all hallow's eve

just when you thought the living room was safe... in walks the "grim rapper"

zombie girl is in trouble!!!

"what?!?! it's just popcorn! where's the brains i ordered?!?"

watch out grim rapper-zombie girl is on the attack! slice'r up with your mad rhymes!

i hope the mail carrier isn't afraid of spiders! eeek!

happy hallowe'en

oh, l'horreur!

seeing as it's getting close to hallowe'en, i thought i'd post another favourite avez vous... enjoy!

party time!

my friend kaaren throws the best parties. always guaranteed a good time. this past saturday was no exception... mexican theme hallowe'en party. one of the first costumes we thought of was the mexican bee from the simpsons, but unfortunatly we couldn't find it anywhere and i wasn't about to make one. while out shopping for her own costume, my sister picked up a very large sombrero. derek already had a sarape and i painted his face like a sugar skull. i, myself, went as frida kahlo.

as a gift for our gracious host i laboured over my counter making a sugar skull cake. i used the best chocolate cake recipe i have (i'll post that another time) in my betty crocker dome cake pan. i'm still not fully convinced about the pan though, it tends to dry out the outer layer of the cake when you've got the centre filled. inbetween the layers i used some dulce de leche. i carved the skull shape with a big serrated knife and then covered the whole thing in a very thin layer of buttercream, called a crumbcoat.

then more buttercream, and fondant rolled out smooth.

last, and most labour intensive... the decorating with royal icing.

costumes

i literally stumbled onto this site called buy costumes and holy crap what a fantastic site! i think we spent about 2 hours yesterday looking at everything from sally from the nightmare before christmas to a banana. in the end derek and i decided on wonder woman and the flash for the kids.

and johanna picked out a tootsie roll for her little tootsie roll.

this is going to be awesome!