halloween hangover

Isabella wasn't with me when I discovered Made In Candy in Powerplant Mall here. So I brought her there last weekend to replenish our stash of literal eye candy and let her watch the candy artisans work their magic.

And they did! They had just started working on a customized design when we arrived. Here's the sketch they had up on their glass wall.

They stuck strips of black & orange candy together to make the jack-o-lantern's mouth. Three triangular black rods formed the eyes & nose.

See the jack-o-lantern starting to form?

Then they added the green strip to form the stalk & a lot of white candy for the background.

They then wrapped it with a mat made out of orange (& dark orange) candy strips.

And voila! The jack-o-lantern in a huge cylinder!

The candy makers then pulled & tugged with all their might on one end of the huge roll until it stretched out into a thin tube.

Which they sliced into the finished product...

Isabella loooooved it! She had track & field practice that day but gave it up to watch the candy being made. She kept gushing, "I want to work here! I really do Mommy!" So much that she even asked one of the owners about the possibility of a summer internship.

Look how happy she was, finally tasting the candy we had watched being made for close to an hour!

Really love that 15-year-old Isabella is still a kid! :)

Now what's with the title of this post? I guess the halloween part is self-explanatory. Hangover, on the other hand, has to do with how delayed this Halloween post is (I mean, it's already November!). And the delightful surprise of this new candy design in our new stash of candy (the first batch I bought didn't have this particular design)... A tiny pink martini!

The best part is it tasted sooooo good! Like pink grapefruit martini or maybe pink lemonade. Certainly the kind of candy I can be drunk on! :)

Photos are my own and from Made In Candy's facebook page.

pumpkin colors

I've always been drawn to the sight of pumpkins. I think it's the huge pop of orange brightening up the supposedly scary holiday. So it's no wonder these pumpkins made me smile - with colorful cartoony faces painted on the fun, orange gourd!

Though it turns out, painting over the orange still draws me in. Okay, I guess it isn't surprising that I would be captivated by these colorful, patterned pumpkins...

Don't you love their fun, Mexican pinata vibe?

What about the restrained pops of color & pattern on these white pumpkins?

 
Even purely white pumpkins look gorgeous!

Who would have thought white pumpkins could look this sophisticated?

Now what do you think of these black ones?

Turns out, with some paint, tinsel, glue and twine, Shannon of NYC Taught Me brought some punk to her pumpkins!

I'm not sure I'm ready to bring this punk aesthetic to my home. But I don't mind a black pumpkin for an interesting vase...

And to my dear friends & family in New York & New Jersey (where the top pumpkin photo was actually taken), I wish I could send you these pretty white pumpkin candles to help out during the power outages going on now. Stay safe. You are all in my prayers!

I guess it doesn't matter if pumpkins are orange or not. I'm still quite enamored by them in any color!

So orange or not, pumpkin or no pumpkin, have a happy Halloween everyone!

Photos are my own and from elizabethstreet via nyctaughtme & here, here, here and here.

Click here for my previous post on my farm-to-table pumpkin experience.

Today, I am loving...

We've lived in our house for over 7 years and I still haven't decided on our house-number's design. Today, I am loving... the idea of an unexpected look for a house number - whether it be by stenciling it on a planter like in the photo above or by positioning it on an unusual spot of your front door like this one...

Or on pumpkins! Haha! (Remember my pumpkin-carving experience here?)

I even like that that this house number is spelled out!

Problem is, none of these ideas will work on my house. 1 The platform from our gate to the street is an incline so a planter would slide down. 2 We are a gated house so that idea of the numbers on the bottom part of our front door will not work. 3 Pumpkins? Okay, that doesn't need explanation. 4 Our street is a 3-block-long cul-de-sac, so houses are counted by lot & block numbers. It will be a whole paragraph to spell it out!

Hmmm... I wonder what unusual house number will work in my house? Ideas, anyone?

Though I haven't thought up one for my house yet, today, I am loving... the idea of an unexpected house number. After all, it's the first thing a visitor sees of your house.

Photos from annnniegirl, here and here.

Click here for previous posts from the Today, I Am Loving... series.

Lego Tales: Noah's Toy Story Minifigs

We got Noah this Lego Toy Story 3 train set two Christmases ago (Christmas 2010). As you can see, he's got the real Lego minifigs of Rex, Woody, Buzz, Jessie and Bullseye.

But just a month later (January 2011), he decided to make his own Toy Story mini-figures out of Lego bricks!

I could not fathom why he would make minifigs out of Lego bricks when he had the actual ones.

Then again, maybe I shouldn't have been surprised. Because more than 2 years ago, even though he had an actual Buzz Lightyear costume...

... He still begged Isabella to make him Andy's cardboard box Buzz costume.

He drew the purple stripes himself with his crayon.

And played pretend-Buzz (or was it pretend-Andy?) for hours after.

I have to say that I love how Toy Story creations made out of cardboard and Lego bricks can bring just as much joy as the real thing!

Photos are mostly my own edited with pixlr except for the one from here and the Toy Story backgrounds on the pages of one of Noah's scrapbooks. I never meant for the scrapbook pages to get published so I didn't take note of the source. If you know where it's from, please email me so I can give due credit.

Click here for previous posts from the Lego Tales series. Click here for the down-in-the-dots version of this post.

my farm-to-table pumpkin experience

Two Halloweens ago, I went pumpkin-picking in New Jersey. It was surreal enough to see real pumpkins since we don't grow pumpkins in the Philippines, what more a whole field of them! For some reason, these enormous orange fruits just made me smile!

This inconspicuous sign (we were lucky we noticed it!) on the side of the apple-cider-store barn really cracked me up!

Then the pumpkin-carving began...

And voila! Mine is the third from the left. Was obviously the amateur -- I didn't cut the "holes" big enough so my pumpkin had the dimmest light. But my pumpkin turned out pretty cute, right? I can't help smile when I see its Cachupoy "hair" [Cachupoy was a famous Filipino comedian whose trademark was sporting hair parted in the middle]. 

These would be perfect for tonight when we turn out our lights at 8pm for our family's monthly earth hour (see related post here), which Isabella so responsibly reminds us of every 30th.

For those of you going trick-or-treating tonight, Happy Halloween!

Photos are all my own. How-To layout by moi.