Happy Halloween!

Working my 3 days a week, then having a day off then working on my thesis for the remaining 3 days leaves me little time to play these days. However, since it was Halloween and I'd not seen my friends in Bristol for 2 months, I thought I'd get into the spirit (no pun intended) of things and join in with some freaky fun. Of course cake was involved- duh. For some reason (maybe my lack of fun lately) Halloween unleashed my creative juices. Not only did I bake, I painted and customised my own Lydia from Beetlejuice outfit. Oh yes, I channelled those goth vibes. Here are the results of my creative splurge:


The pumpkin cake- not only pumpkin shaped, but also full of delicious carved pumpkin remnants!

The cake was a spiced pumpkin cake- made from the inner scrapings of our carving pumpkin that was stewed down a little. The pumpkin cake was baked in a standard round tin. When cooled, I cut round the top to make the stalk. I then smothered in spiced cream cheese frosting that was coloured with food colouring. At this point I got a bit paranoid as the horrendous orange colouring from Asda started smelling really plasticy (my sister described it as smelling like smarties). Bad times. Plan B? More mixed spice and nutmeg. Sorted. The eyes and mouth were made from ready-coloured roll out icing.


Eye-eye cupcakes! Chocolate cupcakes and buttercream with some creepy googly eyes!

Oh did I have a bit of fun with these! The cupcakes are standard chocolate cupcakes with chocolate buttercream on top. The eyes are made from Cadbury's Snow Bites- pupils are rolled-up blobs of black roll out icing, red veins added by using red food colouring and toothpick! Credit goes to my little sis for coming up with vein idea! Ah, she is learning!
My piece de resistance- and my date for the evening...

I realised my costume was actually pretty obscure, so decided to take along a 'date' to clarify things a little. For the record- it didn't clarify a thing. As far as my friends were concerned, I was a generic goth. I was impressed by my efforts which included crushed velvet leggings (mmm... Velvety), my DMs, a velvet poncho and fingerless gloves. All this and White face paint (no idea why whitening products so popular in east Asia- I looked wrong) and copious amounts of mauve eye shadow (also doubled as blusher for that real 'dead' look).

Games also got a bit creative at the party- vodka apple bobbing anyone...? I personally was looking forward to dirty Scrabble... But no one brought a bloody Scrabble board. *sigh*.

All in all, a fab night. But it made me realise how much I miss my friends. I miss my family. I miss having a life. I seriously cannot wait for this PhD to be over...