Frankenstein Cupcakes

I first saw the Frankenstein cupcake idea in a magazine, but couldn't find it when the time came. I ended up peeking at a few pic of similar ideas on Flickr and decided to just wing it as I have done ice cream cone cupcakes in the past.

Here's what you need:
Package of ice cream cones- Tip--buy more than you need because some will likely be damaged!
Box cake mix- I used an orange and fudge mix special for Halloween
Ingredients called for on box- Usually water, vegetable oil, and eggs
Container of chocolate icing
Full size peanut butter cups
Black decorator's icing- I used Wilton's black icing in a tube that the tip is "supposed" to fit on!
A mini muffin pan

Step 1: Place 6 (or 12 if you have a big mini muffin pan) cones into your pan. Fill with prepared cake mix to just above where the cone widens.
My box called for the oven to be at 350 degrees and I found through trial and error that 15 minutes seemed to be the perfect baking time for my cupcakes. Your time may vary a bit, but you can always check by poking with a toothpick. If it comes out clean, it's done!

Step 2: Place peanut butter cup on top when the come out of the oven immediately. They will melt a bit to stick onto the cupcake top.

Step 3: Decorate! Put chocolate icing around edges of peanut butter cups (or any other color you like). Push 2 candy corn in for the neck plugs (I guess that's what they are!) Draw a face with your choice of icing. Black was quick and easy for my purposes. If you don't have tips and bags for decorating, you can put your icing in a sandwich bag and cut a small corner off with kitchen scissors.










A few tips I discovered along the way. Don't make the night before because my candy corn got sticky and started to melt and fall out due to the moisture in the cake mix. Also, the fine detail in the icing decoration started to run. I would bake the cupcakes and do the basic icing the day before and decorate only a few hours prior to your party so they are looking their scariest!

Jeff Carves a Pumpkin

Almost 3 weeks before Halloween this year, my husband says, "I know what I'm carving on my pumpkin." Now most years it's like pulling teeth to get him to agree to carve pumpkins with me. It is a Herculean task! He proudly flips his laptop around to show me a spiderman face carved into a pumpkin. I have to admit, it was pretty cool. I was just excited that he actually wanted to carve a pumpkin uncoerced! I wanted to try painting my pumpkin black to make it super creepy. I ended up carving a somewhat cute design, so I don't really know how creepy it turned out, but I was happy with the results. Here are our attempts at artful pumpkin carving for 2009.

My first embroidery project

I recently finished my first embroidery project. The pattern was a Sublime Stitching pattern. It turned out really cute and was a lot of fun! I guess I can't really say that I'm new to embroidery, but it was my first time trying an iron-on pattern like this one. I can see that there will be many more projects like this one in my future. I've been spying on some really cute patterns on Etsy.

Craft Magazine's Blog Rocks!

I have to say that Craftzine is the rockingest website for crafty ideas out there! I actually found it via another great blog that I read, homemade by jill. If I go for a few days without checking it out, I am absolutely flooded by awesome pictures and tons of ideas that I would love to try, like this shaped book tutorial at Cheeky Magpie. There just aren't enough hours in the day to even look at all of the cool crafty things people are doing these days, let alone actually making them! Trick or treat was okay last night. We had about 45 kids come to the house. We actually have some candy left over, which is not what I was hoping for! Ramona was a good sport and wore her pig costume for a brief period. She was a hit with the kids and their parents. She did, however, look totally and utterly humiliated! Her second picture is the most perfect "stink eye" from a dog I've ever seen!

Adult Halloween Parties = FUN!

The past three years have brought out much creativity and laughter amongst our group of friends in the form of the adult Halloween party. The locale changes every year so there are some fresh faces and a new perspective on the theme, but the core group remains the same. The year the Audia's hosted and used a 'Through the Decades' theme. Their living room was done in 70s style, the bathroom in 60s, the dining room (with tons of delicious treats!) in 80s with plenty of cool toys to admire and play with, and the kitchen in 50s. The guests had the choice of wearing clothes from a specific decade or dressing as a character or item that was able to be dated for a particular decade. Jeff and I took it one step further and dressed up as a decade! We went as 'The 80s'. We were getting ready to embark on a cruise, as you may be able to tell from the photos. Jeff's pants were only 2 sizes too small, and I couldn't decide if I was more Barbara Bush or Rose Nylund. What do you think? Well, we had a great time eating, playing games, and just being together!

Halloween Craftiness

Granted it may be a little late to be thinking about making Halloween crafts, but I couldn't resist when I saw this because it's so simple. It also led me to another great blog at Skip to My Lou. These adorable pumpkin and ghost votive holders would take virtually no time at all and would be great projects to do with you kids too. They are made using baby food jars, Mod Podge, black construction paper, and crepe and tissue paper. How easy is that? If anyone tries these and wants to post pics, that would be fantastic. I can so picture these sitting along your walk or driveway to light the way for all the little ghouls and princesses coming for your treats on Halloween night!

Our house is a very, very, very fine house!

Fall always seems to fly by so quickly, probably because it is my favorite time of year. I always want to get the decorations out just a bit earlier than I should, but thankfully my husband keeps me somewhat in check with that and I return the favor when he pushes to get out Christmas decor before Thanksgiving rolls around. Shopping for Halloween candy is always fun. We just need to place it strategically or buy it at the last minute so that we don't eat most of it ourselves. We decided we didn't want to be a one of the houses that gave out crappy candy, so we get the good stuff....chocolate! We have averaged around 40-70 trick-or-treaters in the five Halloweens that we have lived in this neighborhood. I think that it's the perfect number. I hear stories of people elsewhere that get into the hundreds and have to turn off their light when they run out of candy. Last year we actually had some left that we had to get rid of! The highlight is definitely seeing what our next door neighbors are going to dress as to go along with their 6 year old son. We've had Dad as batman (secretly my favorite year) and another year as Scooby Doo in a full-on costume. I hear this year the son will be Harry Potter and Dad will either be Hagrid or Dumbledore, but whatever he chooses, I'm sure he will go all out in the costume department!

My New Monster Friends!

I've finished up some original designs for a couple of Halloween cuties this week for my Etsy shop. I'm really pleased with the way they turned out....so I'd like to introduce to you Grace the Goofy Spider and Frankie the Frightful Bat. They've both had a rough start in life and are hoping to find their way to stardom. More Halloween is being planned...how I just have to get crackin'!