My Halloween Party

Ok, so two posts in one day about Halloween, probably should have done them earlier than this but I wasn’t feeling great. I had a Halloween party for my birthday Saturday night (I will be doing a 25 Before 25 update seeing as I am now 25!). I had a great time organizing it!

This was the bathroom. We added a red light bulb for an extra creepy feeling, added cobwebs all over the place, wrote REDRUM on the mirror and put the creepy doll complete with axe and ‘blood’ (strawberry syrup!).

Here’s Mike the Mummy! We got some white clothes, stuff with them newspaper and then wrapped him in a ripped old sheet. Luckily the sheet was off white anyway so we didn’t have to tea stain it or anything. Got the idea from this video. We also added a red light bulb to that half of the kitchen.

I also got some warning tape from Tesco that said ‘Enter if you Dare’ and put it on the front door, but never got a picture of that unfortunately.

My cupcakes! Jack Skellington and vampire puncture marks. All I did was cut the top off cupcakes to level them off, add a bit of icing to it (jam would work too), rolled out and cut out ready to use fondant, stuck on top of cupcake and then used icing pens to fill in details. Simple but effective!

Brain cake pops! I got the idea from this post here. The broken ones happened because the chocolate wasn’t thick enough, I suggest doing a double layer of white chocolate at the beginning to make it stronger.

Brain hemmorrhage shots! Inspired by this post. But instead we used pear schnapps.

These weren’t made, my boyfriend bought them for me, but they’re too cute not to add!

I also had a jelly brain made from a big jelly mould I got from 2 Euro shop, Jelly shots and Jelly Shots in the shape of pumpkins and skulls that I made in a silicone ice cube tray.

We played snap apple and also I made a pinata in the shape of a Mummys Head but didn’t get a good shot of that.

 

And you can see my costume here, I was Effie Trinket from The Hunger Games.

We had a great night, I really enjoyed it. If you are looking for other Halloween treat ideas, check out my post on Witches Fingers and last year’s post about random Halloween treats I made. Enjoy!

Halloween Nails!

I LOVE Halloween!! LOVE IT! Favourite time of the year. It’s unfortunate that this year I am sick on Halloween. I did celebrate and dress up at the weekend but it’s not the same. So to cheer myself up I did my nails!

From left to right: blood splatter, Frankenstein’s Monster, orange with black crackle, eyeball

And on that thumb

Glittery Spiders web!

Right hand

Left to right: Jack Skellington, Vampire, Mummy, Orange with glitter and on the thumb a pumpkin

I enjoyed drawing the character and I thought the orange black crackle and the orange with glitter were a nice way to be Halloweeny without the characters.

Hope you enjoy Halloween!

YouTube Pick of the Week

Back to a nice mix of things after last week’s Gangnam Style week!

I love these guys, they always have me in stitches. All Irish people should enjoy this Glenroe Swipe video!

Big week this week as Chanel No.5 has it’s first ever campaign front by a man (that man being Brad Pitt!). To see it click here. I,however, prefer this video. It sums up my reaction to the whole thing perfectly.

I did however love this video about Chanel No.5 and some history behind it. It’s a very charming video.

Bodyform has decided to tell the truth! Very funny.

I’ll admit there was some dust in my eye watching a father describe his daughters wedding day.

Finally RTE released a One Take Lip Dub to The Stunning’s ‘Brewing Up a Storm’. So much going on in this video, I must saw I was impressed by it.

25 Before 25: Sew Something from Scratch

Not content with a tea party fundraiser to organize, I also wanted to sew a skirt from scratch for it. I’ve barely any sewing skills so I decided a skirt circle would be easiest. And then I decided to make it a tiny bit more complicated for myself by added a zip, waistband and pleats. Sure why not?!

Instagram shot of work in progress!

I loosely followed the instructions from Keeping It Simple, her guide on a circle skirt. Needs to say, due to me being a beginner, I ended up with seams that were not too straight and also a wonky zip. But I loved the results!

Finished skirt!

As you can see I went for tea pots to go with the tea party theme. I love the skirt, it was fun to wear as you’ll see in the photo below!

I also used some scrap material to make a small bit of bunting.

25 Before 25: Host a Tea Party/Host a Fundraiser

I knew from the beginning of my 25 Before 25 that these two entries would be together. I’ve wanted to raise money for Breast Cancer Awareness Month for a while now, it’s something close to my heart after seeing my Nana die from it and seeing other family members battle it. I had seen the Get The Girls ‘Round campaign last year and thought it was the perfect idea. Straight away I knew I wanted to do a tea party, it was perfect for all ages and I could bake away to my hearts content! Here’s some of the pictures from the event.

Those adorable bun cases above (and in the 3rd photo) were very kindly sent to me by Orla from Irish Girl in London.

As you can see I went with the pink theme. I made the bunting above in the second photo, as well as a skirt for the occasion (which I will do another post about!). We had some jazzy tunes playing and I had collected tea cups from charity shops all through the summer. Local businesses kindly donated gifts towards a raffle and since people brought along a load of other baked goods (we had another table covered in goodies!), we had an impromptu bake sale the next day after Mass. I have yet to finish counting the money raised, as I keep getting donations in, but so far we’ve raised in around the 500 Euro mark! Very happy with that, I was hoping to get around 200 Euro so I’m delighted.

And here’s a shot of the aftermath!

That doughnut looking cake in the background was delicious and I will have a separate post with the recipe for that!

Cake Batter Fudge

I’ve made this twice already and I love it! It’s so so simple and so quick to make. The worst thing is waiting for it to set!

Cake Batter Fudge

Adapted from The Pursuit of Hippieness

Ingredients

1 can Sweetened Condensed Milk

3.5 Cups (works out at almost 400g) white chocolate, chopped or broken into bits

3 tsp Vanilla Extract

1/4 of a tsp Almond Extract (original recipe called for 1/2 tsp, I found it too over powering. You could go for 1/8 tsp if you really don’t want a strong taste)

Sprinkles

Method

1. Pre-line a pan (I used a square baking pan) with tin foil and spray with some cooking spray (or brush some oil on). Put the condensed milk and white chocolate into a microwavable bowl and microwave until white chocolate has melted. Stir to blend until smooth.

2. Add the extracts and stir. Add the sprinkles, stir slightly to mix in. Pour mixture into pan and then sprinkle some more sprinkles on top so they sit and stick to the top.

3. Let rest in the fridge to firm. The first time I made this, it wasn’t firming so cut into pieces and turned them upside down, this helped to firm. I think it wouldn’t firm as I didn’t have enough chocolate in it, so definitely make sure you have enough.

4. Enjoy!

YouTube Pick of the Week: Gangnam Style!

So I’ve been meaning to put this out for a while now but seriously slacked on it. I’m still loving Gangnam Style, which I wrote out in a past YouTube Pick. And of course I’m also loving all the spin offs of it!

Grant from Mythbusters does his spin on Gangnam Style.

Mom and son dance to Gangnam Style! They also got to do it on Ellen!

Speaking of Ellen, here Psy surprises Britney and teaches her how to dance Gangnam Style.

Are you a metal fan but find yourself loving Gangnam Style? Fear not as here’s the metal version done by 331Erock. He does loads of other metal versions of songs, even if you aren’t a massive metal fan you’ll still appreciate them!

US Naval Academy decided to do their version too.

Key of Awesome were of course on trend and did a parody called Kim Jong Style.

Last but not least is Bill Nye the Science Guy doing it Science Style.

Book Review: The Casual Vacancy

This book isn't going to be to everyone's taste. But I really enjoyed it. The step when reading this book is to completely take J.K. Rowling out of your head. Because if you don't you'll just ruin it for yourself. Done that? Good!

The book is very character driven, not a huge amount of action. The book is building up slowly to a climax but it is more about the characters, their relationships and how they interact with each other. I really enjoyed this as I live in a small village and I find it interesting how people know each other from just being around the place and as I'm a bit nosy I often wonder about the secret lives of people and what goes on behind closed doors. This book is kinda like that.

I found myself wanted to read this after I had put it down to do something else. And if I had started to read it and just thought 'one more chapter', I'd actually end up finishing after 6 more chapters. That to me is a good sign, that I found myself wanting to read more and more. Though it's not necessarily a sign of a good book. I do think it is a good book though as I liked the characters (or loved to hate the nasty characters), I could identify with some, I could identify the characters as 'real life'.

The only downside I thought it had at first was when I didn't quite get the whole J.K. Rowling aspect out of my head and I found it very crude at first. The swearing, references to sex and drugs. At first I did wonder whether she was doing this just because she could, for the shock value and to try set herself apart from Harry Potter (I managed to go this far without mentioning HP!). There did seem to be a certain element of that. But once I managed to get the J.K. Rowling thing out of my head I did find that it fit into the story and it didn't bother me so much. Also it can be a dull in places as it isn’t so action filled.

Overall I would recommend the book, especially if you like character based stories. It’s a sturdy read and if you like J.K. Rowling’s ‘voice’ then you should like this.