GETTING READY FOR HALLOWEEN

I just love Halloween! It is my second favourite holiday! As a child I grew up with a lot of Americans, so participated in many typically American things, like Halloween. Halloween has only really got big in Britain in the last few years but I have been decorating the house, holding parties and generally enjoying the time for many years! I am getting ready to make costumes and scouring the shops already for tasty treats! I am sharing some of my home made details used over the years below along with some of my favourite pins from Pinterest. Enjoy!

Some of the many pumpkins carved by my other half. He is so much better at this than me!

 This one is double sided, he was just showing off!

 Jack Skelton

Token one carved by me and my kid!

I have to say that my creative side hasn't stretched too far to the outside of my house. I have pretty much bought up shops instead to decorate the house with giant spiders, bats, pumpkins etc! It always looks very festive and sticks out in a sea of non decorated houses. All the candy pretty much goes in the night! But one year I saw some black pumpkins on Pinterest and decided to have a go. I had made an easy cloak one year for myself so decided to use that as part of the body (ie plant pot) and plant my old witch hat on top. The paint was tricky to paint on, it kept rubbing off but it did the job for the night!

I plan on having a few more home made touches this year.

If, like me, you enjoy holding a party, it is easy to get creative with food and decorations.  I have had pumpkin carving parties, fancy dress parties, children's parties and small gatherings all appropriately decorated and themed. I'm sharing some of my favourite bits below!

There always has to be cake, a party without cake is like a fish without water! The cake above was made using the Wilton Jack-O-Lantern pan. The pan has long been discontinued but you can find them occasionally on EBay and instructions on how to decorate it can be found here on the Wilton site. However, you could achieve this look with a round pan and shape it slightly to look more like a pumpkin. It's very simple too!

If you want cake but don't want a huge cake, may I suggest cupcakes! These were easier than they looked!

The ghost and graveyard cakes were frosted quickly with grey icing and edible glitter, then I hand shaped the tombstones and wrote on them with an edible pen. The ghosts started out as a ball of fondant (though you could use marshmallows), then I rolled and cut out round shapes of white fondant and draped these over to get a 'sheet' effect. I then used edible pre made eyes which I fixed on with a little icing.

The pumpkin patch cakes used the Wilton grass tip #233. Then I hand shaped some pumpkins (and also used some candy pumpkins and placed on top. At the back I used some chocolate fondant and cut out long rectangle shapes. I scored these with a knife to give the look of a wood fence and placed these on. They were a little tricky to stand upright as I placed them on as soon as they were made. If I had left them to dry for a while this would have gone smoother.

If you are looking for even smaller cakes you could try cake pops! I made a batch of pumpkin shaped ones along with monsters. Here are the monsters.

These were inspired from this pin and look very similar, though not as neat! I again used the edible eyes to make this easier.  Check out my board for more inspiration!

If you aren't the decorating kind, perhaps whoopie pies would be the way to go?

The recipe for these was from a book called simply Whoopie Pies (you can get it here). They were pumpkin whoopie pies and I used home grown pumpkin for them. But you can use the canned variety. They turned out pretty big and were filled with classic marshmallow and finished off with candy corns. Simple yet festive!

Another super easy idea especially if aren't a decorator is ghost brownies!

All you need to do is make a batch of brownies, then get a large marshmallow and place on top of each. Next make vanilla buttercream and warm it up so that it pours (or buy canned ready made and warm it up in the microwave) and pour carefully over each marshmallow. They don't have to look the same, just ghost like! Then take some normal consistency frosting and pipe features onto your ghosts (you could use edible candy eyes to make it even simpler). I threw around some candy corns and pumpkins along with plastic spiders to pretty them up (and to hide the fact that my cake board was too big).

OK if cakes aren't your thing but you like something sweet, how about marshmallow pops?

What you will need are large marshmallows, come candy melts and green straws. Take your marshmallows and insert a green straw into each. Dunk into the orange candy melts and let set. Get some black candy melts and pop into a piping bag and pipe features onto your pumpkins. Job done! You could use frosting if you have that onto hand instead.

And what about other treats for your party? 

You can find plenty of savoury ideas along with decorating, costumes and sweet treats on my Halloween board. But here are a couple I have done in the past that were a huge hit!

Firstly make your sandwiches festive and fun. Turn them into bats!

All you need is a bat shaped cookie cutter (or any other Halloween shape you fancy), some cream cheese tinted grey and your favourite fillings!

I made the sandwiches then cut out the shape. I piped grey cream cheese faces and they were done.

Another fun idea is cracker sandwich spiders.

Take some round crackers like Ritz and spread peanut butter on one. Place another on top then get some pretzel sticks and stick these into the peanut butter. Finish off with raisin eyes fixed on with a little peanut butter! 

What a spread!

As you can see there is plenty of normal fare there along with tradition candy corns and pumpkins. I also managed to find some Jack-O-Lantern shaped gingerbread cookies. Perfect party food!

I hope you are suitably inspired for this year's Halloween!