Halloween Ideas

For me, Halloween is a great time to let my creative side come alive! I love this time of year and have made it a bit of a tradition now to have a good ol' Halloween gathering at the house with close friends and family. The best part for me is looking for creative ways to decorate the house and fun and unique recipes to serve my guests. I love Pinterest in general and it is fabulous for Halloween ideas. I have a whole board dedicated to seasonal crafts with lots of great Halloween decor inspirations. Here are some pictures of things I made last year with the links of where I sourced them;

1. Graveyard Cake

Recipe from BBC food.

This cake was a real talking point at the party and I was so pleased at how it turned out. It was super easy to make and if you really wanted to save time you could buy a pre made sponge. I bought tea biscuits and covered them with chocolate instead of making my own biscuits and you could use Nutella as the icing to save time! Super yummy!

2. Witches Hats

  Recipe from Lauren Conrad

These witches hats looked brilliant and the kids loved them. You could try different fillings instead of Fluff. Maybe Nutella? (yes, I Love Nutella!)

3. Spooky Signs

Here I made up some spooky names for the different sweets we were serving and filled them in jars I had saved. I used strawberry laces and wine gums for the "Monster guts". This was really fun, I also made "Stinky cheese" and "Sickly sweet toffee" muffins. Have fun with playing with words.

4. Shrunken Heads

Recipe by Martha Stewart

These shrunken heads are made by carving out faces in apples and then baking them. It was really fun and super easy. The effect was really amazing and people could not believe I made them!! I served mine in a bloody red sangria instead of cider. 

5. Haunted House Pumpkin

by Martha Stewart

I held a Pumpkin Carving Competition where everyone had to bring their own carved pumpkin and we would vote on the best one. I told people to be creative as possible and this haunted house pumpkin won! It was really easy to carve and looked really good with the bats and cat sticking out the top.

6. Glitter Pumpkins

by Martha Stewart

I made these Glitter Pumpkins at the beginning of October and used them as decoration under my glass topped coffee table. I got packs of glitter from the pound shop so they were really cheap to make and because they were completely covered in PVA glue they did not spoil all month.

I hope this have given you some inspiration if you are having a Halloween party or you just want to indulge in some spooky crafts or make something to decorate the house with. I am looking forward to our party this year and have a few new ideas I want to try. You can follow me on Pinterest  and look through my seasonal board for more Halloween ideas. Here are some things on my list to try;

Whatever you are doing for Halloween I hope you have a great time!

A x

Pancakes for breakfast!

I love food! I love cooking and finding new recipes that I (and the rest of the house) love. One day I decided I wanted to whip up a batch of American-style oh so perfect and fluffy pancakes and so began scouring the internet for that perfect recipe. I decided to try a recipe by Nigella which went down a hit... perfect, golden brown, fluffy goodness. Ever since I have been asked to make them every weekend and it is just expected that we have them for Sunday breakfast. We love ours with dashings of Nutella, bananas and syrup! But sometimes I just like to slather mine in butter and enjoy :)

AMERICAN STYLE BREAKFAST PANCAKES

Ingredients

• 225g plain flour
• 1 tbsp baking powder
• 1 tsp white sugar
• pinch salt
• 30g unsalted butter melted
• 2 large eggs
• 300ml milk
• butter for frying (optional) I use a good non-stick pan and use no butter 

I whip up all the ingredients in a bowl using a whisk, then transfer this to a jug. I pour the batter in a good non stick frying pan on medium heat. I do one pancake at a time and make them fairly big. Turn over once they are blistering on top and cook until golden.

TOPPINGS WE LOVE -

Nutella, Syrup, Bananas, Strawberries, Blueberries, lemon & Sugar, Butter!

I hope you enjoy these pancakes as much as we do! 

A x