Homemade Halloween how to make a bride, a groom, a bat, a robot and a ghost!

Halloween is one of my favourite times of year and my children are getting to the age where they can celebrate it to. We have had a great time this year making decorations and different types of Halloween food. we invited a few people round and had a little halloween party.

 

This was my best costume ever! My mum made the dress and I modified it. My mum is a seamstress so always has plenty of scrap fabric. To make this you need to start by making a long white dress, sew a bit of lace on and it will automatically look like a wedding dress. Then for the blood i used water and red food colouring. I made it look dirty with grey and black paints from the kids bedroom. As for the flowers... they were a birthday present and I left them to die!! The whole thing cost nothing. You could easily re-create this, you could buy a long white dress from a charity shop or ebay quite cheaply.

 

Now dave's costume was a little more 'expensive'!!!! The suit and tie cost £4 and the white shirt he had in his wardrobe unworn for years. We used the same red food colouring and grey paint. We just ripped and teared parts of his suit. Both costumes have gone to new homes after selling them on ebay, its really nice to know that someone else would have enjoyed them this year.

 

This year I wanted the kids to be comfortable with what they were wearing and enjoy wearing them so we decided to let them choose, apart from Millie, as she has only just turned 2 she doesn't really know whats going on. I made a ghost outfit for her. Leon isn't keen in all things scary and opted for a bat costume, and Toby wanted to be a robot!! I told him this wasn't 'halloweeny' but he insisted!

 

So Leon's first ,he doesn't like facepaint or hats so his was really simple! All you need is a long sleeved black t-shirt from the sale rail in Matalan and a pound shop umbrella.

 

Take off all the other parts and just leave the long metal bits in.

I glued in the metal bits in the ends and then you need to sew them to the umbrella near the top. I also put duct tape round the top ends so they woundn't poke him.

 

 And there you have it bat wings, this isn't the best picture as he was to shy to have it done proper!

 

Next is toby's which is super easy. All you need is a box, dryer duct, kitchen foil, grey spray paint. Obvisouly this is really easy to do, we added some hazard tape for extra effect. once you have made the box, glue the foil on, add some hazard tape. We had some old dryer duct we never used and cut it to size for the arms and legs and sprayed it, once he had the costume on we cable tied the arms to the box. You will need spares for when they need the loo! Face painted and all ready to go!

 

 

Millies dress was the first ever dress I have made, it was so easy! The great thing is that for halloween outfits it doesn't have to be perfect. This was made from 20cmx100m pieces of old cotton sheeting (again from mums) but you could use an old sheet, curtains, as long as it white! I sewed it all together and sprayed grey spray paint around the arms and bottom of the dress. Added cobwebs from last years Halloween decorations and all ready to go!

 

And here she is... the biggest camera lover of the family!!!

 

 

We made these outfits mainly from things around the house! Here's our total costing:

Leon - black t-shirt £2 (matalan)

            Black umbrella  £1 (poundland)

Total cost £3 plus other things around the house needle, thread and duct tape.

 

Toby Kitchen foil 79p (instore)

Total cost 79p things from sround the house hazrd tape, cable ties, dryer duct

 

Millie £0

 

We had a fantastic Halloween and everybody loved their costumes! This is a entry into the moneysupermarket.com homemade halloween competition.

Half Term Shenanigens

Today was our first day back after half term, we had a great break and with so many creative comps around we all joined in. Having 3 children I never know weather to get them all to do the same colouring competition and enter them all or to do a different one each. This half term I entered them in different ones. Here's some of our entries, firstly there was the Tesco competition, Leon who's 6 entered this:

Next was his entry to win £100 worth of fireworks and we sent his monster picture. This is a great effort for Leon as usually he's not keen on drawing things. He much rather make things.

Toby's picture of a bat which has been entered to win a charm.

This is my entry to the prizefinders latest competition to win a young dracualas dvd.

As you can see I have been busy while the kids have been in bed! These took me ages to make and I was really pleased with the way they turned out. Its for the hey you guys competition. You need to summit a piece of art to do with E.T.

E.T. cupcakes

And finally my pumpkin this will be entered into many competitions. The pumpkin carving competitions are set so high this year there are some unbelievable carvings out there. I don't have the time (or patience) to carve such masterpieces, so I decided to do something a bit different.

We had great fun over the half term and Leon can't wait to get his teeth into the next competition. Now for Halloween I've spent most of today making 3 children's costumes...a bat, a robot and a ghost.

All will be revealed shortly...



Cakes win prizes

Appliances Online have launched a new blog, so they are hosting a blog competition to win over £400 worth of goodies. As soon as I saw it, I new I had to enter I don't need much of an excuse to make some cupcakes, I love making them. My obsession started last yer when I won a cupcake course!

I like to try different types of cupcakes I made amaretto, lemon chello, strawberry and coffee for my wedding, the coffee went down well with everyone, except me as I don't like coffee, so I made coffee ones today. I'm trying to cut down so its the perfect choice!!

I just use a basic cupcake recipe, but made 24 so double what I usually make. Start by mixing 8oz butter with 8oz sugar and mix until light and fluffy, add 4 eggs a bit at a time. Mix 2 teaspoons of instant coffee with a splash of boiling water. Finally add 8oz of self-raising flour and mix with a spoon. Pop in the oven on 180 and cook for 10-12mins!

Whilst the cupcakes were cooking I set to work on the icing, its takes quite a while to make the topping and by time I had made them the cakes had cooled. I added butter cream to the top, I mixed 100g of butter with 200g icing sugar, it was too much I had loads left over!!

So what do you think?

spoooooky Appliances online

Close up, these are my favourite.

Bones, brooms and blood stained 'a'

Hope you like them!

Super Hero's Lost powers #kodakavengers

Some naughty builders dumped tons and tons of soil and bricks into our garden, I had no choice but to call the super hero's to help me move it.

But... the superhero's had had a really busy day saving lives, helping the community, Iron man decided he couldn't help on this occasion as he desperately needed a nap, so off he went to charge his powers. Captain America set to work but he discovered he had lost his powers....

He set about to find them...

He jumped here, there and everywhere...

He searched high and low....

"ah ha I have a plan, lets call the hulk!"

The Hulk was more than happy to help with the super hero duties

Now thats done lets look for your super powers....

Finally afters hours of searching Captain America finally found his powers.

This is an entry into the Brit mums #kodakavengers competition. We all had great fun in the garden and the boys (including dad)came up with the story as they went along. Thanks for hosting such a fun competition and thanks to brit mums who sent the masks out to us.

My latest prize

I have won my first big win for ages today, a £50 cloggs voucher from the cloggs facebook page. I really wanted to win this competition just because I love designer shoes but I can't always afford designer prices. So i thought long and hard about it and decided to make cupcakes mainly because I  love making cupcakes and so i could include cloggs in my entry. I had a good look at their website and decided to do little cake toppers of all the brands they had. Admittedly they did take me all week to make, here's the finished entry:

 

I've had my eye on a pair of hunter wellies for ages, just what I need in time for winter.

I have also joined Pinterest so I can enter other competitions, so far I have only entered one as I have got completely side tracked and spent most of the time looking at the images rather than pinning and repinning. I haven't really got used to it all yet. But if you like follow me at

http://pinterest.com/vickyd4v3/

Jenny craig UK competition

Jenny Craig UK are hosting a fantastic blogging competition to win £400 towards a bike and a 28 day weight loss plan. You can find all the information to enter here.

Since having my 3rd child i have been about 2 stone over weight, before my holiday, this year I managed to lose half a stone. I am quite fit, I run and exercise at home. My big problem is food, I love it, especially chocolate, as soon as the kids go to bed the choccy comes out. So my questions is....

How do I break the habit, do I gradually 'wean' myself off chocolate at night time, or just try to stop altogether?

soooooooooo............

I haven't been blogging for quite a long time, simply because I haven't been comping for a long time. I last reported the win for the kitchen makeover. Unfortunately it didn't happen, the local company started to ask for extra money, it didn't state anything about needing to pay extra in the terms and conditions so we decided not to take the prize. We were gutted about it but we just had a 'bad feeling' about it. This experience put me off comping for a while, I've won the odd prizes here and there since then.

Aswell as that experience we also got married in the summer, at Lake Garda in Italy, so planning of that has taken quite alot of my time! So i'm back to it now and plan to seek out some comps to enter today and start again. Now that we haven't taken our kitchen prize, I still need to beat my total from last year. And with only 4 months left of the year it's going to be hard!