All Hallow's Sugar

That's better... a bit of sleep was all I needed. I've been having weird stomach pains and bloating (sorry, TMI, I know, but I guess if you've been a long-term reader, you'll have read worse) so I'm slowly testing out what might be the cause. I'm off alcohol for a while, and I'm trying to cut down on sugar (I don't think it's the culprit, but now's as good a time as any) so I think I had a low sugar moment last night. Best Beloved is praying I'm not gluten-intolerant, he loves his bread and pasta. I just want the ache to end!

It's been a pretty sugary couple of weeks, drinking with family and friends and then the heady rush of Halloween. I was invited to a couple of Halloween parties, couldn't make one because of visiting family, but I did get to the other, handily situated next door. I've never been into celebrating American traditions like Halloween, Valentine's Day or Thanksgiving, but it's different when you live next door to a lovely American and she's homesick for her fun.

It was a small but faithful party, complete with costumes and activities. My favorite cake-maker, Sam of Amore Cakes (at the Farmers Market), had made a batch of Witch's Fingers, pale shortbread fingers with almond slivers for nails, and I bought some for Julia, which went down a treat.


Here she is as Athena, complete with owl companion and our gift.


This is Lisa, Julia's housemate, originally from Tasmania, dressed as The Bad Apple. Scary!


Here we are, dressed in our Folk-Festival-bought masks, using them to be the Sad Cow and the Zombie Country Mouse.

We carved pumpkins,



ate devils on horseback and bobbed for apples.





The apples, once wetly won, were cut into chunks and dipped into caramel, or 'carmel' as Julia's north-western accent makes it. Yum! That, plus all the 'candy' and the exquisite pumpkin pie with maple cream, shows you how sugar-loaded I've been.

Bumblebee wore a cloak that I'd made for him on the weekend. His old cloak had been given to a smaller body a few months before and he really missed having a black hooded cloak. I seemed to have a 'free' day on Sunday (actually, when you're self-propelled, no day is a free day, but I felt I needed to spend some actual time doing something for him) so I proposed we shop for material and make a cloak.

Blimey, that was a tough day. Note to self: NEVER GO TO SPOTLIGHT ON A SUNDAY. We're both still rolling our eyes at standing in a 4-metre line to buy 6 metres of cheap black poly-cotton. Then my sewing skillz proved to be quite rusty, so I spent much of the afternoon unpicking and resewing, and was still up at midnight and then up at 6am the next day to finish it in time for that evening's party. That made Best Beloved roll his eyes, but I felt great when I saw him wearing it with a variety of masks.

So I had two fails during the week. One was as a sewing queen, and the other was at bobbing for apples. Here's something you probably didn't know about me... I hate putting my face under water. I've battled it for years, and I'm much better these days, can duck down in the pool and stuff, but I tried shoving my head into that wheelbarrow to get an apple in front of a crowd and realised that I was just not very happy about it. I don't have a problem with losing face, so I just stood up and confessed that I couldn't do it, and thankfully it was a nice group of people who didn't call me a wuss etc. Apparently there were people hiding in the house to avoid even having a go, so that made me feel ok. And they even let me eat the carmel-dipped apples :)

I did carve a pumpkin, so I did make some contribution to the evening's festivities!





(and this is what happens when you put pumpkin scrapings near my husbang.)


This weekend I'm attending The Gathering, a local conference for bookbinders from all over Australia and even a few from overseas. Should be fun... but first I'm going to a movie tonight (by myself, because BB will be flying back from business in Cairns): Anonymous! Yum, eye-candy galore. That's the best kind of sweetie.