Top 5 Easy No Bake Halloween Treats

 I love Halloween! It's a great excuse to eat sweets and have fun, when else do we get the chance to dress up?! Every year we get together with our closest friends and have a little afternoon Halloween party. It won't be quite the same this year as sadly one of our friends passed away earlier in the year, but we are determined to keep up the tradition and I know she would want us to too. However there is one slight problem, my oven has finally given up the ghost and I need some easy no bake Halloween treats for this years party. After scouring the nets here are my top 5 favourites so far:

Number 1 - Vampire Dentures

Fabulously easy toothy treats from The Girl Who Ate Everything. If you buy the chocolate chip cookies, there is absolutely no cooking involved.

All you need is:
Chocolate chip cookies
Red icing (frosting)
Mini marsh-mallows
Slithers of Almonds (for the fangs!)

Apparently they originally won 2nd place by Lori Fillmore in the Nestle 2010 Spooktacular Baking Contest. Thanks for sharing this fab recipe, I may even cheat more and buy ready made icing!







Number 2 Ghosty Bananas and pumpkin oranges. Thanks Inga Elizondo for this one. I thought I had better put a healthy one up near the top of the chart. This one is simplicity itself. Bananas with chocolate chips, and peeled satsumas with celery stalks.

Number 3 Finger Food
I nearly didn't pick this one but they are so gruesome I just had to. I wasn't going to pick them because a) I'm not over keen on frankfurters and b) my poor husband lost the ends of two fingers a few years ago and thought these were a bit near the knuckle! Ha ha no pun intended! All you need are frankfurters, ketchup and a little piece of onion for the nails.

Number 4 Cheese string brooms
Super cute cheese broom sticks. I couldn't find pretzel sticks here in the UK so used twiglets instead, taste yummy but produces stunted brooms, more like feather dusters really, but fun all the same. They are a little bit fiddly to tie with the chives, which is why I am using moms.popsugar.com  picture and not mine!

Number 5 Mini donut pretzel spiders
Another easy treat to assemble. I used the mini donuts from Tesco but any small ring donuts would do but they definitely work better with chocolate dipped ones. Once I had made one I left the children to make the others. We found it quite hard to get the smartest to stick but a tiny spot of icing holds them in place.













To see these and lots more no-bake Halloween treat ideas see my Pinterest board or to read more about why we enjoy Witches, Pumpkins and other Halloween Tat here

Nerines for Autumn colour - My Number 1 plant for October

Nerines for Autumn Colour

 

There is nothing like the Nerines for prolonging the colour well into the Autumn. The vibrancy and poise shown by the Nerines is that generally reserved for spring and summer performers.

 

The defiance these magnificent bulbs show holding back the ravishes of Autumn and Winter, as they display their great trumpet blooms. Sturdy upright stems these gorgeous plants from South Africa can pretty much cope with whatever the Autumn weather throws at it.

 

They benefit from being planted in a southerly position on good well draining soil, but mine thrive in a north west facing garden, and bring a welcome splash of colour, in an otherwise now sleepy bed. They quite like to be over crowded, I have got some growing in a well established pot of bamboo, the more they compete with each other for space, the better the show each year. I do feed the ones in the pot, mainly because the bamboo is such a greedy plant, but the flowers are no more or less impressive than those planted directly into the ground.

I do believe they are now available in whites and reds but I have the near native bubble-gum pink variety but I think I will try an add some white ones this year.

Autumn Bounty Bowl

 

 

Decoupage Autumn Bounty Bowl

Make the most of your Autumn bounty and make a gorgeous display with this dead easy decoupage bowl.

I can spend hours and hours going through gardening seed catalogues. The gorgeous vibrant colours, the anticipation they bring as you look forward to the new season of colour. I hate to throw them away after I have made any selections, so we are always looking for new ways to use them. One creation was a decoupage shoebox for the copious amount of hair bands we seem to collect.

So inspired by the Autumn harvest we looked for something else to decorate. My daughter and I like to craft together, so projects have to be fairly simple, with quick results or attention spans tend to wane. Decoupage is a great kids craft, it fulfils the messy aspect required by children, and getting fairly good results from little skill or from tiny hands means it's a great craft to help build confidence and creativity. To make the Autumnal Bounty Bowl you will need:

1 balloon

Bowl for keeping balloon steady

Watered down PVA

Scissors

Magazines or catalogues

Marker pen

Gold acrylic paint
Paint brush

Instructions

1.Taking a balloon and using the traditional paper Mache technique of laying strips of newspaper

over the upturned balloon (use a bowl to steady it), brush over each strip with PVA glue, I guess you could use the wonderful modge podge for this too, but I had just PVA to hand which I slightly watered down.

2. Once two or three layers of newspaper cover half the balloon, it's time to select the images you want to use.

Single colour themes look really effective but I chose a multi-coloured range of images with different shapes and textures to reflect the colourful bounty of Autumn.

When you have got the coverage you like, leave to dry at least overnight. The more generous you are with PVA the more rigid your bowl will be.

3. Once dry and hardened, pop the balloon and carefully peel it away from the shell of your bowl. My daughter particularly enjoyed this bit. You will need to trim the edge of the bowl to give a pleasing finish.

You could go for a regular straight edge but is actually quite tricky and a shaped edge can look very effective.

4. Using your marker pen draw the shape of your
desired bowl edge. Use sharp scissors cut your bowl edge.

5. Once you are happy with the border of your bowl, paint the inside with a tough acrylic paint and leave to dry.

To give the bowl a glossier finish, give a light coat of spray varnish inside and out and leave to dry thoroughly.

04a393512910785ef72c1e7b7497fd805d210d78cbab100229