1. threadless
2. thebeeskneesdesigns
3. pamwares
4. crafterella
5. mrYen
6. FunFavors
7. topsyturvydesign
8. lupin
9. whiskerkisses

Tip your hat to Halloween

So my favourite holiday of the year is nearly upon us… yup, that’s right, Halloween is on its way. But this year, why not tone down the goth and glam it up instead? That doesn’t mean you need to make a big effort – in fact, just a well-chosen hat can really make an outfit – and you’ll look 100x better than your mate whose costume consists of wearing devil’s horns on a hairband or a plastic vampire cape…

For some inspiration, here’s a selection of Topsy Turvy Design‘s wonderful and sometimes weird hats.

See more hats after the jump…

Fangtastic Halloween tees

Halloween’s on its way. Time to go trick ‘n’ treating with a t-shirt twist. Lazy Oaf have got two great boys and girls’ tees with a spooky theme. These nifty tees cost
a not-so-terrifying £25 each including postage. Get yours here.

4 haunting Halloween treats

Halloween’s coming… What better time to indulge in a few little gothic treats.

First up, check out these sparkly vampire lips from Lady Luck Rules OK. Available
as a necklace or earrings in blood red or darkest night black. They’re fang-tastic.