Halloween!

We had a halloween party on actual halloween (since it just happened to be a Saturday).  There were sparklers, a little bonfire, mulled cider and apple juice, a slow cooked ham and lots of autumn fruit pies!

My mum grew the little gourds last year for my sisters wedding and I dried them to use again this year.  The colours aren't as bright as they were last year and they are really light and hollow sounding but I think they still look pretty nice on the mantlepiece.  This year I've added some fresh pumpkins (which will end up in a soup or something in a bit) and some leaves, twigs and pinecones picked up from various walks as well as some poppy seed heads from the garden.

The smaller guests dressed up, George was a cat and meowed lots.

We had sparklers and a little bonfire in our cast iron garden stove outside.  It was so mild we even ate our tea outside too.

The sticks for the bonfire proved more interesting than the sparklers for some of the guests.

There was lots of food, including tonnes of sweets as well as these three pies which are from the left - boozy rhubarb (made with the rhubarb I strained out of my rhubarb liquer), blackberry and apple and the last one is apple.

This one was my favourite - I bought the little leaf cutters on eBay.

No party is complete without bunting in my opinion so I spent the Friday night before the party making some out of the pages of an old book and a sharpie marker!

George makes all sorts of marvellous art projects at nursery so I added these to some black and white string to make a spooky garland.

I love this glittery bat!

My sister gave me some spider web decorations which came with their very own spiders.

An autumny flower arrangement.

I had planned to carve lots of pumpkins but in the end I just did this one simple one.  Will try harder next year!  I made a pumpkin cake with the stuff I scooped out of it but after cooking for what seemed like an eternity it was still the most squishy inedible thing unfortunately.

I made this garland out of a sponge painting that George had done.  It was full of lovely autumn colours so I used my star paper cutter and cut out lots of stars and glued them to some black and white butchers string.  I love the idea that every halloween I'll be able to get this out and hang it up - whereas  the painting would have been up on the fridge for a while and then got put in a pile with the many other masterpieces he has produced. ;-)

Some more bunting, this time it's just ordinary printer paper and a sharpie marker taped to black and white butchers string.

We strung some rope lights along the bench in the hall which I really love.  They are so sparkly!

All in all it was a great party, now the back yard is pretty much finished I'm hoping we can have lots more gatherings out there.

Autumn

It's been such a long time since I posted anything on here but it's been such a lovely autumn over the past few weeks I thought I'd finally get round to posting some pictures of what we've been up to lately....

We've been working on finishing off the patio area at the back of our house, helped abley here by George and ducky.

I tried to go courgettes from a plant my mum gave me. As far a I knew courgettes were supposed to be the most productive plants ever and I figured I would end up with a great glut, but no it wasn't to be, my courgette plant only managed one little courgette! Rather than stir fry it or whatever you do with just one courgette I decided it would be best off as a cake. It was yummy.

We had a lovely sunny day out in rowallane, far sunnier and warmer than most of the actual summer days!

There have been many pies and I have used my enamel dishes at every opportunity! The top one is pork and apple with a creamy calvados sauce and the bottom one is fig, pancetta and goats cheese. They were yummy too.

We had another sunny day out in castle espie looking at the ducks, and a wheel barrow of course.

We had nosy neighbours.

And occasionally Belfast city centre looked a bit like Paris.

We had fun exploring the newly cut field on yet another sunny day.

And inspected the new decking.

We crowned the winner of our first annual sunflower growing competition. (I came last)

I made a lot of jam and chutney!

(Some free downloadable labels will be up soon on the shop)

We had some froggy visitors when we put down the new stones at the back of the house.

I spent a couple of days in the autumny loveliness of stranmillis college for work.

And I treated myself to a new scarf which is as big as a blanket, but what with all the sunshine this autumn I have been roasting wearing it!

We also had a Halloween party but I'll save that for another post!

Homemade chocolate box for valentines...

I am trying my best to make as many presents in 2015 as possible. It saves a little bit of money, it's fun and satisfying and for what little money you do spend you definitely get more bang for your buck than if you'd just gone out and bought the finished thing!

So for valentines I decided to make some chocolates for my beloved. I've made truffles before but this time I treated myself to some silicone chocolate moulds to make the finished article a bit professional looking!  They were only a few pounds each, take a look on eBay, there are tonnes of different designs, I got  a plain round one and one that was described as robots but they are most definitely lego men!

The finished selection. 

These are Oreo truffles, I got the recipe from www.apartmentapothecary.com and they were really easy to put together and dee pinched one out of the fridge as they were setting and proclaimed they were the most delicious thing he'd ever tasted so high praise indeed!

Next up were salted caramel chocolates which I finished off with my favourite gold food spray which makes anything look fancy! These were just melted dark chocolate (from lidl - 35p a bar!) put in the mould and set in the fridge and then I melted some chomps with a little butter and added a teaspoon of sea salt, put that in the chocolate mould and set again then topped with more dark chocolate.  I didn't have enough caramel mixture to fill them all so I improvised and made some peanut cups too 

The peanut cups.

Finally I made some white chocolate and cranberry lego men/ robots. This was just melted white chocolate and some blitzed cranberries mixed in. I had some mixture left over so I set it in some mini bun cases, no point wasting it ;-)

All in all I reckon I spent £10 (£5 of which was for the moulds which I can use again) and it took me less than an hour. So pretty chuffed with the result!

I packaged them up in a left over box from my Christmas cookies (79p for two in home bargains!) and I think they look pretty fancy indeed!

Valentines cards....

It's that romantic time of year again so I've made some Valentine's cards and you can get one for that special someone in your life over in the shop!

They're all printed on recycled kraft card and come with snazzy colourful envelopes!  Plus there's free postage to the UK.  Order by next wednesday to make sure you get it time for the big day!

Mexican fiesta night.

Last weekend we decided to have a bit of Mexican night at home. A few months ago we had been out to Acapulco in Ballyhackamore for a lovely meal with friends and had planned to go again, but in the spirit of saving some money in January we thought we'd try it at home instead. Of course this money saving could have instantly gone out the window as I started adding heaps of papel picado bunting to my amazon basket, however my bank balance sighed a sigh of relief when I instead headed to the pound shop and spent a grand total of £1 on coloured tissue paper and decided to have a go at making my own.

Rather pretty off cuts. (Rather blurry pics as I decided to start this project rather late one night while watching this really good Seamus Heaney doc on BBC 4)

 I used this tutorial online and I think it worked pretty well, even if I do say so myself!

The finished decorations. In fairness I did splash out on the circular paper decorations but they were only £2.00 each and I can easily fold them up and use then again (for all those future fiestas I see us hosting!)

 I put out my most cheerful fiesta-y tablecloth (from ikea many moons ago) and added this perfectly tacky cactus confetti.

Obligatory hot sauce.

Beer and lime, yum!

We may have gone slightly overboard on the lime juice. We only used two bottles in the end, ah well I guess we will just have to make many more jugs of margaritas in the coming months, roll on summer!

I neglected to take any photos of the food, everybody brought along a dish so in the end we has quite a feast of nachos, tacos, fajitas, enchiladas and tasty salads and even some homemade guacamole which was delicious. We rounded it all off with my very first homemade key lime pie of which I was very proud and will definitely be making again, even though juicing all those limes nearly made my hands fall of - so stingy!

1st attempt at home made crisps in the air fryer! Had some sliced potatoes left over from making a potato bake for tea and decided to try making some crisps, they’re ready salted and very nice indeed. Just peeled, thinly sliced spuds ( I did mine in the food processor with the slicer blade attached) then mixed with one teaspoon of oil, in the air fryer for about 20 minutes. I had to keep checking on them and taking out the small ones as they went crispy but all in all pretty easy. Finally season with your flavour of choice, I went for plain salt. Yummy!