Well half-term and Halloween have passed by in a flash! I just thought I’d share what we got up to - here goes: Firstly, was our pumpkin picking experience at Secretts Farm in Milford. It was really enjoyable and we got a great variety of pumpkins to cook and carve.
On Wednesday we decorated some marshmallows, I’d picked up a pack in Poundland along with some cake-pop sticks and a pack of three tubes of writing icing. I was looking for black really, but all they had was red, white and blue. I did a Storm Trooper one for Fin, among the spooky designs were spider webs, skeletons and a toad stool.
I had a little look on Pinterest for pumpkin carving inspiration, good ol' Pinterest! I’ve not really carved a pumpkin before, Lee usually does it with the kids but I was determined this year. The large green pumpkin was the easiest to carve, we cut a hole in the bottom and scooped out the insides – I put aside the flesh in a large bowl. We decided on a sugar skull design which I drew on with a chalk pen. We gave the pumpkin a bit of a soak in water with a cap full of bleach (this is supposed kill any bacteria and help it last longer).
The next was inspired by My Neighbour Totoro, one of our favourite characters. We used a fairly small pumpkin, and used lolly sticks with small triangles of pumpkin as the ears.
Pumpkin number three was Keira’s white one (you can see in the collage). This one was quite difficult to scoop out, the flesh was green inside. There was minimal carving for the eyes and nose and the pumpkin was drawn on with a black italic pen (all Keira’s handy-work). I also discovered that our littlest cat Beau is quite partial to a bit of raw pumpkin.
The final "piece de resistance" was Finley’s large pumpkin, again I got lumbered with scooping it out, good job I have claw nails. This was our Jack Skellington face.
All the designs were drawn on freehand. I was pretty proud of the pumpkin family!
I even use the pumpkin along with some sweet potato and made mash to go with our pie and green beans for dinner. Finley was pretty pleased with the “Halloween mash” and ate it all up!
Saturday was our Halloween “getting ready day” Lee had not got anything to wear. He was going as Floki from History channels Vikings. We managed to improvise with dark tracky bottoms, a beige t-shirt, and an inside-out fur lined hoodie and we cut-up one of my old leather jackets (it was ripped anyway). He also squeezed into my Ugg boots and used lots of kohl liner and hair spray. He made a pretty damn good Floki. This is Floki and Lagertha (my friend Kass).
I also went as Lagertha Lothbrok, the Viking shield-maiden, I used grey jeans, a tunic and a brown fur gillet from the charity shop, along with a gold rope chain and belt (all second hand). I then managed a few different Viking braids in my hair (I'm in the middle).
Keira dressed as Coraline, her blue wig was from Poundland, she wore black jeggings and a black t-shirt, and borrowed our friend’s yellow raincoat. Shan dressed as Mavis from Hotel Transylvania with a black dress, stripy tights and baseball boots and a black wig and Fin was the Hulk – of course.
Our friend’s had a party at their house, they both dressed as Viking’s too, we’d been planning it all for a while – they even made shields! Their daughter was batgirl. Two more friends arrived with their two children – amazing sugar skull make-up don’t you think?!
We went trick or treating and then back to the house. It was good fun, the kid’s all played together. My friend had made a brilliant watermelon fruit salad, and we had snacks, they even had the chiminea going in the garden. It was a late, but really great, night for all of us.
