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Ok, I think we're having a halloween/open house thing for the family for this new house, but, well, australia isn't very much into the whole halloween thing. Plus it's in the middle of hot sunny spring so it's even harder to set the mood.

I've never done a halloween party, so if anyone has ideas of anything they've done or easy suggestions lets hear them!

So far, my only idea is to use my plethora of xrays as decoration.

^_^

Soylent Green.

It's made of people!

Make a cake that looks like a bat using about three round cakes - one for body, one for the head, one cut with a jagged edge down the middle for wings (or just two cakes and paint the wings on the body one folded up) - decorate the cake appropriately. Or you could make a cake or cupcakes that look like jack-o-lanterns, since I bet pumpkins aren't in season.

Part of what makes it halloweeny is how you label things. If you're going to have a buffet-style food kind of thing, you can label grapes (off the stem) or olives as eyeballs, spaghetti as guts, make a red punch and call it blood punch or something like that (or green would be bug juice).

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I could do a soylent potato bake *twirls her potato peeler*

You make that cake sound really easy superlion!
Forgot to mention we may very likely have a coeliac, and was going to try and stay away from anything with gluten in it which I know will be hard.

Great idea on labeling, though I was raised calling fruit punch bug juice anyway Can grapes go in jello? i know you cant use something in jello, maybe it's just pineapple (which sell for 50 cents each up the road!)

We may just do a BBQ, which here means sausages on the grill, maybe blood on the plates?

I looked into candy skulls for place holders, but without a skull mold they'd be very difficult. Will have to look for cookie cutters today...like I said, not much halloween stuff here. I knew i should have got some foam pumpkins before i left the states !!!

^_^

Go for the good old BBQ and make sure the beer is cold and if you are not an Ozzie yet you will be after the good old BBQ, and dont forget the prawns either.

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Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
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Do you have a Spotlight store nearby Babel? The one near me had quite a range of Halloween stuff.

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Before you criticize someone walk a mile in their shoes. That way you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Actually we do, and they're having a big grandopening too! step MIL and FIL actually work there

I was thinking of going and just getting stuff to do DIY, though time is short and my shoulder is rather misbehaving. Guess I'll really have to go now!

Heh, Keith, I wanted to try and inject tomato sauce into the snags so when people cut into them they gush out blood but I suppose that may not work!

^_^

It will work if you can get a syringe with a very long needle and inject it from the ends when they are cooked.
You could try the same with hamburgers

Have a look in [link=My Profile] http://www.fishprofiles.com/forums/member.aspx?id=1935[/link] for my tank info
Look here for my
Betta 11Gal Desktop & Placidity 5ft Community Tank Photos

Keith

Near enough is not good enough, therefore good enough is not near enough, and only your best will do.
I VOTE DO YOU if not WHY NOT?
VOTE NOW VOTE NOW

Ok, so the day approaches!

The email that MIL sent around is that it's more nibblies and no formal meal, so the BBQ will wait till another year.

Since other people are bringing stuff too I have less I need to prepare.

I've decided to do a graveyard with dirt pudding(chocolate pudding with crushed cookies and gummyworms) and a gravestone cookie. Swamp dip (spinach and veggies) and decayed body dip (hummus with red pepper) with crackers, and coffin shaped pumpernickel bread with a tomato spread.
I'd have made better shaped bread but without the cookie cutters cutting out ghosts and bats would be too hard!

After lots of searching i found marshmallow fluff at Coles and will do jack o lantern rice krispie treats, and of course two bags of round lollipops got covered with tissue paper to make ghosts.



Lindy, went to spotlight, found $2 cobwebs, adam got a costume. Also found a doorhanger:




Felt to make jack O lanterns with


And some decals, you can see my ghost towel from the states in the background.


I got one plastic cauldron for candy, I'd have gotten more but they were a tad , so I'll wait till Dia de los Muertos (day of the dead), when hopefully stuff will be marked down.

Google helped me find this wonderful site, and I made a few jars for the kitchen, and some for the hall bathroom.



Also decided that since all the trees couldn't lose their leaves and be proper spindly skeletal trees that I'd bring some skeletal branches inside. Some of the shrubs around the house needed to be trimmed anyway, but taking leaves off by hand is a little more than I bargained for, seems to look fairly good anyway!


And some fallen leaves fill up a vase with orange flowers I had from the states




Bring on Halloween

^_^

Looks good Babel! Hope the day goes well.

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Before you criticize someone walk a mile in their shoes. That way you're a mile away and you have their shoes.

Nice work!

Pumpkins are still available here, but seriously, you are looking at $15-30AUD for a carving pumpkin, and you have to pre-order. Our normal pumpkins are not the type you want to go trying to put faces in.

Actually, on the topic, what is a normal pumpkin for the US or UK? After reading a lot on carving etc, i'm getting the impression that what I'd consider to be normal pumpkin use might be very abnormal for others. As far as I was aware, US called then squash and generally eat the small ones as a pie filling, and the UK grew marrow to feed to cows (this one was an interesting discovery after trying to feed pumpkin to visiting Scotsmen and being told that they had no idea what it was). Can someone clue me in on the general size/type of pumpkin you'd eat in other parts of the world, or if you eat it at all?



For animals, the entire universe has been neatly divided into things to (a) mate with, (b) eat, (c) run away from, and (d) rocks. - Terry Pratchett

While ya'll are discussing the day's menu -
Don't forget to start the day off with a hardy breakfast
of "Green Eggs and Ham" to set the tone..

Frank


-->>> The Confidence of Amateurs, is the Envy of Professionals <<<--

Frank, I wouldn't be able to get adam to eat either even if they werent green !

Ok 'pumpkin' in the US to me means orangy carving one. Most people don't do cooked pumpkin and for those that make pumpkin pie for thanksgiving it comes from a can. And this is from someone who was raised with a fairly traditional thanksgiving menu (ie, the gravy came from the giblets and neither stuffing or mashed potato came out of a box, all the pie dough was made by hand ect). I'd never even tried pumpkin soup till I moved here! Squashes are usually also decor, though they do sell some of the smaller varieties like acorn in the stores and they may be cooked, though I was never served them as a kid, even though my mom cooked dinner from scratch.
I think I remember seeing kent pumpkins in the grocery store (my MIL gives them to us quite regularly now as she grows them at home, and I've since learned they can last a year on the counter before being made into soup), but always thought they were just there for buying to decorate your thanksgiving table with!

I'm sure a generation or two back, or for those further from the cities than I grew up things are and were different, so I can't speak for all the US but to me
Pumpkin = orange for carving and $15-20 isn't bad, it just means you're getting a big one that's hard to hold onto
pie filling = in a can Libbie's I think
squash = good for decorating for halloween or thanskgiving


I was half tempted to try carving the one pumpkin I have on the counter (they're so hard to cut and adam doesn't do pumpkin either) but just cutting it up in pieces is more than enough work for me let alone try and carve anything of a face. Plus, unlike american 'pumpkins' there's good eating on them!

I wanted to go do some grave rubbings (not robbing!!!) for wall hangings but would you believe it I can NOT find a single crayon! Well except for a rainbow one and that's not exactly spooky.

^_^

Holy poo! Those are expensive pumpkins! It's ~$3-5 USD for a large (the size of a basketball or larger) pumpkin around here.

I used to grow the giant pumpkins that get 300-400lbs... those were so much fun. They just got to be too much work... haven't grown 'em in a few years...

Very nice bloody hand print, btw, Babel. What'd you use for the fake blood? Red paint?

OOO waffley i want one of those!!!
My mothers rule growing up was you can pick whatever pumpkin you want so long as you can carry it back to the car!

Sadly those are just decals, window cling type things. I'll be putting them up in the bathroom half way through the night.
I've seen fake blood made from corn syrup and red dye applied to everything from candles to roses. Only problem ends up being that food dye tends to stain fabrics and other materials so be careful where you use it!

^_^

Heh. When it comes to the giant pumpkins, carrying is out of the question. It usually takes 2 people to roll one with some degree of control. One person can roll one, but bumps/hills can cause you to lose control... and ya wanna be careful with 'em...

I've made fake blood before, it's hard to get to the right color/consistency to get it to look right in thin and well-lit applications (ie: bathroom mirror). Works well enough as stage blood, though. Either way, the bloody hand print is a cool idea

I keep forgetting to look for corn syrup in the stores, it's no where near as common as in the states but next year I'm going all out! So I have between now and next year to come up with a good blood recipe

heh, my stage blood tastes like peppermint

^_^

It'd be nice if we could get premade pie crusts here, would make making pumpkin pies so much easier. Instead of just getting sheets and trying to form them to the pan...

30 buck a pumpkin is crazy!!!! you should just get a friend to see if you can be mailed some pumkin seeds for next year then plant and in a year you willl be good to go! the bloody windows halfway through is a good idea! someone will get startled!good food ieads too!if you can find a novelty jello mold (ie brain hands etc) that might be fun too... if not maybe you can order some for next year!

also if your interested there is an alchoholic beverage called jungle juice (usually you put it in a cauldron with some dry ice and let it attract guests, just google it for a recipe)

hah just realize that your halloween was my yesterday...

hope you had a ghoulish time...

\\\\\\\"an ounce of prevention is worth a pound of the cure\\\\\\\"

brandeeno - the problem (which causes the pumpkins to be so expensive) is that Halloween falls in Spring in the Southern Hemisphere, when pumpkins don't grow. And growing them in a greenhouse isn't very economical because they take up a large area to grow.

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