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.

Repairing my tired and dry hands - E45 Hand Cream Product Review

This is my first product review through BzzAgent and so far so good I've been very impressed. I do a lot of gardening and we have lots of pets, so there is lots of hand washing going on, which can leave my hands dry and sore. I do use a regular hand cream which works well but often leaves my hands feeling greasy. I am intrigued to see how the E45 creams compare with my usual cream.

I have been using the E45 Intense Recovery hand cream for several days and already seen a noticeable difference. My Hands are definitely smoother, less dry and although a little early to tell my nails seem less flaky and prone to splitting. Quite a light cream, no over greasy residue.

I have also used the E45 Repair and protect overnight hand cream, which was light and readily absorbed into the skin. However for a fragrance free product definitely had a stronger smell than the E45 Intense Recovery cream