Halloween Wars - Week 3

Hello Boys and Ghouls, Crypt Keeper here to replace that dead wood they propped up to host this monstrosity of a halloween show. He wasn't so happy to go but chainsaws make for such wonderful bargaining tools.

Let's get this waste of a perfectly good night I could spend grave robbing started.

Literary Barbies

Anymore it seems if you get enough clicks on Youtube someone is willing to turn you into a doll. And yet for those who prefer say the collected works of the Bronte sisters to the collected work of a Twisted Sister, you're plum out of luck. Until now!

Okay so I've only made three so far and damn if they weren't a pain in the butt. It's that cursed recognizable hair and finding period clothes and that ever present vacant stare with a bit of drool on Ken's chin that gets me every time.

Any votes for a favorite author you want to see immortalized in plastic?

Okay, one more.

Coffin Cake

On top of Redcliffe and the hand that refused to stay buried my husband and I also hit up what appeared to be if someone crashed a Hallmark into a Ben Franklin using a small restaurant and picked up a coffin pan.

Like all baking paraphernalia left in the world this comes from Wilton

The picture on the box and recipe on the back suggested one use brownies, but coffins aren't usually crumbly and made to look like dirt. That's what the grave is for (this edible death analness is why you all love me, yes?), so I tossed the suggestions and hauled out my Evil Cake Overlord Cookbook.

This time I went a bit easier with an Autumn Glory Cake. I also halved everything from the original to fit.

• 1 1/2 cups Cake Flour
• 1 1/8th cups Sugar
• 1 Tbsp Baking Powder
• 1 1/2 tsp Cinnamon (okay I kept the cinnamon amount the same because I love that stuff)
• 1/2 tsp Ground Cloves
• 1/2 tsp Ground nutmeg
• 3/4 tsp salt
• 1/2 box of instant vanilla pudding mix
• 3 Eggs
• 3/4 cup Water (I used apple cider because I had some around).
• 3/4 cup Butter
• 1 Tbsp vanilla extract

I'm sure you know by now mix together all those dry ingredients, add in eggs and water (or cider. . . Mmm, apple cider) mix, then butter and nilla.

I baked my little coffins at 350 for 30 minutes (cakes call for 45-60 minutes) as well as 6 extra cupcakes thanks to left overs and they came out looking like this:

Kind of cute right? Well wait until I extract them.

Is that not the most adorable line of coffins you've ever seen? You just want to scoop them all up and shove them in your mouth.

I'd almost call them done myself but what is cake without frosting? Again I have no technique whatsoever for putting a sugar and egg white mixture on top of delectables so just squint a bit.

I'm almost thinking next time I'll make some red frosting and pipe that into the middle like a bedding but leave the coffin sides unfrosted. The cake is so tasty it really doesn't need that much frosting anyway.

Now to find some unsuspecting Trick-Or-Treaters to unload these babies on.

Zombie Hand Paint Job

Due to the fact my husband and I will be spending our anniversary knee deep in Costume ball decoration for our anniversary we decided to celebrate early.

And what better way than by traveling to the Big City to do some Halloween gawping?

(For the sake of my acting like a slack jawed yokel Omaha is a big city now while Lincoln is just some tiny hole in the wall with three people and 10 cows. You know, the way everyone pictures Nebraska.)

We said goodbye to the dog and were off on a grand adventure of wading around piles of sticky kids who were adorably pushing their noses against the glass waiting for stores to open and not so adorable sticky teenagers.

The trip was mostly a look and savor, neither of us expected to find much of anything but there were a few cool scores. First up was this Lenticular I'd had my eye on for some time from Halloween Express.

I call it Redcliffe. If you have no idea why I call it Redcliffe it's really not worth explaining, but trust me it makes me a giant dork.

Now the really cool thing that I didn't realize from looking online is that it's actually 3D and a pretty good 3D too. It gives a nice slightly more authentic undead coming at you feel that other lenticulars don't have.

But enough about Redcliffe now to get to why you're all really here. The hand.

This zombie hand was only $6. And the details in the sculpture are amazing, not something I'd expect to find for such a low price that's for certain. But that paint job, unless one has an unusually large undead smurf population it simply wouldn't do.

Luckily we have ways to fix that - Mwhahaha ha *cough cough* ha. Okay I'll get to it.

Halloween Wars - Week 2

The amount of Television watching in this house is so sad it actually made those little Nielsen diaries they send to you with five bucks cry a bit and grab it's little hat before Mary Poppinsing out through the chimney.

But come Sunday night, after a week spent scrabbling and crafting finally my husband and I plop down exhausted on the couch and try to zone out to what used to be the most bland offering of the cable line up: The Food Network.

Despite the inevitable slide to EXTREME! DANGER! WHO WILL SURVIVE THIS CHILI COOK OFF WHERE WE MAKE CONTESTANTS EAT LIVE BUGS! every cable channel makes towards  reality hell still we watch it. I hadn't intended to do a recap of any Food network show unless my life depended upon it (a bunch of people enter the stage, they make shit, someone gets money and we all feel a bit dirtier for it) but this is Halloween stuff and I'll happily take the bullet if a spider or witch is involved.

Right off the bat (snicker, I said bat cause it's Halloween and throwing around terrible puns is the best the FN writers can do) you feel slight stinging in your eyes, your skin goes clammy and your short of breath as an ominous voice echoes from poor ADR across the $20 set they stole from some kids play about the Three Little Pigs.

There, your worst fears are realized. Your own personal death is hosting this show:

It's the douchebag from Cupcake Wars, a show much like the Black Death that creeps in on grim reaper wings and next thing you know you're bleeding out of every orifice watching your loved ones convulse, screaming about Red Velvet.

I always wondered what Death looked like. For some reason I never pictured a Sears blazer, spiked hair from a 90's boy band and some of the most excruciating puns this side of a bubble gum wrapper.