Liam has been off work yesterday, today and tomorrow as it is half term and he had quite a few days of holiday to use up before the end of the year. It was good to have him around to help out with the rainy day activities! This morning he and Izzy did Halloween craft from her newest magazine.
Izzy had great fun and we now have lots of Halloween decorations!
Averie's Caramel Apple Bars are still my favourite, but these make a nice change - sweet and chocolatey with a hint of coconut.
After eating it was time for more playing...
And then lunch - fried egg and Linda McCartney sausage sandwich, mmm!
This afternoon it was my time to have fun with Izzy with some baking - Halloween baking!
We made two batches of cupcakes - one vanilla, and one chocolate mint:
For the vanilla cupcakes, Izzy iced them with a simple icing glace icing...
and then I added cocoa powder to the remaining icing and piped/dragged it to make cobwebs:
These worked quite well, but the white icing set quicker than I could put the chocolate icing on so the webs didn't drag as much as I would have liked. I'm sure if you were icing the cakes yourself you wouldn't have that problem though - 5 year-olds take longer to knife white icing on than adults do!
Despite the fun that Izzy had making and icing the cakes, her favourite bit always comes afterwards - eating leftover icing!
For the chocolate-mint cakes (after the children's bath time, hence the clothes change) I made green peppermint flavoured butter icing...
Which I piped onto the cakes, and then Izzy topped with 'pumpkin' wrapped chocolates...
Ta da!
Before we changed our plans this morning because of the weather, I'd been planning to make these cupcakes on Saturday. I just hope we've still got some left by the time Monday comes around!!
Are you doing anything this weekend/on Monday to celebrate Halloween? Last year, I took Izzy trick or treating with some of her friends, but I've decided against doing that this year. Instead we will just go round to my Mum's and do apple bobbing, hands in green spaghetti etc. She'll have just as much fun, and it means Toby can join in too. Also, tomorrow we will go to Crealy and carve a pumpkin - that's the thing she's been looking forward to most this half term! The weather is meant to be better tomorrow, fingers crossed!