A spooktacular few days

So I know it's not exactly everyone's bag but I LOVE Halloween. Maybe it's because I was never allowed to go trick or treating as a kid (my mum said it was begging), but now I like to make the most of the spooky holiday! Also, prepare yourself for Halloween-puns-galore in this blog post! The dates have fallen awkwardly this year with Halloween on a Wednesday but with next weekend practically being bonfire night, Halloween started on Saturday and I kicked things off with a good old bit of pumpkin carving. Let me start by saying I have absolutely no idea how some people manage such intricate and artistic designs. I can only assume it's by using black magic because pumpkins are hella messy to scoop out and hella difficult to carve. I couldn't work out what designs to do so I had a nosey on Pinterest and that was a complete waste of time because it's filled only with pumpkins carved by people who have clearly already achieved their pumpkin-carving PhD. Eventually I went for Oogie Boogie (from A Nightmare Before Christmas) and Mike Wazowski (from Monsters Inc) and I thought they turned out pretty well! Although, I failed on the instagram front because my pumpkins were from Tesco (not freshly picked from a pumpkin patch while taking 2748573 photos and videos).

Then after watching Hocus Pocus (witch was for the first time), it was time to get ready for my night out. I'd decided ages ago that I was being a fallen angel so I started with my makeup. I did black and purple smokey eyes, black eyeliner cracks underneath, black lipstick and my favourite part, white contact lenses. I feel like any Halloween outfit looks a million times better with some freaky contacts! As for my outfit, I prefer to wear normal clothes and add some fancy dress accessories (rather than getting a whole costume) so I wore white lacy bodysuit (miss pap), black denim skirt with lace edging (boohoo), black sock boots (public desire) and black choker necklace (new look). I finished with a black feather halo headband and black feather wings (both from ebay). Although despite saying my makeup looked amazing, my parents were not too impressed with what little clothing I was wearing (my dad asked if I was going out in my underwear) but you know what they say, if you've got it, haunt it.

Then after braving the cold, I made it to Katie's for predrinks with my hallowqueens, Katie, Siobhan and Sophia. We'd coordinated ourselves quite nicely, all with black and white outfits and some token headwear. Literal squad ghouls. Then after plenty of prosecco, a lengthy photo shoot while promising the taxi driver we were "on our way out", we made it into town for the Halloween event at the Bowery. Which was literally packed! Despite having tickets, we still had to queue for like half an hour and I've never known that before. Once we were in though we had the best night. We had so much fun; we had all of the boos, we had tequila shots, an extra hour thanks to the clocks going back and selfies in the chip shop (for some strange reason?).  And then I finally went to bed at half 6 at my first sleepover at Katie's flat (since she moved in, in January), and then we spent the whole of a perfect hungover Sunday laughing until we were coffin and watching crap TV.

You may have been surprised not to have seen any cakes on my instagram or blog in a while but expect to see a lot from now on because it's officially baking season. Halloween, bonfire night, Christmas; it's all about cake let's be honest. I kept it simple with my Halloween ones, with vanilla cupcakes and then decorated them as spiders webs, pumpkins and Frankenstein's monsters. Although creeping it real, it's SO much easier baking for work now that I'm only in an office of like 10 people instead of 150. Sorry Potter Clarkson but I don't miss trying to lug enough for everyone on to the bus and tram! (miss you all though).

The last couple of years I've really wanted to go to one of the scarefest events after hearing people say how good they were so last night I finally went to one! Me, Katie and Sian piled into Staci's "mom" car and we headed off to Xtreme Scream at Twin Lakes. Because Twin Lakes is a theme park for children, we weren't sure how scary it would be but it was honestly so good! We were all joking about how Katie would take it because she's never scared of scary films or spiders or anything else and she ended up being really scared (which she was glad of). Although the worst by far was Staci. The shaggy and scooby picture? An accurate representation of her on me as we were going round the mazes. There's now a definite bald patch in the back of my fur coat from where she was gripping it so tightly and whenever there was a bang or an actor jumping out, she practically jumped on me. The event was so well done though with a high swing ride (that was just freezing cold rather than anything else) and 6 different scare mazes with various themes (a pie factory, a hotel, a village, a prison, a circus and one with a bag on your head). We timed it perfectly by coming out of our 6th and final one just as the park was closing, so we really made the ghost of it. My favourite was the hotel and I spent the whole night trying to achieve unagi but failed whenever someone would come running down a corridor at me or jumped out of an unsuspicious cabinet.

And then on to actual Halloween! I got in the spirit of things with lipstick as dark as my soul and a witches hat that I borrowed from my mum, since she was borrowing my devil horns. And you're probably aware of the connection between cats and Halloween? Basically hundreds of years ago, people thought that witches would disguise themselves by turning into cats and I guess that superstition eventually turned into the idea of cats being a good sidekick or animal companion for witches instead. Well I am here to tell you that's false. This was the reaction of my cat Bella at the sight of me and mum in the most minimal of fancy dress. What a scaredy cat!